The lid of the expensive night cream was stuck halfway on. A tiny thing, but I never screw it on crooked. It is a stupid habit, but an ironclad one. The special little spatula for the cream always lies on the right. Now it was lying on the left, carelessly tossed onto the edge of the sink and smeared with white cream.
The air in the bathroom smelled different too. A heavy, sweetish powder scent hung in it.
Mechanically, I reached for my silk robe on the hook. The belt was tied in a tight double knot. I always tie it in a loose loop so I can slip it off in one motion. Someone had worn it before me.
Lenka was rattling cups in the kitchen. We had sat at the same desk in eighth grade, pooled our money for our first pair of brand-name jeans, and sobbed in each other’s arms when, a month ago, her husband had thrown her out after a scandal. She had stood on my stairwell landing with red eyes, smeared mascara, and a single suitcase. Twenty years of friendship do not give you the right to hesitate. You simply take the suitcase from her trembling hands and go make the bed with fresh sheets in the guest room.
But now the bed in the guest room was neatly made, and that stuffy powder scent had seeped into the collar of my robe.
I unscrewed the cream lid and screwed it back on properly, until I heard the soft click. I carefully washed the spatula under running water and wiped it dry.
Was I imagining it? Probably.
After all, the woman was under stress.
I threw the robe over my shoulders and went out to the kitchen.
I know how to find mistakes. It is my job. In seventy-page estimates, I can see without a marker where a contractor has hidden an extra half percent. That morning, over the phone, I professionally tore apart a logistics report in three minutes. I was proud of my sharp eye. I hung up, smiled, and turned toward the table.
Lenka was drinking coffee from my mug.
From the heavy, lopsided clay cup I had brought back from Tbilisi. My husband knew that it was not even to be moved to another shelf, let alone used.
“I couldn’t find any clean ones,” Lenka shrugged, catching my look. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not,” I answered calmly.
You would have to be a truly petty bitch to begrudge a piece of fired clay to someone who had once saved your life. In my second year of university, I came down with severe pneumonia in the dorm. Back then, Lenka sold her only decent down jacket to buy me expensive antibiotics. For a week, we ate nothing but pasta with soy sauce, watched stupid comedies, and laughed like idiots. We had always split everything in half: clothes, secrets, our last money. What difference did it make what someone drank morning coffee from?
But by evening, my beige cashmere sweater had disappeared from the hallway closet.
Lenka fluttered off to some meeting with a lawyer, throwing over her shoulder, “I took your beige one, all my things are completely wrinkled!” The next day, my favorite bottle of niche perfume migrated from my dressing table to the windowsill in her guest bedroom. “Oh, I sprayed some yesterday and forgot to put it back, sorry, sorry.” The sweater returned to the hanger, soaked through with her cloying perfume.
On Thursday, I ran into our neighbor Marina by the elevator. Usually, we limited ourselves to a nod, but this time she held the doors and sympathetically touched my sleeve.
“Listen, Lena told me everything. Hang in there.”
I froze with my keys in my hand.
“Told you what?”
“Well, about your breakdowns,” Marina lowered her voice to a whisper. “That you don’t sleep at night, cry constantly, argue with your husband over nothing. If you need a good neurologist, I have a contact. Panic attacks are no joke.”
I had not cried in about four years. And the previous evening, my husband and I had spent the whole night choosing new wallpaper for the country house and eating pizza straight from the box.
“Lenka exaggerates everything,” I smiled and stepped into the elevator.
The doors closed. I pressed the button for my floor. Lena had molded me into a hysterical woman and, for some reason, carried that image out into the world. Who else had she managed to tell? Our mutual friends? My husband? I wrote it off as her own stress, an ordinary attempt to justify her shattered life against the backdrop of mine, which was supposedly cracking at the seams.
What a convenient, understanding idiot I was.
On Friday evening, I came home from work and found them in the kitchen, drinking wine. My favorite Barolo, the one we had brought back from vacation and were saving for our anniversary.
Lena was sitting on the countertop, swinging her bare feet and laughing at some joke my husband had made. He stood beside her, leaning against the kitchen cabinets, relaxed and at home. That was how the two of us usually stood together on Fridays. I silently put my keys on the cabinet.
“Oh, Anechka’s home!” Lena slid down to the floor. “We opened your wine. You’re not mad, are you? I had such an awful day, and Igor suggested I relax.”
I looked at my husband.
“Igor, we agreed to open it in October.”
He winced almost imperceptibly, but I caught it.
“Anya, seriously, why are you getting worked up?” His voice was calm. “Lena is already going through a hard time. It’s just a bottle. We’ll buy another one. Lately, you turn every little thing into a drama. You need some rest.”
I shut myself in the bedroom. I sat on the edge of the bed without even turning on the light and listened in the silence as the glasses clinked again behind the wall. Maybe I really was picking on trivial things, turning into a stuffy, controlling woman with a calculator instead of a heart. I sat in the dark, mentally going through the last months of my life with Igor. Maybe I really had become too closed off, too buried in my reports, and had forgotten what it was like to laugh easily in the kitchen with a glass of wine on a Friday night. He was not a villain, my husband. He was just an ordinary living person, tired of my constant composure, now reaching for that simple, sincere warmth beside which he could feel strong and needed, like a protector. Lena was in trouble. She needed support. And here I was, counting poured glasses and moved perfume bottles like a petty, jealous, aging owner, inventing paranoid conspiracies where there was only ordinary human compassion.
