Better Left Unsent: A Novel

From: Millie.Chandler@Flyetv.com

To: Jack.Shurlock@Flyetv.com

Subject: Christmas party

Hello! Good morrow to you, Jack! Just dropping you a message before you leave like you said to. You did say that, didn’t you? (I’m pretty sure you did, but also, we both had a LOT of those awful custard-yellow Boss Man Michael cocktails at the party and I personally feel like those drinks changed my biochemistry forever. That instead of blood, I’m now somehow eggnog and rosemary and nostril hair and whatever else we suspected was in them?! I STILL feel disgusting.)

Anyway, I just wanted to say I had such a fun time hanging out with you at the party, and how laughable is it that we’ve worked together this whole time and chose to hit it off the WEEK before you leave the company for the foreseeable!? And……… ahhhhhhh, I’m so not going to send this, am I? Of course I’m not going to send this. I really thought I might, but of course now I’m too scared to because you are cool and I am a turnip. A coward. Turning into a bit of a wallflower these days, actually. And I suppose because I’m not ever, ever going to send this and nobody will ever, ever see it, I can say what I like now. So! Jack Shurlock, you are really hot. Like, really. And were we going to… kiss? OMG, I feel like we were!? That moment in the dark, sitting in that booth. When we both stopped speaking and you sort of shifted closer to me, gave that slow smile. Just a millisecond before drunken Cherry sat up between us, retched, and said simply, I just swallowed loads of sick. I think we were, weren’t we? And I wish we had. I even had a truly cinematic, Definitely Not Safe For Work dream about it last night—interrupting drunk colleagues excluded—and I keep thinking about it. Seriously. 10 out of 10, Jack Shurlock. Five stars. 100% on the Tomatometer.

(OMG, LOLLLLLL, definitely never ever, ever sending this now.)

Best wishes and happy travels to the man who will never read this!

Millie x

chapter 1

I am going to vomit. I’m going to have a heart attack right here, on a scratchy office chair and in Boardroom Two, which, for some reason, always smells faintly of Pecorino cheese. Perhaps I’ll even—die? I mean, that’s surely possible given the circumstances and that my poor heart is thumping so hard, so quickly, my body must be convinced I’m running a marathon completely untrained. Deaths happen all the time at marathons, don’t they? It’s why I don’t run. (That, and the fact that sweating always turns my face to the color of a shiny, embarrassing, prize red cabbage.)

But now—now I’m seriously considering running. Running and not stopping. Running until this stuffy boardroom is nothing but a tiny, unidentifiable speck in the distance. Running until I get to the border, until I meet a nameless man in dark sunglasses who’ll shove a fake passport into my hand, along with a false beard and a one-way ticket to a tiny, hidden-away desert town in the Outback somewhere.

Because—God, this is awful. My worst, worst, worst possible nightmare. Probably anyone’s worst nightmare, for that matter, but most definitely, beyond a doubt, mine—and it’s happening. Right now. To me. Actual me. Millie Chandler. Live, and in stereo.

Nobody’s even said it out loud yet either; why on a totally normal-seeming, run-of-the-mill Thursday morning at nine fifteen I find myself summoned here, in a boardroom of people mere receptionists like me only ever see when redundancies are announced (or when they’re drunkenly tightrope-walking the sexual harassment borderline at after-work drinks). But I already know. Without anyone uttering a single word, I know why I’m sitting here in front of three of my bosses, plus Ann-Christin, our incompetent but sweet HR manager whose blank face stares through a laptop screen like a Star Trek villain. I knew almost the second I walked into the room a few moments ago, trailing behind Petra, my boss (and, I hope, still my friend), and saw my name projected from a computer onto the screen on the wall. A uniformed stack of them. Millie Chandler. Millie Chandler. Millie Chandler. Millie Chandler.

Because it seems, somehow, emails that shouldn’t have been sent, have been sent.

Lots of them.

