I did not go digging immediately. I know that sounds strange, but I have never been the type to grab someone's phone and start playing detective because I feel insecure. I also knew that once I crossed that line, whatever I found would force a decision. Up to that point, I still thought there was a chance I was reading too much into a bad week and a sour mood. That lasted less than 24 hours.
The next evening Nina was at my flat again, technically working from my kitchen table, which mostly meant clicking around on a spreadsheet while sending voice notes to friends and acting irritated every time I made a normal amount of noise in my own place. She had brought overnight things but was oddly restless the whole time, checking the time, reapplying lipstick for no reason, walking to the bathroom with her phone in hand even when she was just rinsing a glass. It was subtle enough that if I described it to someone, they could say I was being paranoid. But when you live around a person long enough, you notice when their routines stop matching their excuses. At around 8:30, she said one of her managers wanted the team back online for a late call.
She packed in less than a minute. Laptop, charger, makeup bag, gone. No kiss goodbye, no normal small talk, just this clipped thank you when I handed her the cardigan she forgot on the chair. She was already halfway out the door when I asked if everything at work was all right. She turned around and gave me a look I had started seeing more often.
Not guilt, annoyance. She said I was doing that thing again where I made her job sound suspicious just because I worked in a place where people still respected office hours. Then she left. That should have been the end of it for the night, but about 15 minutes later I noticed she had left her tablet on my sofa. It was one of those thin work devices synced to her phone notifications.
I honestly just meant to message her and tell her to come back for it before I went to bed. The screen lit up before I could even pick it up properly. A message banner came through from someone saved as Lewis S. Followed by a second one almost immediately. The preview was not enough to prove anything outright, but it was enough to make my stomach drop because it was written with the kind of familiarity that does not belong to co-workers staying late on quarterly reporting.
Not even close. I stood there longer than I want to admit, just staring at that screen like it might somehow rearrange itself into something innocent. It did not. Another message came in, then another. By then, the problem was no longer whether I was imagining things.
The problem was that I was about to find out exactly how stupid I had been. I picked up the tablet and unlocked it. Nina had given me the passcode months earlier when she asked me to order something for her online, and like most people who are not hiding anything at the time, she never changed it. I remember thinking that if the messages turned out to be harmless, I would probably feel like an idiot for even opening them. They were not harmless.
Lewis S was apparently one of the senior sales reps on her team. I knew the name vaguely because she had mentioned him a few times in passing, always in that dismissive tone she used when talking about co-workers she thought were less competent than her. According to her, he was average at best and lucky to still have a job. The conversation thread on the tablet told a very different story. It was not explicit in the sense of photos or anything like that, but it did not need to be.