And they make breakfast.

This may be their last day, but it should be no different from any other.

4

231 – UNGRATEFUL

Still hungover at noon, she opens the bank statement first, skipping all the outgoing figures next to items like shoes and bags and bar tabs and restaurants and other things she knows she doesn’t need but at the time believed were imperative to her happiness.

It’s not happiness.

And it’s never enough.

Five tattoos only felt better than four tattoos for a moment. The joy of ten thousand social-media followers was as fleeting as the climax she faked with that reality TV contestant. The drug doesn’t work.

Her mother had told her that fulfilment can only be achieved when you choose to give something back. She’s only been gone two years but her daughter has forgotten this lesson.

The ungrateful young woman skims over the evidence of the mistakes she hasn’t learned from and heads straight to the reality of the figure written in red ink at the bottom of the final page. The expression on her face doesn’t alter, it does not convey what she feels inside, but the tears offer a clue.

There’s a second letter from the bank confirming an increase to her overdraft limit. And a wave of relief washes the tears away, diluting another headache. And the severity of real life dissipates for a few seconds.

But her credit-card bill reintroduces panic. She’s been saving it for days.

She throws up into her mouth and swallows it back down.

There are four other credit cards.

Her father only knows about one.

Her sister has one card that she clears each month. And she remembers their mother.

The bathroom door is locked, as it always is. Just in case. She sits on the closed toilet lid, the tiles are cold beneath her bare feet, reminding her that she, at least, has some capacity to feel. She stands up, takes a swig of water from the tap at the sink and splashes water against her sad-clown face. Looking at herself in the mirror, she takes a picture with her phone. Not for social media. For her. And she drops back to her position of self-pity.

There’s more.

She tells herself that she can’t open another bill. That it will kill her. That she will have to confess to her father and he will have to bail her out again. And everyone will know.

But one of the letters in her growing pile of debt and guilt will get her out of this mess.

One white envelope contains her exit strategy.

It gives her the choice.

She tears a strip of toilet roll to wipe those drugged panda eyes, lifts the toilet slightly from her seated position and pushes the mascara-blotted paper through the gap between her legs before sitting down again to work through the last few letters.