Oil is one of the last avenues of blue-collar opportunity in this country, one of the few sectors open to working-class men—outside of sport—that still pay well. The oil workers I knew were always trying to redress this imbalance by spending their wages as soon as they got them. They bought powerful cars on finance, expensive clothes, good shoes, strong cocaine. They went to the gym, bench-pressed weights, and covered themselves in tattoos (it seemed a cultural practice somehow related to the job, as miners in South Wales used to gather in chapel to sing). They stayed single longer than most men in the provinces, and even their marriages had a provisional feel, as if they might be dissolved at any moment. They were interesting. The sort of people you’d want at a house party, provided the house wasn’t yours.

IT TAKES TWO REVELATIONS TO LEAVE A PERSON YOU’VE ONCE loved. There is the moment you realize you no longer love him. And there is the moment you realize you can no longer pretend. The length of time between the two varies, depending on your capacity for deceit, your tolerance for fraud. [...]

For months, I’d lain awake next to him, as my nerves shrilled and my mind performed frantic, scuttling maneuvers. Now I felt calm. The realization that you’re out of options brings with it its own brand of peace. I would leave him, I decided. I would leave him, his parents’ money, and the shockproof captivity of moderate means. I would do it today. Then, whatever privations waited for me on the other side, I wouldn’t have to do this again. I wouldn’t have to hear him tell lies. I wouldn’t have to watch him, wide-eyed as a manga girl, swear, swear, that what he’d just said, he hadn’t said, that what he’d just done, he hadn’t done, that it was all just a figment of my febrile, female brain.

The truth, as he must have known, was that I had nowhere to be. It’s dangerous, to strip people of their routines, then tell them to fill their time wisely. Above the funnel of his collar, his face was white and vulnerable. He looked frozen. I went to kiss his cheek, and as I leant in to close the final gap between us, he turned his head, so that his mouth was on mine. Even as he did it, I was aware the night could still be rectified. I could purse my lips and transform the kiss into something sealed and comparatively chaste. Not a kiss you’d give your mother, but one you might plant on a friend. There would be space between what had happened and what we would pretend, but it would be slippage. A small, survivable loss. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to. What I wanted was for us to be alone. What I wanted was all of his attention, trained on me. His hands on me. His mouth on me. I could smell his skin. I’d forgotten what this was like. Comprehensive need. To be so soaked in another person’s presence that everything else cedes, as to floodwater. I stood there for a minute, flooded. Then I reached around, pulled his head down, and kissed him back.

I turned to look at the man who’d spoken. He looked back at me. His look said he knew all my secrets, and found them unedifying.

“Who’s this then, lad? Your eldest?”

The others laughed.

“Didn’t like that, did she?” said another.

We went around the corner, out of sight. I could feel the malevolent force of the men at my back. I wished I’d let him come alone.

“They were rude.”

He glanced over my shoulder.

“I told you. The rules are different offshore.”

I ran my finger along the window ledge. There was a fine coating of dust on the paintwork. People were clearing out; the downturn had seen to that. I should probably try to negotiate a better price—six months’ rent here would take most of my savings—but I found that kind of conversation difficult. I took a hands-off approach to money, like the queen. It had been Adam’s métier, when we were together, since he cared about it more. The day I went to fetch my things from his flat, he thrust some pictures of a house he’d just bought towards me. “This could have been yours,” he said grandly, as if sharing the deeds to Pemberley, rather than an unexceptional corner building in Catford. “Everything I own could have been yours.”

“And doesn’t it say it all,” I replied, wrapping my one good coat in tissue paper, “that I’d rather be doing this?”

Friends called from London. “What are you doing all day?” they asked. Nothing was the honest answer, though I could hardly tell them that. Discipline is a muscle and mine was beginning to waste. The days stretched before me, long and formless. I thought idly about my book, and took myself shopping. I got my nails done and my hair fixed, as if I were my own kept wife. I gave myself new names. When I bought coffee, I’d say it was for Hadley (H-a-d-l-e-y, I’d sing out, with preemptive clarity). When I ordered taxis, I’d say they were for Saskia. On Tinder, I was Elodie.

I was still stunned by the week’s revelations. I should have been in glory, but what I felt was closer to the tranced horror of a child who has struck a match and somehow set fire to the curtains. It scared me that Caden was prepared to do this, with only minimal prompting. It should have been harder; everyone told me it would be harder. Married men never leave their wives. And yet, I always knew he would. I had a sense that if I led by example, if I left my job and the city where I lived, if I showed him how easy it was to simply walk away from things, he would follow. I was shocked and unsurprised, at the same time.

And Caden. All night, he’d been swimming up through my thoughts like a fish, though I tried to push him back down. Every time I remembered the enormity of what he was about to do, the freight of responsibility I’d have to bear, my stomach seized. Ordinary nerves; a squirm of paranoia. This was it. We were together and would have to remain so, for the rest of our lives. I could never leave him. I couldn’t allow him to dismantle his marriage, abandon his family, then dump him ten minutes later because I’d met someone I preferred; because his wife was a nuisance and his children were awful; because the difference between too and to continued to elude him, and every time he confused them, it made me gnash my teeth. We were going to do so much damage. We were running up a debt we’d never settle.

I was in the pub one night and this woman went to sit down next to me, so I moved my coat out of the way. She laughed at me, because the coat was pink. I said, “It’s not pink. It’s light plum.” Bit of banter, you see? Broke the ice. I fuck her the way I can’t fuck my wife. Throw her about the room. Bit of strangulation. It’s different, more animalistic. I’ve only seen her a couple of times, but when I’m offshore, I talk to her more than I talk to my missus. I don’t know if I miss her, but I miss the things she says to me. She tells me I look strong. My wife doesn’t say those things. And I don’t want to say “Look, I need to hear this” and then for her to go “Oh, you look nice” straight away, all robotic and that. But I do need to hear it. Massively. Turning thirty hurt me. My hair started falling out.