Shared wall, old building, the kid is eleven and has been learning trumpet since September. Practice is 7:00 to 7:30 every weekday, including the days I work late shifts and get home at 2am. I asked nicely in October. The mum said she'd "see what she could do". I asked again in November and got told that's the only slot before school and that children need routine. I asked the building manager, who said instruments are allowed between 7am and 10pm, so nothing to be done. So I recorded a session through the wall. Thursday at 11pm, which is inside the allowed hours, I played it back at roughly the same volume. Same trumpet, same scales, same kid. Then again on Friday. Saturday morning she came round and said I was harassing an eleven-year-old. I said I was playing an instrument recording inside permitted hours, exactly like they do. She said it's not the same because her son is learning something. I said her son was learning that the wall goes both ways. The building group chat is about 60/40 against me. The 40 are the people who share a wall with someone.

Some background, because he'll say I'm leaving it out. Six years ago I was his best man. My speech had jokes in it. One was about a hostel in Prague. It got a laugh, his wife laughed, we moved on. He has brought up that speech at every gathering since as the reason he was "owed one". My wedding was three weeks ago. He stood up, tapped the glass, and said "Right. I've waited six years for this." The room laughed. I laughed. Then he opened a folder. Twelve minutes. I timed it afterwards on the video. It included: my ex, by name, with a description of how she left; the year I was on antidepressants, framed as the year I "went a bit soft"; a story about me crying at a Coldplay concert which he knows I've never told my wife; and a bit about her parents' "rules" that got exactly one laugh, from him. Her parents are devout and had already made a fair few concessions to be there. Her dad left the marquee during the Coldplay bit and didn't come back for the first dance. My wife spent twenty minutes in the toilets with her sister. There is no photo of us cutting the cake because we did it late and the photographer had already left. He messaged the next day: "Legendary night. Told you I'd get you back." I didn't reply. He's since told our group chat that I've "gone married" and can't take a joke, and that everyone was laughing. Some people were. Mostly his side. I'm not looking for someone to tell me the speech was fine. I know it wasn't. What I actually can't settle is whether ending a fifteen-year friendship over it is proportionate, or whether I'm doing the exact thing he says I'm doing.

We share an iPad. It lives on the kitchen counter, we both use it for recipes and Netflix. Last Tuesday I picked it up to check a recipe and her notes app was open to a page titled "Session 14". I want to be honest here: I did not close it. I read the whole thing. Then I scrolled up and read sessions 11 through 13 as well. She has been talking to her therapist for two months about whether she should leave me. Not "we argue a lot". Whether to leave. There is a list of pros and cons. My name is in the cons column next to the words "doesn't notice". I confronted her that evening. I said I read it, I said I'm sorry, and I said we need to talk about the list. She went white, then she went quiet, then she said the only thing we are going to talk about is the fact that I read her therapy notes. That was nine days ago. Her position is that the notes are the equivalent of a diary and that reading them is a violation she is not sure she can get past. My position is that she has been planning an exit for two months while acting normal at dinner, and that I would never have known if I hadn't looked. She says that's exactly what therapy is for. I say a list of reasons to leave me is not a feeling, it's a plan. Her sister says I'm the problem. My mate says he'd have read it too. We are still in the same flat and it is very quiet.