So, so, so many of them.

Emails I wrote, but never sent. And never sent was how they should have always, always stayed.

Oh my God, I really am going to be sick. Or pass out. Or both. (But then—passing out would definitely get me out of this, wouldn’t it? And I want, so much, to get out of this.)

We’re just waiting for Paul to arrive, sighs Michael Waterstreet, more hard-hearted cop than managing director, and although I manage to nod, let out a shaky little whimper of an OK, I’m so rigid in this chair, it’s hard to tell if I actually moved at all or if I’ve perhaps, due to all the shame and terror and utter embarrassment, turned to stone like a petrified fossil.

How has this even happened? How? Five years I’ve worked here at Flye TV, a small, slightly disorganized (but mostly successful) TV sports broadcasting company. Five whole years I’ve given it my all, like an agreeable robot, a considerate, smiley yes-woman, full of nothing but Sure! and Oh, absolutely! and "Of course I’ll send your parcel overseas and pretend I totally believe you when you say it’s for the company, and not for your auntie in New Zealand again, who collects what looks and feels like monster truck tires." Yet here I am. Here I am, at what I can only imagine is about to be a disciplinary and perhaps what will go down as one of the worst moments of my entire twenty-nine-year-long life.

Could you, um, please t-tell me what this… this is about? I ask wobblily, even though I am, of course, 99.9999 percent certain what this is indeed about. "Is it about emails? Is it about… my emails?"

But Michael holds up a large, corn-beefy hand. We’ll discuss it once everyone’s arrived.

Oh, it’s bad, isn’t it? This feels really, really, really, undeniably bad.

I should have known today was going to have a shade of disaster to it too. The signs were all there, and I’m so skilled at looking for signs these days; little whiffs of bad things approaching on the horizon that I might need to dodge. Today, though, I missed them. Completely. The traffic that was unusually horrendous this morning (a tiny hint). My favorite work mug—enormous, sloth-shaped, so amusingly funny-faced—that wasn’t in the office kitchen cupboard (a bigger hint). And the fact that when I’d asked Chatty Martin in Finance if he’d seen it, he blanked me. Yep. Chatty Martin, the man who during a bad bout of tonsilitis carried around his laptop, open on a text-to-speech website through which he spoke to us like an expressionless AI robot, ignored me. (The very biggest omen of them all.)

And now, I’m here. Staring at this screen on the wall.

At my drafts.

My email drafts that are no longer just ‘drafts.’

All those things I want to say but I’m too afraid to. All those things I type instead, to get them off my chest, to release them, without anyone knowing, without any… well, collateral.

Oh, God, this really is like a terrible dream. One of those dark what if situations you dream up at 2 a.m. when you’re feeling sad and alone in the world. Except this is not a what if or a dream. This is happening. This is real life—my real life.

The boardroom door clicks shut behind me, and my heart drops to my feet. Paul Foot, our director, stands in front of it in a pin-striped suit two sizes too big. He slowly looks at me, to everyone else, and then to the screen on the wall—to that shameful, shameful Jenga tower of From: Millie Chandlers, each a little window into who I really am. Rants, complaints, my stupid inside jokes, my truths, my… secrets.

Righty-o, folks, he says, and—ah. There it is. The sloth, smiling judgmentally, in his chubby hand. My favorite mug, now symbolic in its own right.

Because this is it.

This is The Moment. And how do I even get out of this? The damage is already done. The worst has already happened.

All my email drafts have somehow been sent.

Every single last one.

From: Millie Chandler

To: Michael.Waterstreet@Flyetv.com

Subject: Re: millie, set up meeting room asap

Ummmm, an empty email and an instruction in the subject without a single

please or thank you?????? Not that I expected anything else of course, because I hear how you speak to other people who work here. YOU ARE THE RUDEST MAN ALIVE!!!!

