The Wrong Side of Thirty-Two

Chapter 1: The Wednesday That Ate Everything

The thing about catastrophic days is that they never announce themselves. There's no ominous soundtrack, no darkening sky, no raven perching on your windowsill at dawn. Sophie Kerr's worst Wednesday began with a perfectly adequate cup of tea and a Wordle she solved in three guesses, which she took as a sign of good fortune.

She was wrong.

The offices of Pennington & Rowe Logistics occupied the fourth floor of a building in Reading that looked like it had been designed by someone who actively disliked architecture. Sophie had worked there for six years, first as an HR assistant, then as an HR coordinator, and finally—after a promotion that came with a title change but no meaningful pay rise—as an HR business partner. She had never been entirely sure what that meant, but she was good at it, whatever it was. She kept files in order. She mediated disputes between warehouse managers who communicated primarily through passive-aggressive emails. She organised the annual Christmas party and always remembered that Derek in accounts was lactose intolerant.

At 10:47 a.m., her manager, a woman named Linda Foxwell who wore statement necklaces and spoke exclusively in corporate jargon, called Sophie into the glass-walled meeting room that everyone called the Fishbowl.

"Sophie, thanks for popping in. Close the door, would you?"

Sophie closed the door. She sat down. Linda was wearing her serious necklace—the chunky amber one that came out for disciplinaries and restructuring announcements.

"I'm going to cut right to the chase," Linda said, which was something she said before never cutting to the chase. "As you know, the business has been on a journey. A transformational journey. And as part of that journey, we've been looking at our people landscape—"

"Am I being made redundant?" Sophie asked.

Linda blinked. "Well. Yes."

The irony of an HR professional being made redundant was not lost on Sophie. She had, in fact, been the person who drafted the redundancy consultation documents three months earlier. She had formatted the spreadsheet. She had colour-coded the at-risk roles. She simply hadn't noticed that one of those roles was her own.

"The business has made the difficult decision to consolidate the HR function," Linda continued, now reading from a script that Sophie recognised because she had written it. "Your role is being absorbed into the centralised team in Bristol. We want to thank you for your contribution—"

"I wrote this script, Linda."

"—and we're committed to supporting you through this transition with a comprehensive outplacement package."

Sophie sat very still. She had always imagined that if this moment came, she would be dignified. Composed. The kind of woman who shook hands, collected her things, and walked out with her head high. Instead, she found herself fixating on the fact that someone had left a biscuit crumb on the meeting room table, and she had a powerful urge to brush it onto the floor.

"Right," she said. "Okay."

"You'll receive your statutory notice period, plus an additional four weeks as a gesture of goodwill. And of course, you're welcome to access the Employee Assistance Programme—"

"I set up the Employee Assistance Programme."

"—for any emotional support you might need during this time."

Sophie left the Fishbowl with a cardboard box that contained a desk plant she'd been meaning to throw away for months, a mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST COLLEAGUE, and six years of professional identity crumbling like wet cardboard.

She drove home to the flat she shared with David Lloyd, her boyfriend of four years, and sat on the sofa with the box on her lap, waiting for him to come home so she could tell him and he could say all the right things. David was good at saying the right things. He was an account manager for a software company, and his entire professional existence was built on saying things that sounded reassuring without committing to anything specific. It was, Sophie had always thought, one of his better qualities.

David came home at 6:23 p.m. He was carrying a bag from the Thai place on the corner, which Sophie took as a positive sign. Comfort food. He must have sensed something in her text.

"We need to talk," David said, before she could open her mouth.

Sophie looked at the Thai food. She looked at David. David was thirty-four, with the kind of face that estate agents would describe as well-presented: neat brown hair, reliable jawline, eyes that were either hazel or green depending on the lighting and how much you cared.

"I also need to talk," Sophie said. "I got made redundant today."

"Oh." David put the Thai food on the kitchen counter. He did not come over to hug her. This was, in retrospect, the first sign. "That's... that's rough, Soph. I'm sorry."

"What did you need to talk about?"

David sat down on the armchair across from her. Not next to her on the sofa. The armchair. The armchair was for guests, for David's mother when she visited, for the cat they didn't have. It was not for your boyfriend of four years who was about to say the right things.

"I've accepted a job," David said. "In Vancouver."

Sophie waited for the rest of the sentence. The part where he said they'd be moving together, or that it was just for six months, or that he was joking, or that Vancouver was actually the name of a new restaurant in Reading.

"Canada Vancouver?" she said.

"Yes."

"When did you apply for a job in Canada Vancouver?"

"Three months ago. Look, Soph, I didn't want to say anything until I knew—"

"Three months."

