The first time Leon cheated on me, we’d been married eight months. His affair was with a woman I knew. Long before, we’d gone to school together. We’d been friends. Small world, huh? read her Facebook message. Her name was Megan Blake, and she’d joined my primary school in Year Five. At nine years old, she’d already worn kitten heels as school shoes and had a mini tube of lip gloss attached to her key ring. I didn’t even own house keys.

Megan Blake had such bad nits that sometimes, when I looked closely, I could see her hair crawling. Her father was dead, her mother an alcoholic. I’d been a meek child: pasty and slow, with parents who still cut the crusts off my sandwiches. Megan picked me out seemingly at random and decided we were best friends. She spent break time chewing Juicy Fruit gum and calling out to pedestrians through the playground railings. Whenever a dog walked by, she’d stick her arm through the iron bars and pet it. She talked to adults like she was an adult herself. Still in the slammer, she’d say.

The adults would laugh nervously, then pull their dog’s lead and hurry away. You fancy smuggling us in a KitKat? she’d shout after. There’s a newsagent on the corner.

My mother said that Megan was outrageous. She’d come over after school and eat the entire contents of our fridge. When my mother called Megan’s mother to come and collect her, she’d get no answer, and Megan would end up staying for entire weekends. We’d cut all the hair off my Barbies and draw biro tattoos on their arms.

At night Megan and I would lie in my single bed, straddling and kissing each other with open mouths. I was always the boyfriend, Megan the girlfriend. She’d give me tips on how to use my tongue, and I’d follow her advice religiously. She refused to brush her teeth before bed, so her mouth always tasted of Juicy Fruit. She lost a tooth in the playground once, and there was a big grey hole in it.

After Megan and I stopped being friends, I sent her a bath bomb in the post and never got a reply. Nothing dramatic had happened between us. We just ended up in different secondary schools, where Megan met new people and drifted away. By the time we were reunited at sixth form, she had white highlights striping her dark hair and a diamanté piercing in her upper lip. She didn’t recognise me in the corridor, and I had to give my full name to remind her.

Fuck me, she said. Fran, it’s been ages.

I nodded. I guess it has.

After that we didn’t have anything left to talk about. I wanted to ask her if she remembered the punk Barbies, the ice pops we stole from the newsagent. I wanted to ask her if she remembered the kissing. Instead we were silent for a minute, and then Megan’s eyes slid from mine and looked off down the corridor.

Well, she said. If you ever need a fake ID, you know where to come.

She gave me a little nod, that same wisdom in her eyes that she’d always had. I felt breathless. Yeah, I said. Definitely.

The next time I saw Megan was in the cafeteria, when I stopped her to say that I’d received some money for my birthday and would like to buy an ID, and after that in the car park, where she sold it to me. Both times I found myself incapable of coming up with anything entertaining or meaningful to say to her. It was like trying to make conversation with a crush. I don’t know if I did fancy Megan, or if I fancied the person I was sure I could have evolved into if I’d stayed friends with her.

After I gave her the money, she told me about a club night that was happening that weekend. It’s garage, she said.

I like garage, I lied.

She smirked. See you there then.

Megan probably knew that I had no idea what garage was, other than the place my father liked to disappear to on the weekends. Maybe she gave that tip to everyone she sold an ID to, as customer service. Still, I took the information as a direct invite. I spent hours getting ready. I wore a halterneck top, my hair scraped back with gel. I sprayed myself with air freshener, since I owned no perfume. Before I left, I announced to my parents that I was going clubbing with Megan Blake, my best friend from primary school.

Oh Lord, my mother said, shaking her head. That girl was always trouble.

When I got to the club I couldn’t see Megan out front. I stood in the queue, running my fingers over the curved corners of the ID in my pocket. Every few seconds, I spun my head around and scanned the line for Megan.

What’s your star sign? the bouncer said, once I got to the front.

It was over before it had even begun. I’d memorised the name on my fake ID as well as the birthday, but the star sign was a detail that hadn’t crossed my mind. I walked up into town and called my father for a lift home. I went to the chip shop to meet him. I sat on a red metal chair in the shop window with the taxi drivers, my face warming over the vinegar steam, and waited.

Fifteen years passed before I heard from Megan Blake again. In that time I went to university, I taught English in three different secondary schools, I moved out of my parents’ house and then I moved back in again. I had a string of uninspiring boyfriends, I saved some money which I hoped to put towards buying a house, then finally I met Leon and I married him. I thought of Megan Blake only fleetingly. The first time I kissed Leon, I remembered her advice – to flick the tongue like a snake, but slowly – and I utilised it. A year or so later, after Leon and I were married, I thought I saw Megan from the top deck of the bus, pushing a buggy down the street. A year after that, when she added me on Facebook, I realised that it couldn’t have been her with the buggy, as there were no photographs of kids on her profile. No one could resist posting their offspring on social media. People wore their children like a badge.

