Turn 2 of 13

Go downstairs and talk to Rae

You pull on yesterday's jumper, the one with the coffee stain you haven't treated, and take the stairs down two flights. The concrete smells the way it always does — damp and someone else's cooking — but today the smell registers as information rather than atmosphere, like you're cataloguing it for a form you haven't been given yet. You knock on Rae's door at 8:15, which is early for her, and you know this because you know her schedule the way you know your own, have known it since before the course, but now the knowing feels sharper, more deliberate, as though something in you has filed it more carefully.

She opens the door in a dressing gown and socks, hair flattened on one side, and squints at you.

"Sam. It's quarter past eight."

"I know. I'm sorry. I just —" You stop. You had a reason. You're standing in her doorway and the reason is there, you can feel its shape, but it won't resolve into a sentence. The mirror. The email. The forty-four minutes you can't account for. All of it is true and none of it is something you can say out loud without sounding like you've lost something important.

"You look weird," Rae says, not unkindly. She leans against the doorframe and studies you.

"Good weird. You look rested. Like, actually rested, not coffee-rested. What's going on?"

"I've been sleeping better," you say, and it comes out smooth, automatic, like someone else scripted it. You don't remember deciding to lie. The words were just there, the right shape for the question, and your mouth delivered them without consulting you. That should bother you more than it does. You notice that it should bother you more than it does, and that noticing sits somewhere far away, behind glass.

Rae frowns, not suspicious but attentive, the way she gets when she's working out whether to push. She's wearing her reading glasses on top of her head and they catch the hallway light.

"You want tea? You look like you need to sit down somewhere that isn't your flat."

"Yeah," you say. "Tea. Yeah, I'd — that would be good."

You follow her in. Her flat is messier than yours, warmer, lived-in in a way yours hasn't been since before the year went wrong. The television is on with the sound off, news captions scrolling. You sit on her sofa and your hands settle in your lap, palms down, and you don't remember being told to sit that way but it feels correct, it feels like something you've practised.