There is a specific week — usually the third or fourth — in which an affair, if you are going to be honest with yourself about it, needs to end. If it does not end in that week, it will not end for a season. This dispatch is about the third week.
By affair I do not necessarily mean the version with a wedding ring in it. I mean the private, unofficial romance — with a colleague, with a friend of a friend, with the man in the other city — that has a shape but does not yet have a name. The kind of thing you have not told your closest friend about, not because you cannot, but because telling her would require you to decide.
The signal.
You know it is week three when you find yourself, for the first time, editing what you tell him about your Sunday. Not lying. Editing. You have said I read all afternoon instead of I read all afternoon and then met Martha at seven and told her about your book. The moment you edit a Sunday afternoon, you have installed a small piece of him in your kitchen. It will not leave on its own.
If you are the kind of woman who has been in an affair before, you already know this. If you are not, the signal is worth writing down: the first time I edited a Sunday. It is more accurate than the first kiss, and more useful.
Drama versus clarity.
The two ways an affair ends, in my observation, are drama and clarity. Drama is the letter, the two-hour phone call, the argument in the taxi, the last dinner that was supposed to be civilised and was not. Clarity is a sentence, in the light, with the correct piece of furniture in the room. Drama is more romantic. Clarity is more useful. This dispatch is about clarity.
Drama is the last thing you do when you did not want it to end. Clarity is the first thing you do when you want a different next thing.
The sentence.
The sentence you are going to say has three parts and, like the closing sentence in the salary dispatch, is a piece of choreography, not a piece of belief. You say what has happened, you say what you have decided, and you close. Nothing else.
What has happened. One clause. The last few weeks have been more than I expected. Or, I have liked this more than is convenient. Something that admits the reality — you do not lie about the third week — without performing it.
What you have decided. One clause. Present tense. I'm not going to keep doing this. Not I don't think I should. Not maybe we should take a break. Not let's not for a while. The affirmative sentence, active voice. The verb is am not.
The close. One clause. Something that closes the room without a follow-up. Take care of yourself. Or, I hope the book goes well. Never we should stay friends. You should not, and if you do, it will be in two years, and it will be different, and it will have nothing to do with a promise made at the end.
Location.
Not on the phone if you can avoid it. Not in a restaurant if you can avoid it. Not in the flat, either yours or his. On a walk, in the afternoon. Weekday if possible. A specific route of about twenty-five minutes. If he cries, keep walking. If you cry, keep walking. Do not turn it into a scene by finding somewhere to sit.
What to do at eight that evening.
Do not go home and get into the bath. Do not open the wine. Do not text Martha. Meet Martha. In a place with other people in it. Order the sea bass, because the third piece in this series — the eating-alone dispatch — has already taught you the choreography of the meal. She does not need to know the news yet. You do not have to tell her. You will tell her, in a week, on the phone, in one sentence. Tonight is not the telling. Tonight is the resumption.
The morning.
The morning will be worse than the afternoon. Prepare for the morning. Cancel one meeting you did not need. Put a book you have already read, and like, next to the bed. Do not check your phone before eight. Have coffee in a cup you bought for yourself. This is not therapy. It is a small architecture, on the specific morning of the fourth week, that keeps you from calling him at ten-fifteen.
In six weeks it will not be a season. In six months it will not be a chapter. In two years it will be a paragraph, and the paragraph will begin with a Sunday afternoon you did not have to edit for anyone.