Megan’s friend request gave me a little pulse of exhilaration. I was standing in Sainsbury’s, and I scrolled her profile with curiosity. Her message came in a few minutes after I accepted the request. I was still standing around in the cereal aisle. Initially I thought Megan Blake would be reaching out, wanting to see me. The idea was flattering. I wondered if she’d seen that I was married now, that my husband and I were behind one of the most popular student clubs in the city. Recently, there’d been a write-up in the university paper, with a photograph of Leon and me looking pensive behind the bar. Sometimes we put on garage nights. The students, who’d been born just shy of the millennium, loved a nineties throwback. How the tables have turned, I thought. Then I opened the damn thing.

I’m sorry, Fran. If I’d known it was you he was married to, I would have called it off months ago. Small world, huh?

Megan Blake was online. She and I had a bit of back and forth. All the time, my heart was spasming in the base of my throat. She told me she’d met Leon two months before, that she’d known he was married but she hadn’t known to who. A week ago, when she found out his wife was me, she’d updated him on the fact we were childhood friends, and he’d promised to come clean. The next day he’d told Megan, not expecting her to get in touch with me herself, that he’d confessed the affair to me. He’d also told her he was in love with her, later that night, after he’d taken some MDMA. I didn’t think that counted. Still, I was angry. I got hot under my coat. I took it off and threw it in my shopping trolley. After that I bought some Weetabix, seizing the box from the shelf and slamming it down at the tills.

I didn’t buy anything else. I couldn’t think, by then, about what we did or didn’t have in the cupboards. I even forgot that we were out of milk, so the next day I ate the cereal with water. It was gross, but that grossness was fitting. I was feeling sorry for myself. After I’d got back from Sainsbury’s, I’d called Leon a cunt and a fuckhead. I’d picked up the beer bottle he was drinking from and thrown it right at his face. It had nicked the top of his cheek, the highest part of the bone, and a slow trickle of blood had moved down his jaw. He’d freaked out and gone to A & E, where the paramedics had essentially called him a pussy and sent him away with no stitches.

Back at the flat he’d begged my forgiveness, the blood oxidised now on his knuckles, and I’d told him to go fuck himself. The next day he’d begged my forgiveness again, after I’d finished the Weetabix, and I’d said OK. I liked my life with Leon: the club and the flat and the whir of the city. There was no excuse, other than that.

After I agreed to forgive him, he came over and put his palms on my cheeks. He gave me a kiss on the forehead. I was still sitting over the empty bowl. Fran, he said, I love you like a love song.

I thought I recognised that line, so later I looked it up. It was a lyric from a Selena Gomez song that had come out that same year. It was all over the radio.

The second time Leon cheated on me, eleven months had passed since the Megan Blake episode. This time, it was with a girl we’d hired for the club. She was twenty-one years old and studying History of Art. Her name was Aaliyah, blue hair washed out to the colour of sea foam. This time, I’d seen it coming. There’d been a few nights when Leon had failed to come home after work, claiming he’d fallen asleep in one of the leather booths in the club. Aaliyah had a lighter with Betty Boop on it, and always refused to look me in the eye.

Her housemate had messaged me on Instagram and asked to meet in a Starbucks around the corner from the club. All the younger people had moved over to that platform by then, after Facebook. At that time, I didn’t know why she’d chosen to track me down and tell me. Maybe her father had cheated on her mother, and the betrayal had defined her whole childhood. I figured it was something like that.

For fuck’s sake, I said, in Starbucks.

The friend pulled a miniature of whisky from her coat pocket, added a glug to my hot chocolate. You can do better, she said.

Later, when I confronted Leon about his affair, he tried very hard to lie. Aaliyah? he said. I don’t know an Aaliyah.

Yes you do, Leon. Even I know Aaliyah. She works in the club.

Oh, her? I thought her name was Alicia or something, I don’t know. Yeah, OK. We might have kissed once or twice.

Some days later, I found out he wasn’t sleeping with only Aaliyah, but also with her housemate, the same girl I’d met up with in Starbucks. Aaliyah showed up at the club one night, having just found out herself, and swung a punch at Leon in the smoking area. She had a strong arm. I was impressed. His nose bled all over his jeans, and when he looked up there were tears on his cheeks. I felt a sense of justice at that. Afterwards I went over to Aaliyah carrying two shots of tequila, one for her and one for myself. We clinked the tiny plastic glasses before knocking them back. The bouncers looked over and cheered.

When I got back to our flat in the early hours of the morning, just off from my shift, Leon was still awake and seething. She ruined my fucking jeans, he said.

I didn’t tell him the trick I knew about cold water. I’d bled through more of my clothes than he could even imagine. Still, Leon always felt the world was out to get him.

Shame, I said, my voice filled with irony.

Oh Jesus. You hate me too, is that it?

Yes, Leon. I never want to see your goblin face again. I’m leaving you.

I did as I’d promised, and moved back in with my parents in the suburbs. I’d been living with them when I first met Leon two and a half years before, trying to save some money to buy a house. Now I’d invested all that money into Leon’s nightclub, and my marriage was in scraps. I wasn’t sad so much as embarrassed. I didn’t want to tell my parents about Leon’s affairs, so instead I told them we were having the kitchen redone in the flat. I don’t know if they believed me, but they played along all the same. My mother kept suggesting colour schemes.