She was exhausted.

Meagan had worked since the age of 16 and never leaning on anyone had left her without the energy to even stand. She looked around her empty office, desperately wishing it were filled with nice things. Nice things took the pain away but in this room there was nothing, just her immense misery. She hated nothing. Nothing was the space left behind when debt collectors took the family TV. Nothing was what was in her mum’s purse when she wanted a new top or to go out with friends. Nothing was the contents of the fridge when she got home from school not just once but many times. ‘Nothing’ had made a 16-year-old Meagan decide not only would she always have ‘something’ but she would most certainly amount to something too. Life had let her know, it was all down to her. But after fourteen years of grafting, on her empty office floor, what did she have to show for it? Even if she owned all the possessions money could buy, unshared things meant – nothing. Tears welled from the pit of her tired, broken heart, a heart that had never trusted the world, and instead coped by controlling everything, even who she loved. Was that why she was alone, why that arm’s length she kept between her and everyone else suddenly felt like a chasm?

She laughed wearily at her oh-so-clever plan, a worthless fantasy as unreachable as any of Simi’s cosmic wishes. Her plan wasn’t a strategy. It was a futile attempt to strangle the spontaneity and glorious messiness out of life. Jemima was spot on. Even with Simi’s acting Meagan had wrung out all natural impulses by trying to control it. Furthermore, it hadn’t been to help Simi but to protect herself. She’d created that absurd, arbitrary rule so she didn’t have to move on with her life plan because now the next step was upon her, she was terrified. From here on in, every phase involved leaning on someone, trusting them with no guarantees. They involved being vulnerable, which, like eating sushi and riding a bike, Meagan did not do. She curled herself into a tight ball on the floor. She didn’t have a life plan. She had a cryogenic chamber. In work Meagan was fearless, but in life taking care of someone else’s heart and letting them care for hers was the most terrifying prospect of all. More sobs poured from her, but this time it was a release, one that had been a long time coming. She sobbed as she realised all she had lost by controlling everything – Simi and Todd, a bigger life that didn’t gravitate solely around work. In fact, if she weren’t such a control freak, she might actually have a desk and chair to cry on but she’d controlled that out of existence too.

Just as her misery threatened to consume her, the landline phone rang. She groaned into the floor and snivelled her way across the carpet to hit the speaker button.