Emily reread the email, her fingers hovering over the keyboard before she hit send. The screen blinked once and went dark. She leaned back, the chair groaning beneath her. The office hummed with the low purr of printers and distant chitter of employees. She rose, shutting her laptop with a decisive click, and drifted into the breakroom where Lucy huddled at the corner table, tissues crumpled in her fist.
The kettle boiled like a dissonant melody. Emily filled her chipped mug with budget coffee granules, her mind tracing the shape of Lucy’s tears—thick as honey, pooling in the hollow of her cheeks.
Lucy turned to the window, her nose red and trembling. “What’s wrong? Someone cancel your presentation?” Emily asked, sliding into the seat across from her.
Lucy blinked, then shook her head violently. “None of your business.”
Emily leaned forward, the light overhead casting long shadows. “You’re crying about him, aren’t you? That insurance salesman with the Range Rover? I saw you last week, strutting in like you owned the day. Now he’s vanished, leaving you with an empty hand and these… tears.”
Lucy’s face crumpled. The kettle hissed like a serpent, and Emily poured the steam into silence.
“You think you’re pregnant? Two lines, right? Classic story—gold-digger promises, dreamy eyes, then poof, gone. You’ll be stuck with a child, juggling shifts at that creche while he’s off with some call girl posing as a meteorologist. You’ll go mad, teaching piano to teenagers to pay for diapers, while he laughs in some tropical resort.”
Lucy flinched. “You don’t—!”
“Of course I do. My mother left my father for a man who sold counterfeit watches from a suitcase. My dad still wears his old wedding ring like a beginner at a masquerade, pretending it’s still real. You’ll end up like them, Lucy—empty, hollow, chasing someone’s shadow.”
Emily sipped her bitter brew, watching Lucy retreat into the folds of her gray coat. The office walls seemed to breathe, expanding with hearses and weddings, the scent of burnt toast and regret clawing at the air.
She returned to her desk, the ghost of her childhood flickering in the letter tray—her parents’ last argument, the night the creak of her bedroom floorboards gave her superpowers to overhear. Her mother slurred accusations like spilled wine, a string of pearls dissolving on her father’s collar. That was the night Emily vowed to build a life without men, brick by brick.
She had leapt from dorm rooms to translation agencies in London, trading love for spreadsheets, her savings account blooming like a rare orchid. The boyfriends came and went—dentists, lawyers, men who whispered “marriage” while eyeing her lease on Primrose Hill.
Now, the boss’s voice cut through her haze. “Emily, Mr. Whitmore’s looking for you.”
By the end of the day, she’d handed in her resignation. London felt like a dream, vast and glittering with possibility. Her father would stay in their tiny flat in Southend, sharing peat sods and secondhand grief. Her mother? Probably with a new man with a tailored smile and a debt ledger.
Emily left her office, the city outside glowing like a fever dream. She would have tea in a café where the crumpets bled jam on napkins, where time folded like origami. This was her story, written in hieroglyphs of survival and silence. No men, no mothers, no mess. Just a suitcase full of dictionaries and the scent of rain.
