I hover my finger over the delete button and try to pluck up the courage to do what I know I need to.

My heart is beating hard in my chest, and I can’t help but feel as though I’m making a mistake. But I know this is the right thing to do – and if I don’t make this call now, then I might never get around to doing it.

It’s been nearly ten days since I came back from the trip to Paris with Jason, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him. My brain keeps running over every little detail over and over again until it feels like they are laid in solid ground inside my head. I can’t get rid of him, even though I promised myself it would be the last I ever saw him.

Sean has noticed, of course. He’s not blind; he can tell something is up. As he reads to Donnie on the couch, I find myself watching the two of them, waiting to feel that spark of joy that I normally do when I see them together. But it doesn’t quite come the way it normally does. Once Donnie is off to bed, Sean comes over to me and puts an arm around my shoulder.

"Are you okay?" He asks. "You’ve seemed… kind of off for the last few days."

"I’m fine," I lie. "Just tired, that’s all."

He doesn’t know about the extent of my weekend with Jason. No way am I going to tell him that my ex swept me off to Paris for a couple of days. No, I’m sure it would do nothing but make him feel inadequate, and that’s the last thing I want. Besides, I want to keep this all to myself, so that I can savour the memories that are completely and utterly mine.

I’m sure it will fade in a couple of days. I’m sure. It’s just a crush; just old memories getting stirred up and making me feel like I have more of a connection with Jason than I really do. Yes, it’s tempting to let myself get caught up in what we had, but I know that we’re not good for each other, not really.

Even if that trip was the most fun I’ve had in years. Even if I have never felt that romanced by anyone before in my life. Oh, it’s impossible to get him out of my brain – I want to forget about him, but he’s stuck there, going round and round.

I wonder if he’s thinking about me, too. I lie awake at night, next to Sean, and do my best not to ponder that question. I don’t want to reach out to him, because if I do, I’m going to find some way to see him again, and that would be a disaster. Sean and I are done with the Weekend Club.

He’s already deleted the app, of course. He didn’t even have to think twice about it.

"It was so much fun," he admitted, with a flash of that cheeky grin I love so much. "But I want to keep coming home to you. Besides, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to fit in many more dates, what with working again…”

He’s landed a management job at another pub. It’s farther away from home than the last one, so he has more commuting time. Still, it’s good to have him working again.

"Yeah, of course," I agreed, hoping he believed me. I didn’t want to hurt him. I still don’t. But the secret of what happened between Jason and me is starting to hang heavy in my head. It’s not like the other dates.

Maybe because of the history between us, and maybe because there are so many details that I am keeping from Sean, but it feels more like an affair than anything else I’ve done so far. Which is ridiculous, because my husband knows that it was happening. But it’s not as simple as just sex with Jason, the way it was with the other dates. It’s something deeper, something that’s not so easy to just throw off and forget about.

His last words to me, about seeing me again soon, keep playing over and over again in my head. That’s him telling me he’s not done with this, right? That he still wants to see more of me? I wish I could take him up on that, but if I were to sneak out with him outside of the rules that Sean and I made, then I really would be cheating. And I can’t stand the thought of doing that.

It’s the thrill of it. The thrill of having someone lavish all this time and attention on me. Back here, back home, I know it’s not possible in the same way, what with real life poking its head in. But I wish… I wish that I could just have a little more time with him. And that’s dangerous.

Yes, Jason and I have amazing chemistry, but we’ve already tried dating and we know it doesn’t work. If it was meant to work out, then it would have the first time. It didn’t. I need to forget about him, to focus on the life that is right in front of me and remember this is the life I want.

I need to get rid of the app. That’s the only way I’m going to be able to leave all of this behind, and I know it. I need to forget everything that happened between Jason and me, and, more than anything, ensure that I don’t have any other way of staying in touch with him. We didn’t exchange numbers, after all.

I have sent him one last message. Thanking him for the good time we had together, wishing him the very best. And now, I am sitting there, on the edge of the bed, my finger hovering over that delete button as I try to make myself press it.

And, finally, I click down on the button. Then I watch as the app vanishes from my phone. It’s over. This months-long adventure into the crazy world of other people is over. If Sean and I want to get back into the app again, we have to go through the whole screening process and get ourselves signed up once more, and that sounds exhausting. Anyway, Sean wouldn’t want to.

It’s done. Eight dates, and it’s done. And God, they were crazy dates. There isn’t a single one that I’m going to forget, one way or another. It’s a good thing. They were all special to me, except maybe Steffan. And they taught me about myself. Made me braver. More ready to try out new things and put myself out there.

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Later that night, I snuggle up to Sean and press my nose into his hair, inhaling deeply. Here, with him, this is home. This is where I’m meant to be. He half-turns, sleepily, to face me.

"Hey," he murmurs. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I’m great," I promise him, as I kiss the back of his neck. "Just great."

And for the next few days, I am able to convince myself that I am. I take care of Donnie, I work, and I curl up with Sean on the couch to watch TV at the end of a long day, and it feels right. Just like it was before, except maybe with a little more trust than there was. Because, for both of us to go and experiment with other people, but still come back here, that’s powerful. That’s a sure sign that both of us are where we need to be right now.