Those thoughts made me nauseous. I hated myself for my suspicion.
In the morning, I decided to apologize. I stepped into the hallway with a smile, ready to say that yesterday I had gone too far because I was tired. But the smile froze before it even reached my lips.
They were standing by the front door. Igor was leaving for work. Lena, once again wearing my beige cashmere sweater, was tenderly straightening the collar of his coat.
“Don’t forget to have lunch,” she cooed quietly. “And don’t pay attention to Anya. She’s just going through a difficult period. I’ll talk to her. We’ll sort everything out.”
Igor nodded guiltily, smiled at her, and left.
He nodded.
My husband had just agreed that I was not right in the head, and that she was my free live-in therapist.
On Saturday evening, our old mutual friends Katya and Pasha came over. We sat at the table while I picked at my salad with a fork, no longer feeling like the mistress of my own kitchen. Lena fluttered around, took my signature salmon pie, which I had made that morning, out of the oven, cut it with my serving tongs, and gave Igor the most golden piece.
“Lenochka, what a homemaker you are,” Pasha said fondly. “Igor is lucky to have you. I mean… lucky to have both of you.”
I snapped. Sharply, messily, and at the worst possible second.
I stood up, yanked the plate out of Lena’s hands, and hurled it into the sink with all my strength. The porcelain shattered into pieces.
“Get out of my house,” I hissed. “Take off my sweater, stop throwing yourself at my husband, and go back to your ruined life.”
Lena gasped theatrically and covered her mouth with both hands. Large tears instantly appeared in her eyes. Igor jumped up, grabbed my forearm hard enough to hurt, and almost growled, “Anya, stop this paranoid hysteria! You’re crossing every line!”
The guests muttered awkward goodbyes and fled within three minutes. I was left standing among the shards, officially a crazy, jealous bitch who threw dishes at a divorce victim without a single piece of proof.
That night, I sat in the dark in the kitchen. Igor had demonstratively gone to sleep in the study. Lena had locked herself in the guest room. I drank water in small sips and hated myself for losing control, for sinking to the level of a marketplace scandal.
Lena’s phone began vibrating softly but insistently on the table. She had forgotten it on the charger.
I do not search other people’s pockets for secrets. I only wanted to turn off the sound so it would stop buzzing and drilling into my brain.
A push notification glowed on the locked screen. From a contact named “Sister Rita.”
“So? Does he already believe that she’s completely lost her mind?”
The water in my glass trembled. My fingers froze. Something very cold opened in my chest. What exactly were they discussing? And how long had this been going on?
At that moment, a message arrived on my phone.
Katya.
“Anya. You acted like a bitch today, but I have to say this. When you went out onto the balcony, Lena was stroking Igor’s neck and whispering that he needed a stable woman, not a ticking time bomb. I thought I imagined it. But I’m not blind.”
Finally, someone else had seen this madness.
I knew the passcode to Lena’s phone. I entered the four digits. I opened the chat with her sister and scrolled up.
Igor is spineless. He’ll be easy to push.
Wore her beige sweater again yesterday. He notices.
Tell Marina from apartment 14 that Anka has panic attacks. Let everyone think she’s sick.
I kept scrolling. Date: August. Two months before her husband had supposedly thrown her out.
I’m divorcing Kostya, that’s it. I’ll crash at Anka’s place until her little fool is ready. The apartment is huge. We’ll drive that stuffy bore out in a couple of months.
I slowly put the phone on the table.
In the morning, I made coffee.
Lena came into the kitchen with the face of a martyr, prepared to play offended innocence. She sighed, adjusting the collar of my beige sweater with a familiar gesture.
I did not talk. I simply pressed one button and forwarded the screenshots to Igor and to her.
Her phone on the table beeped softly. She glanced at the screen. Her mouth fell open, and her eyes darted feverishly, searching for a saving lie.
“Pack your things,” I said in an absolutely even voice.
“Anya, you misunderstood… This is taken out of context, I just…”
That was it. No shouting, no explanations. From my face, she understood that there was no one left to perform for. Lena left in silence. Only the wheels of her suitcase knocked loudly and irritatingly against the parquet floor in the hallway. The front door slammed.
Igor came out of the study a minute later. He had already read the message. I did not ask what he felt, realizing he had been nothing more than a spineless little fool she had planned to push.
He walked up to the countertop, shifted awkwardly in place, moving his weight from one foot to the other.
I looked at the man with whom I had recently been choosing wallpaper for the country house, the man who had so easily and casually nodded in agreement with the idea that I was insane.
I turned away, picked up a sponge, turned on the hot water, and began scrubbing the sink with firm pressure until it shone.
Behind me, my husband stood in silence.
My home belonged only to me again.
