My Best Friend of 15 Years Was in My Husband's Phone as 'Work David'

I found out on a Sunday.

Which feels important somehow. Sunday is supposed to be the safe day. The slow coffee, church bells, no-urgency day. The day nothing bad happens.

His phone buzzed on the kitchen counter while he was in the shower. I wasn't snooping I genuinely thought it might be his mother, who had been unwell. I glanced at the screen.

Work David: "Last night was everything. I miss you already."

I stood there so long the coffee went cold.

His name is not David. And the number the number I had seen enough times in eight years of marriage to recognise without the name belonged to Rochelle.

Rochelle. Who had been my best friend since we were nineteen. Who was maid of honour at my wedding. Who sat with me in the hospital waiting room when I miscarried at eleven weeks and held my hand through the whole unbearable silence. Who called him "practically my brother-in-law" at dinner parties and made everyone laugh.

Rochelle. Who had apparently been in my husband's phone for God knows how long as Work David.

I didn't scream. I didn't cry.

I put the phone face-down exactly as I found it, poured my cold coffee down the sink, and started making a fresh pot.

He came downstairs in his robe, smelling of my shampoo I noticed that for the first time and felt sick and said, "Morning, love. That smells good."

"It does," I said.

I handed him his coffee.

I watched him drink it.

And I spent the next three hours deciding not what to do I already knew but how.

I want to be clear: I am not writing this story for sympathy. I am writing it because somewhere, right now, a woman is standing in her kitchen holding a phone and having the floor fall away beneath her. And I want her to know the floor comes back. You will find it again. And you will stand on it without him.

Have you ever been betrayed by someone you completely trusted? How did you find your way through? Leave a comment below.