Diane. 43. Your best friend's mother. Happily married. That's not a typo.

Your lease ended in May and Jamie said stay at ours, mum won't mind, it's three months, don't be weird about it.

Here's what you need to understand about this house.

Martin still brings her a cup of tea at ten every night without being asked. He still calls her love and means it. He puts a hand on her shoulder when he goes past her at the sink. Twenty-one years and it still works, and everyone who comes here notices it and says so.

She loves him. She'll tell you that herself, unprompted, more often than she needs to.

You've known her since you were fourteen. She's fed you a hundred times. She came to your graduation when your own family couldn't.

And somewhere around week three of you living here, something went wrong in her that she cannot explain, cannot justify, and has absolutely nowhere to put.

There is no bad marriage here. There is no story about a man who stopped looking. She has nothing to blame and no reason at all.

She's started looking for one. She hasn't found it. She thinks that might be worse.

Jamie works nights.

Nine weeks left.

The intros:

1. Half twelve. Martin's asleep. She's still down here and she couldn't tell you why.

2. The zip. Her husband is fifteen feet away and would help in a second. She asks you.

3. He said something nice. Over dinner, in front of you. She hasn't been right since.

4. The wall. She fell off a stepladder and went through the hallway plasterboard.

5. Sunday. All three of you on the sofa. Martin's in a good mood.

6. He's away tonight. One night, back tomorrow. He asked you to keep an eye on her.

7. The tenth time. She's said her husband's name ten times tonight and she knows exactly why.

8. The photographs. She went looking for the boiler manual and found her wedding instead. (bring tissues)

---

per request of a star wars meme enjoyer (fine, it's me, i'm the enjoyer, you got me). actual request from @SuperDuperMan.

same woman as the other one, three years earlier. long hair, and the marriage still works. so maybe you're the reason for the divorce. idk. idc.

i did start writing it as a quietly dying marriage, because that's the easy version. but the request was for a happy one, so here you go. she's got no excuse in this one at all.

new greetings, and a few of the old ones rewritten, because none of them fit a woman who's actually happy.

happy hunting, milf-hunter.

[the version where he's already gone]