I never imagined I’d share this story. It’s filled with too much pain, shame, and regret. But perhaps it will serve as a lesson to someone. For me, it’s a confession I’ve carried for far too long.
My name is Emily. In our final school years, Veronica and I became inseparable. Both top students, ambitious, dreaming of leaving our small town for the bright lights of bigger cities. We shared books, secrets, and our first dreams of love. We were alike—in character, in aspirations. But fate, as it turned out, tore us apart for good. And it was all my fault.
After school, we went to different universities. She studied chemistry in Manchester, while I pursued literature in Birmingham. Every holiday, we made sure to meet: cooking breakfast together, wandering the streets, talking till dawn. Both of us dreamed of settling in the city, building careers, starting families.
But the years passed. Graduation loomed, and neither of us had found love. My mother would say, “Emily, university is your chance to meet someone decent. After that, it’s too late—everyone at work will be taken.” But who listens to their mother at twenty?
After graduation, we both ended up in London. Veronica taught chemistry at a secondary school, while I worked as a journalist for a local paper. We rented flats, lived modestly, worked relentlessly. Weekends were for strolls and meeting old friends. That’s when Andrew and James came into our circle. Veronica fancied Andrew—steady, reliable, with a flat and plans for the future. I dated James briefly, but it ended when he moved abroad with his family.
Veronica and Andrew grew closer. She’d come home exhausted from work, yet still scrubbed his floors, picked out furniture, whispered plans for their future. One day, she sighed, “This will be our bedroom, here the living room, and this… this is where our children will grow up.”
I listened—and envy crept in. Quiet, gnawing, ugly. It ate at me from the inside.
Then Veronica fell ill. Constant fatigue turned out to be anaemia. She was hospitalised for treatment. And I… I started visiting Andrew more often. Cooked him dinner, laughed at his jokes, brushed his hand. One evening, I found myself in that very bedroom—the “heart of the home,” as Veronica called it.
I seduced him. Deliberately. Coldly. Won the game. Two months later, we married. I walked into that house in a white dress Veronica had once imagined wearing. He carried me over the threshold. I smiled. The victor.
Veronica didn’t make a scene. She only said softly,
“Thank fate for showing me the truth in time.”
She vanished from my life, but sometimes the walls of the flat seemed to whisper in her voice. Especially in the nursery, where I arranged toys for my son and daughter—the same room she’d dreamed of filling with laughter.
Years later, I learned Veronica married Peter, a man with a daughter from his first marriage. To my surprise, they were happy. She bonded with the girl and even his difficult mother. They bought a spacious flat, later had a son and daughter. Their family was picture-perfect: harmony, understanding, love.
Meanwhile, cracks formed in my life.
Andrew never advanced in his career, stayed put in our town with stagnant prospects. His mother, once kind, later hissed at me,
“You took Veronica’s place. But perhaps my son deserves no better.”
Arguments became routine. We only spoke to shout. The children grew up in tension. My daughter left home young, fell in with a troubled boy, had a child. My son moved abroad and vanished—no calls, no letters. Gone.
Veronica’s children? One works in Brussels for the EU. The other teaches at a prestigious university. They visit every summer. Their family gathers on the terrace with guitars, songs, laughter. Peter sings beneath Veronica’s window. Their home is full of joy. Mine—empty.
On nights like these, I understand:
Fate truly sets everything right.
Veronica was right—she had reason to thank fate. I? None. I made my choice. Stole a fiancé. Betrayed a friend. Got a house, a wedding, a title. But lost myself.
I’m not happy. I don’t love. I live with the weight of guilt. And I know—I earned it.
