Richard hung up his jacket, listening to the low, familiar rhythm of his children bickering good-naturedly — a sound that filled the house in a way that felt far too rare.
This, he thought. This was the quiet he wanted to come home to.
Later, when the kids had retreated to their rooms — Chloe messaging friends about the lemur that had tried to steal her crisps, Drew editing a slow-motion video of sea lions — Richard lingered in the doorway of the sitting room.
The house still held the soft echoes of their day: a half-drunk bottle of fizzy orange on the counter, a penguin keyring Drew had abandoned on the coffee table, Chloe's hoodie draped over the banister. None of it glamorous. None of it curated.
But it felt real. Honest. Solid beneath his feet.
He let out a long breath, the kind that released something deeper than air.
Maybe tomorrow wouldn't be perfect. Maybe next week would be messy and complicated in all the familiar ways life insisted on being. But tonight — after watching his children laugh without restraint, after seeing them move through the world without tension shadowing every step — he could feel the shape of something he hadn't felt in years.
A beginning.
Richard switched off the lights, letting the room settle into darkness, and headed upstairs with a quiet, steady certainty:
He was still learning. Still healing. Still rebuilding.
But he was moving in the right direction.
Fatherhood had changed him — softened him, grounded him, given him somewhere to pour the parts of himself that work had drained. If Eleanor felt the same, she didn't show it. Her interest in their daughter flickered inconsistently: sharp and bright when visitors were around, dull and restless when they weren't.
But Richard stayed steady. Determined.
He carried Chloe around their small flat with pride and something close to awe. He fed her, rocked her, walked circles around the sofa at three in the morning. He would be what she needed, even if he had to learn every step as he went.
He wanted to tell Robert — properly, not just in an email — how fatherhood had cracked his world open in ways he hadn't expected.
But Robert didn't come home for another year.
Lisa stopped visiting not long after Eleanor became pregnant. At first there were excuses — long hours, deadlines, exhaustion — and then she simply faded away. Their Friday dinners became just Richard and Eleanor, and sometimes that didn't feel like a loss at all.
But Robert's absence weighed on him far more than he ever admitted. His friend was out there risking his life, and Richard could do nothing but wait.
When Chloe was almost two, a message arrived: Home for three weeks. Need to talk.
Richard drove to Robert's flat, eager, relieved.
He found him sitting in the kitchen — thinner, older, eyes hollow with exhaustion. His duffel bag was still by the door. The room felt stripped down, emptied of warmth.
Robert opened the door and walked back to his chair without greeting him.
"It's Lisa," he said finally. "She's been seeing someone. A year. Maybe more."
Richard froze.
"Oh, Robert… God. I'm so sorry."
"And she's pregnant."
The words landed like a physical blow.
"Right," Richard said, because he didn't know what else to say. His voice sounded stiff, wooden. "Right. I see."
Robert gave a humourless laugh. "You've never known what to do with emotion. Still don't."
Richard tried — he made tea, offered practical suggestions, talked about logistics and lawyers and flats. But none of it helped.
Robert didn't want solutions.
He wanted someone to sit in the dark with him.
Richard wouldn't understand that until years later.
And Eleanor… Eleanor made everything worse.
He invited Robert to dinner a few days later, hoping normalcy might help.
It didn't.
Eleanor flitted around the table with too-bright eyes and a neckline more daring than usual. She leaned in when Robert spoke, touched his arm in pity, complimented him with soft empathy that felt more calculated than kind.
When Richard returned from checking on Chloe, he found Eleanor pouring Robert a drink, standing too close, she lay her hand lightly on his shoulder as she murmured, "You deserve someone who truly sees you."
Robert stepped back as though jolted, jaw tightening. Eleanor just smiled, untroubled.
Robert left early that night.
The next morning, he asked Richard not to invite him over again.
Richard didn't argue. He didn't understand. He only felt the hollow ache of something slipping out of his grasp.
The divorce went through quietly, painfully. Robert returned overseas almost immediately, taking assignments no one sane wanted — Syria, Lebanon, parts of Iraq. His messages were brief, impersonal. Sometimes months passed with nothing.
Richard kept trying — small messages, attempts at connection — but they were met with polite distance.
He told himself Robert needed space.
He didn't realise he wouldn't see him again for several years.
The morning sun drifted low over the streets as Richard pulled out of the driveway. The city was just waking. He eased into traffic, fingers tapping lightly against the steering wheel.
He tried to remember exactly how many years he had known Robert.
Eighteen? Nineteen?
Long enough that the early days blurred at the edges — late nights in cheap pubs, early mornings in too-bright offices, two ambitious young men climbing parallel ladders in a world that rewarded them unevenly.
He didn't mind the early hour. There was something steadying about it. Besides, he was on his way to meet Robert.
Golf. A Sunday tradition they'd only recently resurrected.
He remembered Robert at his worst — brittle, hollow, carrying a fracture only a close friend could see. Richard had watched him unravel, then rebuild, piece by deliberate piece.
And now?
Now Robert was happy. Genuinely, deeply happy. With Isabelle, he had softened without losing himself, grown stronger without hardening.
Richard smiled to himself, a small, private thing.
He wasn't envious. Life handed people joy on different timelines. He'd long stopped interpreting someone else's happiness as proof that he'd fallen short of his own.
If anything, he felt proud. Lucky. Grateful to have witnessed the arc — from reckless ambition to quiet peace.
As he turned onto the road leading out of the city, the air felt clearer, the sky a little brighter. He let the quiet fill the car — not the old weight of loneliness, but something easier. Something companionable.
A good friend. A fresh morning. A few hours of green fairways, low conversation; and the familiar rhythm of two men who had earned the right to be honest with each other.
It wasn't much.
But it was enough to fill him with a quiet ease as he drove on.