false front (part 3) quiet thunder

A quiet home, a dependable husband—and a life built on a lie she’s no longer sure how to carry.

Friday 1 May 2020

When she turned the key in the front door, the hallway light was still on. That wasn’t unusual, but the sound of the kettle finishing its boil was. Geoff rarely stayed up.

She stepped in quietly, peeling off her jacket, careful with the zip. The house felt full of listening. Beige carpet, worn smooth in places. A faded runner on the stairs. Family photos in frames that hadn’t changed in years. Everything in its place. The smell of the house was a soft mix of clean laundry, watered-down bleach, and the lingering ghost of old air freshener. It was the smell of continuity.

When she entered the kitchen, he was there, sitting at the small table, the soft glow of the under-cupboard light tracing the edge of his face. The wallpaper was curling slightly at the corners, and the radio on the windowsill played low classical music that neither of them ever changed.

“You’re late tonight,” he said gently.

Elaine smiled, or something like it. “Rain slowed things down.”

But something in his voice made her pause—a softness that felt too measured, too careful. Her pulse skipped, just for a second. Had he found something? Read a message? Followed her?

Her body stayed still, but her mind scrambled—trying to remember if she’d left something out of place.

He nodded, like he didn’t want to make anything of it. “You must be shattered.”

She sat opposite him, watching for any flicker of change in his expression. But his face was only tired. Steady. As it always was.

He pushed a mug toward her—her favourite one, the chipped enamel with a cartoon paramedic on the side. The one the kids had bought her as a joke.

“I’ve been thinking,” Geoff said, eyes still on his tea. His voice stayed soft, but there was a weight under it. “Maybe it’s time you pulled back a bit. Just until things settle.”

Elaine kept her face still.

“I know you want to help people,” he said. “And I’m proud of you for it, I hope you know that. But we’ve got to think of our age. We’re not… well, you know. Not bulletproof.”

She wrapped her hands around the mug. The heat surprised her.

He shifted, hesitated, then walked across the kitchen and reached into the drawer by the cooker. When he turned back, he was holding a small silver photo frame—one of those cheap ones with a beaded edge. Inside, a picture of her from a charity first-aid course years ago. She remembered the moment it was taken—squinting into the sun, the borrowed St John’s jacket too big for her shoulders.

“I thought we could put this out,” he said. “Something to show the kids next time they call.”

Elaine didn’t speak. Her stomach flickered—not quite nausea, a feeling that went deeper and was more embedded.

“They’ll be proud of you,” he added. “Even if they don’t say it.”

Their children had their own worlds now—separate cities, adult lives, families. They sent messages. Occasional photos. Sometimes she watched the clock tick through their birthdays before a call came.

She touched the corner of the frame, her finger barely resting on the glass.

“Maybe I’ll take a break,” she said quietly. “A few shifts off.”

The words felt strange as she said them, like she was rehearsing someone else’s truth.

Geoff’s face lifted—not quite a smile, but relief. “That’s a good idea. No shame in slowing down.”

A silence passed. She wished he would say something more. Something ordinary. But he only sipped his tea.

Last week he’d read aloud from the newspaper—a woman fined for breaking lockdown rules to throw a birthday lunch. “Selfish,” he’d said. “People bending the rules like they’re the exception. People could die because of that.”

Elaine had nodded. She remembered her own words: “Makes you lose faith in people.”

Now those same words folded over her like damp fabric.

Later, in bed, Geoff drifted off quickly. She stayed still, listening to the gentle scrape of his breath, the shift of the house as it cooled. The beige wallpaper looked darker in the low light. She could see the outline of a watermark near the ceiling—an old stain that had never spread.

The frame was on her bedside table. She’d placed it carefully, facing outwards at first. Now she turned it slowly to face the wall. She wasn’t ready to look herself in the eye.

She lay back, eyes fixed on the ceiling, silence thick around her.

She thought about what they’d built—a life with no real cracks, just quiet compromises. Two children. A mortgage paid off. Christmas traditions. Routine affection. Geoff had never strayed. Never shouted. He’d been dependable, constant. Kind.

And still, a part of her longed for something more. Not more love, exactly—but more life, and more of it hers. She wondered if you could live a whole life without ever really waking up in it.

Without ever asking if it was allowed—to want joy and danger and something just for yourself.

And if it wasn’t allowed, then what did that make her?

Her mind wandered—to David’s hands, lately so careful; to the toast cooling on the plate; to the space between one breath and the next. To the woman in the paper. To her children, scrolling headlines. To Geoff’s voice, saying he was proud of her.

She didn’t cry. She rarely did.

But the ache was there, steady as the ticking clock.

And in the dark, she let herself wonder—not what might happen if she was caught, but what she had already become in the quiet daily rehearsal of her untruth.