"—and I've been thinking a lot about us, about where we're going, and I think... I think this is something I need to do on my own."

Sophie stared at him. The flat was very quiet. From the kitchen, the Thai food was emitting a smell of lemongrass and betrayal.

"You've been planning to leave the country for three months," she said slowly, "and you didn't mention it."

"I didn't want to worry you."

"You didn't want to worry me."

"You're repeating everything I say."

"YOU DIDN'T WANT TO WORRY ME."

David flinched. Sophie never shouted. Sophie was the one who mediated. Sophie was the one who said things like "I hear what you're saying" and "let's find a middle ground" and "perhaps we should both take a moment." Sophie was sensible. Sophie was reasonable. Sophie was currently gripping a sofa cushion so hard that her knuckles had gone white.

"I think," David said carefully, "that we've been growing in different directions for a while now."

"We've been growing in different directions? We went to IKEA last Saturday. We bought matching bedside tables. You said you wanted the ones with the drawers because you were thinking long-term."

"The bedside tables aren't really the point—"

"THE BEDSIDE TABLES ARE EXACTLY THE POINT, DAVID."

He left that evening. Not for Vancouver—that was in three weeks—but to his friend Marcus's flat, where he would sleep on the sofa and probably tell everyone that Sophie had taken it really well, all things considered.

Sophie sat alone in the flat that was suddenly too quiet and too large and too full of matching bedside tables. She ate the Thai food directly from the containers. She drank an entire bottle of wine that had been a gift from David's mother, which felt like justice. She called her best friend, Liz Dunphy, who lived in London and answered on the second ring.

"He's moving to Vancouver," Sophie said.

"What? Since when?"

"Since three months ago, apparently. Also, I got made redundant."

"On the same day?"

"On the same day."

There was a long pause. Then Liz said, "Right. I'm coming over."

"You're in Clapham. It's a Wednesday night."

"I'll be there by ten."

Liz arrived at 10:14 p.m. with a second bottle of wine and a packet of chocolate digestives. She was small, dark-haired, and possessed of the kind of furious loyalty that made her an excellent friend and a terrifying enemy. She had once sent a strongly worded letter to a restaurant that gave Sophie food poisoning, and the restaurant had closed within six months, which Liz took full credit for.

"Tell me everything," Liz said, settling onto the sofa.

Sophie told her everything. The Fishbowl. The script she'd written herself. The Thai food. The matching bedside tables. David's face when he said "growing in different directions," which had the same expression he used when explaining software solutions to confused clients.

"He's a coward," Liz said. "A beige, lukewarm, IKEA-shopping coward."

"He bought the bedside tables with drawers, Liz. He said he was thinking long-term."

"Men don't think. They just open their mouths and sounds come out."

Sophie laughed, which turned into crying, which turned into laughing again, which was confusing for everyone.

"What am I going to do?" she said eventually. "I have no job. I have no boyfriend. I have a flat I can't afford on my own and a desk plant that's been dead for four months."

"You could come stay with me in London."

"Your flat is the size of a postage stamp."

"It's cosy."

"Your bedroom is literally a cupboard, Liz. You told me you have to stand on the bed to open the wardrobe."

"It builds character."

Sophie shook her head. There was, she realised with a sinking feeling, only one realistic option. The option she had been avoiding since the moment David walked out the door. The option that was worse than unemployment, worse than heartbreak, worse than a dead desk plant.

She was going to have to go home.

Home was Brackleigh, a small town in Oxfordshire that had a church, three pubs, a post office that was also a sweet shop, and a population of approximately four thousand people who all knew each other's business. Sophie had grown up there, left for university at eighteen, and returned only for Christmas, bank holidays, and the occasional weekend when guilt outweighed self-preservation.

Her mother, Janet Kerr, answered the phone on the first ring, as if she'd been waiting.

"Sophie? What's wrong? You never call on a Wednesday."

"Hi, Mum. I was wondering—how would you feel about me coming to stay for a bit?"

The silence that followed was not the silence of hesitation. It was the silence of a woman who had been waiting for this phone call for fourteen years and was now trying very hard not to sound triumphant.

"Of course, darling. Your room's exactly as you left it. I'll put fresh sheets on. When are you coming?"

"Friday?"

"I'll make a casserole."

Sophie hung up the phone and looked around the flat. The matching bedside tables stared back at her, mocking in their symmetry. She picked up the dead desk plant, carried it to the kitchen bin, and dropped it in.

"Right," she said to nobody. "Right."

She was thirty-two years old, single, unemployed, and moving back in with her mother.

This was fine. Everything was fine.