I wake up on Friday morning, a couple of days after I deleted the app, with my stomach stirring with nausea. I make it to the bathroom just in time to throw up, and by the time I stagger out again, Sean is waiting for me, looking concerned. I lift a hand to get him away from me.

"Don’t come too close," I warn. "I’ve got some kind of stomach bug, I don’t want to give it to you and Donnie."

"Do you want me to go out and get you something?” He asks. I shake my head as I crawl back into bed.

"I just want to rest for a little bit. Can I stay in bed a bit longer?”

"Of course," he assures me, dropping a kiss on my head.

I curl up in bed and feel sorry for myself the rest of the day, reassuring myself that I’m going to be fine tomorrow. But before I can so much as make myself a morning coffee, the nausea hits me again, and I am bent over the toilet bringing up everything I ate the night before.

It doesn’t make sense, I think to myself, as I clean myself up. Donnie and Sean are both fine, so why would this stomach bug have hit just me...?

I figure that I can take the weekend off to relax and try to get myself feeling better, but it doesn’t work. On Monday, I’m still sick, and I’m starting to get worried.

I think about going to the doctor’s, but it seems extreme to go to the doctor over a little stomach bug. I’m sure that I am going to feel better soon. I make myself a mint tea to calm my stomach after Donnie is away to school, but I catch a whiff of some cheese from the fridge and I feel the sickness rising up in my stomach again.

That’s when it hits me. I have felt this way before, just once in my life – when I was pregnant with Donnie. But there’s no way, is there?

My stomach twists into angry knots as I think hard. Sean and I haven’t had sex in a long time. And with the others, I always used condoms. Except…with Jason, I can’t remember if we used condoms, and it’s not like I’m on the pill or anything. I wrack my brain trying to remember… We were just so caught up in the heat of the moment, like horny teenagers, and I can’t remember pausing to think about protection. Anyway, I never thought this could happen. The universe doesn’t have that cruel a sense of humour, does it? I try to bite down the panic that is rising up inside of me, but it’s starting to take control. No, no, no, this can’t be happening, no way – not a chance in hell.

Sean and Donnie are out of the house, so I head down to our local pharmacy to grab a pregnancy test. I know I won't be able to rest easy until I know one way or another what’s going on in my uterus.

I pick up a bunch of stuff at the pharmacy and toss it all down on the counter, hoping that it will obscure the fact that I only came here for a pregnancy test. I know that the woman behind the counter can’t say anything, but still, I don’t want Sean knowing about this little freak-out of mine.

The blood is rushing around my head as I walk back to the flat. This is crazy. There is no way, no way at all, that I am pregnant right now, let alone by Jason. We had sex a handful of times, that’s not enough for me to...

I know that I am just trying to soothe myself. There’s no amount of times you need to have sex to get pregnant. Hell, one tiny little hole in a condom can be enough. I just can’t believe for an instant that I would have been so careless as to get myself pregnant by one of the guys that I hooked up with from the Weekend Club.

Once I round the corner of our street, I practically sprint back home so that I can take the test. I’m sure it’s going to be negative, and that I am going to laugh at myself for how paranoid I have been, but I need to see that little blank space that tells me there is no baby growing inside me.

My mind flashes to what Jason said the last time that we saw one another – that he would see me again. Is this what he meant? He couldn’t have known that, surely. He couldn’t have guessed. No, I am just being paranoid. No reason to get all up in my head before I’ve even had a chance to take this test.

I rush to the bathroom, dump my stuff on the floor, and unwrap the test as quickly as I can. Positioning it awkwardly underneath me, I pee on it, then sit on the edge of the bath, counting down the seconds until the results appear. I know nothing is going to come of this, I know that, and yet, my heart is still drumming as I attempt to calm down. I have no idea why it’s even crossed my mind that I might be pregnant, when I know I’m not. It’s just paranoia. Think of how relieved I’m going to be when I look down and see that it’s negative...

And when the time is up, I peer down at the little plastic stick, and everything in me clenches.

Because it’s not negative. It’s positive. I’m pregnant.

I run back out to the shop and buy two more tests, gulp down some water, then take them both back-to-back, praying that they’re going to show me that the first one was a mistake. But they don’t. They both come up positive, and soon, I am sitting there, in the bathroom, surrounded by irrefutable proof that I am pregnant.

And that it is not my husband’s baby.

How the hell am I going to tell him? How am I going to let Jason know? It’s not like I have access to him anymore, now that I have deleted the app, and I can’t get back on it without my husband knowing.

And it’s not going to be long until I start showing. With Donnie, it was a matter of weeks before the little bump formed. Then Sean will figure it out. He’s going to know that it’s not his, or at least that he has a whole lot of competition, given everything else that has been going on.

I put my head in my hands. I can’t fucking believe this. But it also seems like karmic retribution. This is what I get, for daring to bring someone as toxic as Jason back into my life; for dreaming of a life with him: I get saddled with a baby.

Of course, everyone will think it’s Sean’s, but I’ll know. And how am I going to work out who the father is? How am I going to get out of all of this without losing my mind – or my marriage?

My brain starts to race, and I begin to put the pieces together in my head. I’m going to have to pull off something big to make this work. Something that might backfire right in my face. But if I don’t try, then my life as I know it is going to fall apart right in front of me.

And I am not about to let that happen. Not for anything. Not a chance in hell.