Sunday morning. The day after City. The day Emma had circled.
I woke at eight, the first time in two weeks I hadn't beaten the sunrise. The bedroom was quiet, the December light grey and soft through the curtains, and for a long, disorienting moment, I didn't know what was different.
Then I realised: the eyelid wasn't twitching. The jaw wasn't clenched. The low hum of anxiety that had been running beneath every waking moment for weeks the frequency so constant that I had stopped noticing it the way you stop hearing traffic was gone. Not replaced by anything. Just absent. The silence of a machine that had been switched off.
Emma was already awake. She was sitting up against the headboard, knees drawn to her chest, a mug of tea in her hands, watching me. Not reading. Not scrolling her phone. Watching me sleep with the patient attention of a woman who had decided that today was the day and had been waiting for me to surface.
"Morning," I said.
