She gets up, goes into the kitchen, pours herself an orange juice – no pulp – and places one slice of bread into the toaster.

And now she is on autopilot. She moves to the bathroom and gets the shower running. The landlord is useless and won’t get it fixed. So, every time she wants to get clean, she has to turn it on fully, take the hose off the hook and hold it upside down while it squeaks and churns, when the water starts dribbling out, she has to wait another ten seconds before she hangs it back up. Then she has another couple of minutes for it to warm up.

That’s when she gets the mail from her doormat.

One letter. White envelope. Four words.

All because she had the gumption to talk to Rossi about her disillusionment regarding her career choice. And how her boyfriend had called it off after two years, via text message.

‘I got into it thinking that I was going to help shape young minds. You know? That these kids would go on to do something worthwhile in the future. Because I had helped to set the foundations. I thought that’s why everybody got into teaching. A bit naive, of course.’

This is how her sessions went. There was no trouble getting her to talk. She didn’t even need the therapy. She just needed to say these things out loud in order to process them herself.

‘There’s that thing, isn’t there? Those who can’t do, teach. I mean, that’s derogatory. Reducing an entire occupation to one characteristic. Like everyone there has failed at something and it’s the last choice. It’s like, if everything in life goes wrong, you could always become a teacher.’ She exhales with disgust and resignation.

Her issue was that it wasn’t her fall-back. It was her first choice. It’s what she wanted to do. And she feels as though she is failing at it. Failing the kids. Failing herself.

So she is failing at the thing that most people end up doing because they failed at the thing they really wanted to do. What does that say about her?

She wasn’t mean or ungrateful or pessimistic or hostile. The teacher was there because she was already good but wanted to be better.

And Rossi took that from her.

The Teacher reads her note, folds it up and lights it by poking it into the toaster. It sets on fire and she places it on the dish rack, watches it burn to nothing. She spreads peanut butter on the toast when it pops up. She showers, like she always does. Stupidly, she goes to the toilet before getting in. When she flushes, it affects the water pressure in the house and the shower moans at her for another two minutes.