Kind Regards,

Millie Chandler

Reception

Flye TV, Progress Road, Essex

From: Millie Chandler

To: Alexis.Lee@TTMedTech.com

Subject: re: sorry, can’t make dinner, clients over from Sweden, can’t go home until I’ve closed the sale!!!

Good. I’m sort of relieved to be honest, Lex. The cinema last week was hard-going. I wish it hadn’t been but it was and I felt like you were mad at me the whole time. You were so contrary and argumentative!? It was like you had a problem with everything I said. And lately, it really feels like we’re drifting apart, and I hate saying this, but sometimes I think that’s a good thing.

From: Millie Chandler

To: Owen.Kalimeris@Flyetv.com

Cc: All Office

Subject: re: Update from Team India, week 16!

It’s been four months since we broke up, and I still miss you so much, Owen. So much sometimes that it physically aches. I just don’t know how to forget you.

chapter 2

Millie, last night, you sent a large number of emails, says Paul, my boss, opposite me at the boardroom table, and we’d very much like to discuss this."

Paul seems calm and matter-of-fact as a miniature, panicky battle takes place inside my chest. My worst nightmare: confirmed. Verified. And I know some people might see having their email drafts sent as nothing more than an irk, at most an Oh, bloody hell, that’s going to ruffle a few feathers, isn’t it? Ha-ha-ha drama they could do without. But I am not some people. Because my email drafts are not just email drafts. For the last couple of years, my drafts have become—my diary. A confessional. A haunted crypt of unsaid things; things I wish I could say, things I really, really want to say but don’t, in pursuit of a peaceful life. No drama. No risk. No eyes on me. No heartbreak (and that one’s very important). A life where I just take thoughtful, destinationless walks with my friends, cook, (try to) crochet, and get far too emotionally invested in reality TV. A little under the radar. Some might even say private, especially nowadays.

But now, or at least from what I can only assume from the screen on the wall emblazoned over and over with my name, it’s… out there. All of it. Everything I think and feel but keep locked up. All my email drafts, sent, to real people. And yes, some to colleagues, but worse than that are—the others.

Oh, the others.

The emails written to important people in my life. People who I really care about; love.

Fuck.

And now I have to explain it. Somehow, I have to explain the whats, the whys, the hows (and the hows is what I can’t for even a second begin to understand) to three silent bosses and sci-fi-head-in-a-jar Ann-Christin.

"I know sometimes emails do get sent in error, continues Paul. A reply-to-all, instead of a reply to a single recipient, for example. But this—you have sent very many, Millie, and various company-wide emails also. Some of which are… personal."

The—the thing is, I start. Must. Not. Cry. I—I didn’t actually send them.

You didn’t send them, Michael repeats slowly, raising a single bushy eyebrow. He’s gone full cop. Full army commander. I should’ve known he might. Michael once arrived at a company winter mud run dressed in animal furs and covered in lard while everyone else ran in waterproof jackets and inadequate sneakers. He’s that type. Plus, I have definitely bashed out a stupid, snarky email draft or two to Michael in my time, so he’s probably seen them and now understandably despises the very bones of me. They came from your email address, Millie.

Yes, y-yes, I know, but—

"And you do recognize them?" He cocks his square head toward the screen, at the strings and strings of emails, and suddenly this seems ridiculous. That this has happened at all—because how does something like this just happen?—but more, that they’re all staring at me, my colleagues of five-plus years, like I’ve just been found with a corpse sewn into my mattress. Please know I really am a nice person! I want to shout. Your nice, normal, diligent, slightly chaotic receptionist who just wanted to come to work and go home again (and maybe buy a fancy prepackaged prawn sandwich for lunch because that’s as risky as she gets)! But it’s like I’m suddenly a criminal. A corporate criminal in smart trousers with a reusable (Love Island) water bottle.

Yes, I wobble. "I do. I do recognize them. And I’m so, so sorry. I’m—I’m… totally mortified."

