On Valentine's Day, Anj Lal's husband gave her peonies from the Co-op.
Last year it was a florist and a table for two. She noticed, because noticing is her job, but she didn't mind. The card was the best he had ever written.
Then his phone lit up on the kitchen counter: Two Ways: your Valentine's result is ready.
Fraser has been running experiments. Forty-one of them, over fourteen months, inside a couples app: two versions of every gesture, every apology, every anniversary, each one scored by how warmly his wife responded. The expensive version and the cheaper one. And the cheaper one has been winning.
Anj plans lorry deliveries for a living. She knows what it means when somebody starts cutting costs without telling you. It means something has already gone wrong.
Experiment forty-two is still running. It is called Response to difficult news.
A sharp, twisty, heartbreaking story about a marriage, a secret, and the version of yourself that somebody else keeps on their phone.
