My Wife Was Asleep Beside Me… Then Suddenly I Got a Facebook Notification from a Woman Asking to Add Me as a Friend.

My wife lay beside me, the night deep and quiet, when a sudden chime from the old Facebook app broke the stillness. A strangerher face a pale portrait of a woman I seemed to recognisehad sent a friend request. I clicked accept and, without a moment’s hesitation, typed, Do we know each other?

Her reply arrived like a moth drawn to a flame: Ive heard youre married, yet my heart still clings to you.

It was an old schoolfriend, Eleanor, whose picture showed her in a summer dress, the sort of beauty that once turned heads on the cobbles of Cambridge. I closed the chat, turning my gaze back to my wife, Eleanor, who slept soundly after a day of toil at the mill. In her steady breathing I felt the comfort of a life newly built together, a home far from the bustling streets of her childhood in Liverpool.

She had grown up surrounded by familyher mother, ever ready with a warm embrace when tears fell; her brother and sister, quick with jokes that could lift the gloom; her father, who would appear with parcels of her favourite biscuits and a smile that made the world feel right. Yet she placed her trust in me, a trust I could not take lightly.

The thoughts swirled like autumn leaves in the wind, and I reached for my little black handset, pressing the block button with a firm resolve. I turned back, pressed my cheek to hers, and let the night carry us both into sleep.

I am a man, not a child. I have sworn fidelity, and I shall keep that oath. I shall forever stand as a husband who does not stray, who does not shatter the hearth he has helped to build.