Mm, Michael grumbles, and I can barely look at Petra, who sits, rigid and wide-eyed, as if she’s been taxidermized.

But they were just drafts, I carry on, barely a space between my tiny, quivery words. "I… I wrote them, but they should have never, ever been sent. And I—I didn’t send them, and I wouldn’t ever want to send them, so I don’t understand how they even were sent because— My voice catches and I swallow, look over at them, like a silly, scolded, lost puppy. I’m sorry. I’m just… really nervous. This is all so serious and formal, isn’t it? Like… like, Hawaii Five-O or something." And I laugh now. Totally motorbike-like, totally fake. And not a soul laughs, or even smiles. And now I want to melt into tears and sink to the floor. Perhaps even fall through it to a lovely dark void?

Millie, sighs Paul, and I like Paul. Paul is kind, like a jolly postman; like someone duped him into a job as company director by telling him it’s just chats and nice lunches, and he stays only so as not to leave anyone in the lurch. You understand we just want to establish officially that you recognize the emails on the screen. That you wrote these.

Yes, I say. I do. I did.

And you were in work as normal yesterday, at your desk, working on your designated company laptop…

"Yes, I say, nodding madly. Yes, yes, that’s right, everything as normal. I was at my desk, as normal, all day…" Except. Oh. The servers. Yes! There was an enormous Flye TV server outage yesterday. The worst we’ve ever, ever had. Like the Battle of the sodding Boyne, up there, Steve in IT had said as he’d passed the reception desk, cheeks flushed and hair on end.

The servers were down all day! I blurt at Jolly Postman Paul. "Could… could something have happened with that? Clearing drafts and outboxes? A surge? That… that makes sense, doesn’t it?"

We don’t know, Millie, Paul replies measuredly. IT rallied and stayed until late last night to fix that particular issue, and there’s something about the beat of silence that follows his flat, too-professional tone that makes my stomach drop like a bowling ball.

Am I going to be… fired? Cut loose from a job I’ve religiously shown up to for five whole years like the human equivalent of a robot hoover? The last time I saw this many people in a room was last month when Gareth in the warehouse got fired (his giant skate shoe—somehow—got thrown through a production truck’s windscreen). I’d felt so sorry for him as he left the boardroom, gangly and hunched with shame, Jack Shurlock, the operations manager, walking him to his car. Will that be me? Is it about to be me?

Although—Jack isn’t here, right now, is he? So, maybe that’s a good sign. Since Jack got back from backpacking, he does seem to be in fewer meetings than he used to be, but—well, all the same, it’s surely good he isn’t here. (If only for the fact that worse than getting reprimanded for something like this is getting reprimanded in front of the hot, assured operations manager you once had a crush on. And—oh my God. Did I ever write an email to him? To Jack? After that Christmas party. Did I? Oh no no no no.)

IT will look into any sort of red flag. Michael sighs, looking like he would rather be anywhere but here, with me and my sad, strange, bewildering email issue. Something being compromised, hacked, and so on? I’ll rehighlight the company-wide server issue too. But just so we’re clear… He looks up at me then, a green ballpoint pen in his shovel hand, hovering. These emails. They were written by you.

… Yes.

And you often take your work laptop home. Yes?

My cheeks get hot now, because yes, I do often take my work laptop home. Officially, because I have a few extra things to do, mostly if Petra asks me (but unofficially, because I sometimes like to use it as a little TV I can follow YouTube tutorials on or to watch Married at First Sight Australia as I cook dinner). But what is he getting at? That I sent them? On purpose?

Yes, that’s correct, answers Petra for me, and oh, Petra. Lovely, lovely Petra. I wish so much we could communicate with each other in this moment—telepathy or something. A touch of Morse code. What’s Morse code for OMG, Petra, it’s worse than you think, because I’m afraid I have inadvertently set my whole life on fire, do you copy? PS, will you still be my friend??

