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From: Millie Chandler
Subject: Sponsor me!
Dear Steve,
I would happily sponsor you, but word on the street is that you said my arse was ‘fat but flat’ as I walked by (WTF?) and that the lovely new temp ‘should look after herself if she wants to stay married’, which is rich coming from a man who looks like a celeriac. You didn’t think I heard, but I did. All of us do, by the way, when you make your stupid laddy comments. So it’s a no from me, mate. I’ll donate separately, away from your sponsored bath of sexist beans. :)
Kindest regards of the highest order,
Millie (and FBF arse)
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From: Millie Chandler
To: (Dad) Mitchell Chandler
Subject: Email not delivering to your Gmail?
Sorry, Dad, I did get your email, I thought I replied on the day! Was just a tad confused because I wasn’t with Mum on Good Friday? I was in Suffolk with Cate. I dragged her to a beekeeping experience day (she screamed a lot, haha). Are you sure Mum said it was me she was wit—
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From: Millie Chandler
Subject: Thanks for last night! Sorry I had to rush off and leave you!
Oh, Cate, I love you so much. You are my best friend and the best and kindest and most amazing person in this whole entire world. But I hate how nervous Nicholas makes you. I hate how you pretend he doesn’t. I hate how he second-guesses you. I hate that he makes you go home to him before you’re ready and all under the guise of ‘I just worry about you.’ I hate how he checks up on you. (Tracking your phone to ‘check’ you are where you say you are!?!) He doesn’t deserve you, and you deserve everything. And I could never say this out loud, but I wish so much that you’d leave him.
Chapter Three
One hundred andseven. I’m pretty sure that’s how many emails were sitting in my drafts, at last glance, meaning – and Istillcannot believe this – that’s how many emails have been sent without my permission. Whizzing off into the world like fireworks. My quiet and mostly harmonious life changed in an instant.Ruined, last night, as I stood in the little kitchen at the flat, happily and obliviously pleating little gyoza dumplings from a meal kit I’d ordered on Instagram. I’d eventalkedabout my emails before I went to bed, which feels cruelly, right now, like I may have conjured this whole nightmare myself. An accidental spell or something, during a rare moon phase I keep trying to learn about from all those cool and attractive YouTube astrologers.
‘I just hope the servers are fixed by the morning,’ I’d said casually to my flat-mate and landlord, Ralph. ‘It was nice at first. Bit of an extended lunch break for everyone.But then people got grumpy and bored, and it dragged and dragged. I can’t do another day like that. No internet. No email.’ And it was around that same time last night, apparently, that the servers had surged back into life, causing what I can only assume to be some sort of – surge?Glitch?A technical hitch that did something a little weird and funky, and simply .?.?. upended my entire life as I know it? (And all while I washed my face and obliviously brushed gyoza out of my teeth at home.)
I groan to myself now, in the echoey upstairs office bathroom, having spent the last five minutes sitting on the toilet seat, shaking, my head in my hands, like a poor, sad cartoon.
How has this happened?
My emails.
My private emails.
Waiting in other people’s inboxes. Oh, God, I cannot bear the thought to sit in my head for even a second.Because, yes, some emails have been sent to unkind, piss-taking colleagues who may have deserved it a little bit, but – there were others, too, and they’re the ones haunting me, spinning-topping around my head, like ghosts. The emails to all the peoplenotat work, the peoplenotin this building, landing in their lives like grenades full of words. To my lovely friends, to family, to .?.?.
The smell of lemon bleach hits the back of my throat as I gasp in the silence and – no. No, no, Icannotbe sick, this isn’t an ITV drama, for goodness’ sake.I need to hold it together. No more crying. No vomit. What is it my dad always says?A bad day is just one bad day, among thousands and thousands of others.Like towns on a world map, he says. ‘One bad town doesn’t make for a bad world, Millie.’ And this is what this probably is, right? Yes. A bad day. A tiny speck of a dodgy, horrible, frightening town I’m having to pass through. Just until I’m out of the other side.
My phone vibrates in the pocket of my trousers. They’re new. Wide-leg, belted, dark khaki. Something I’d never pick for myself, but my best friend Cate had convinced me to buy them after I’d had a whopping fail of a work-clothes ASOS order arrive. I’d Whatsapp’d her a mirror-photo of me in them this morning. ‘You continue to be an effortless fashion prodigy, Cate Mancinelli-Grant,’ I’d typed and she’d sent back seven flame emojis and ‘you look amazing!’ Oh, I wish I could go back. Turn back the clock, to life before that meeting. I had no idea this was waiting for me. This –mess.
I pull my phone out, hands shaking.
Three missed calls.
Dad. Cate.A mobile number I don’t recognise that feels extra ominous.
