No one ever noticed Grace. Not on the bus, not in the chemist’s, not even in the stairwell of the building where she’d lived for over twenty years. People passed by without a glance, as if she were part of the wallpaper—the peeling paint, the broken mailbox, the creaky steps. She was fifty-nine, and with each year, she felt herself fading. Like an old photograph left too long in the sun—first the edges blur, then the whole image vanishes.
At the checkout, the cashier handed back her change without looking up, as if afraid to see something forgotten and unwelcome in her face. The neighbor from the fifth floor muttered a curt “hello,” her gaze floating right past Grace as though greeting empty air. Even her son called less and less. “Mum, swamped—I’ll ring you back.” That “swamped” had stretched into its fourth spring, and Grace had long stopped waiting.
Every morning, she buttoned up a clean blouse, tied a neat scarf, and stepped outside—as if she had somewhere to be, as if someone were expecting her. But no one was. It was her only way of holding on, even if no one noticed. A stroll down the high street, a bench in the park, a cup of cheap coffee from the vending machine—none of it was for pleasure. It was an act of quiet defiance, a whisper: *I’m still here.*
Grace watched the others—the ones laughing, arguing, shouting into their phones, the ones who seemed so alive. She felt an invisible wall between them, solid and unbreakable. No one’s eyes lingered on her. As if she weren’t a person at all, just an old poster on a lamppost, its message long ignored.
One day, she bought a jacket. Yellow. Bold, almost brazen. The kind you couldn’t miss. *Maybe someone will turn their head*, she thought. But no one did. Not even the cashier, who rang it up without glancing at her. The jacket was just fabric. And Grace—still just as unseen.
That evening, shouting echoed in the stairwell. Grace peered out. A little girl sat hunched in the shadows between floors. Eight years old, maybe. Tears streaked her cheeks, her lips trembled, and beside her lay a broken scooter and a battered schoolbag—notebooks spilled out, some smudged with dirt.
“What happened?” Grace asked. Her voice came out steady, warm but firm—no baby talk, no pity.
“He said I was stupid… and then he left,” the girl whispered, not lifting her eyes.
Grace sat beside her, nudged the scooter’s twisted handle with her foot, and looked at the girl—properly, for the first time in years.
“I’ll tell you something—you’re not stupid. You’re just little. But *he* is. And a coward, probably. Because hurting people is easy. Explaining things? That’s hard.”
The girl sniffed. Nodded. And suddenly, Grace felt it—someone was listening. *Really* listening. Together, they gathered the notebooks, smoothed crumpled pages, stuffed them back into the bag. The scooter, Grace fixed with duct tape from the cupboard under the stairs. It wobbled, but the girl grinned as if it were brand new.
“You’re nice,” the girl blurted. “What’s your name?”
“Grace.”
“I’m Lily. Will you be my friend? I don’t have any friends.”
Grace hesitated, then smiled. “Alright.” The word held something she hadn’t felt in years—a warmth, a hush inside her loosening its grip.
The next day, they walked together down the high street. Grace in her yellow jacket, Lily with her hair in a messy braid, clutching a drawing.
“This is you,” Lily said.
On the paper was a woman in a bright coat. With enormous wings. They spilled off the edges, as if ready to lift her into the sky.
Sometimes, coming back to life doesn’t need a crowd’s applause. Sometimes, it just takes *one*. One crying girl on a dingy stairwell with a broken scooter and torn schoolbooks. Because in that moment—you’re not the background. Not a shadow. Not a smudge in the crowd.
You’re the light. The steady hand. You’re someone’s wings. And someone’s *stay.*
