Simone closes the door to Jasmine’s room softly. The morning is already bright, but it is early, not even the city workers have departed with Monday zeal from the street. Terry has gone for a shower and Simone picks around the living room, throwing rubbish into the bin, loading the dishwasher, sorting through laundry. Her body is stiff and she moves slowly. Wincing as she does. Her wallet and phone fall out of Terry’s shorts pocket. There is no money left, but on her phone there is a missed call from an unknown number. Simone has an urge to call it back, but Terry may hear. She must act normal, she reminds herself, be careful, smart.

Simone opens the window. Below on the street, a taxi is pulling up. The door opens, and out of it steps Veronica and her husband. They are sunkissed and smiling. Each carries a small suitcase and their eyes dance as though filled with the sparkling stories of adventure shared. They do not even look up. They link arms as they weave their way from the pavement to their front door, then they tumble into their house, mere feet away from her own. They are happy, quiet, oblivious.

Sarah

Sarah was early for Monday pick-up. With Harry at home, unencumbered, she planned this time to pin Veronica down. Stuff niceties, stuff tiptoeing, she would make Veronica tell her exactly what her report had said. Through the glass window of the classroom door, Sarah watched Veronica sail between the desks handing out some art creation that the children proudly accepted, excited to bring home. At Amelia’s desk, Veronica bent down and said something quietly to her, to which Amelia nodded her head slowly, before Veronica moved on to bestow joy to the next child. Sarah gritted her teeth.

Not this time. Not this time.

When Sarah had walked into Amelia’s classroom the previous week to find Harry not there, the helplessness that had already been building inside her, expanded into untameable horror. It had stuck in her throat, paralysing and oppressive. And all week since then, it had sweated out of her, forcing her to avoid colleagues and cancel meetings, and sit at her desk as though wrapped tight in sticky web. It was the same way she’d felt when Eliza had died, and there had been no recourse, nothing she could do to turn back time. It was the same way she’d felt years and years earlier too, locked in a small wooden room, smelling chlorine, eyes blinking manically in the dark.

Helplessness: the inability to defend or to act effectively.

How quickly it had struck. How easily Veronica had unravelled her. Again.

Yet surely this was the opposite of what she was now. Her whole career was built on her ability to defend, to enact effect.

So not this time. This time would end differently.

Veronica was tanned, refreshed, glowing. Sarah waited until all the other children had departed, she waited until she’d enveloped Amelia in a hug and heard her explain that her lost piece of art had turned up, but too late to be featured in the school magazine, and asked her to go ahead to the playground. She waited until Veronica thought she had the room to herself. And then she flung the door open.