Millie often works more than her agreed hours, Petra continues. And so takes her laptop home under my instruction. She also recently shadowed Marshal Chandra on camera crew, too, at the darts final? He was very impressed with her.

Look, interjects Jolly Postman Paul. "I think we can all agree that everything else aside, the bottom line is it’s simply unprofessional. Issues you could have officially, responsibly raised with colleagues, or even HR."

I know, I say, swallowing down tears. "I know, and I am so, so sorry. They were honestly never, ever meant to be read."

I see. Paul ponders.

It’s like—it’s like something I do to—get things off my chest, you know? Be human. Right? If in doubt, be honest and human, and you’ll appeal to the human in everyone. (I heard that once, on DIY SOS, I think it was, and my flatmate Ralph had sniffed emotionally and said, Tradesmen really are the people’s philosophers, aren’t they?) And I know it doesn’t excuse anything at all, I carry on, "but the emails… I would never want to upset anyone. I don’t even mean it. Not a word of it. I just… type to… to let it out?"

Yes, Paul, says Head-in-a-Jar Ann-Christin, as if I, and my DIY SOS wisdom, have simply vaporized. According to policy, we’re not quite in the gross misconduct area, and Millie has secured her laptop adequately, also in line with policy, so unless we get formal complaints from other members of staff… And then her face freezes on the screen, before her head is sliced into two Pac-Man halves. And thank God, because… complaints? I don’t even want to contemplate the idea of there being complaints. About me.

Yes, says Petra stiffly. I think this is just a case of having some adult conversations. I mean, who hasn’t perhaps wanted to say certain things to colleagues, to friends…

Mm, hums Michael.

Right, says Paul.

And the silence that follows then is like a big full stop rolling into the room. Paul sips his tea from the smugly smiling sloth. Michael extracts a nose hair between two fingers with aggression. Petra nods.

It’s finally over. And all I can think about now, as nervous sweat studs my back, is that my work, really, is the least of my worries, because… what? And who? What have I written over the last two years? Who in my life is currently, in this exact precise moment, opening an unexpected email from me?

Michael gets up, sighs as if disappointed the meeting didn’t end in my arrest, and opens the boardroom door. I follow Petra, who follows Paul, who’s flanked by Michael, all of us gradually trailing each other, like some sort of messed-up wedding procession.

And on my way to the bathroom, across the thin, ribbed carpet, through the fug of coffee and the hot plastic of machines, I hold my smile. When I get into the toilet stall at the end, I lock the door behind me and, finally, burst into tears.

From: Millie Chandler

To: Steve.Hycott@Flyetv.com

Subject: Re: 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 obnoxious 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)

To: (Dad) Mitchell Chandler

From: Millie Chandler

Subject: Re: Email not delivering to your Gmail?

So 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, ha-ha.) Are you sure Mum said it was me she was wit—

From: Millie Chandler

To: MsCateMG@gmail.co.uk

Subject: Re: 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 3

One hundred and seven. I’m pretty sure that’s how many emails were sitting in my drafts, at last glance, meaning—and I still cannot 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 even talked about 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 flatmate 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 people not at work, the people not in 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, I cannot be 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 recognize that feels extra ominous.

I stare at them. What do I do, what do I do?

Ralph.

I’m going to call Ralph. Sweet, sweet, sweet, sensible Ralph. He’ll know what to do; he always knows what to do. He’s logical. Optimistic. And so, so ridiculously smart. (Although I’m unsure whether his cleverness quite extends to what to do when your private emails have accidentally been read by the world as much as it does mushroom species, but cleverness is a transferrable skill, isn’t it?)

Ralph answers the phone, whispering down the line, like someone hiding during a holdup at a bank, Millie? I’m about to go into work.

I know, but—

We’re not allowed our phones once we’ve passed through the shop floor, remember. My boss, the one with the hip replacement—

Ralph, it’s an emergency, I blurt. "Like… huge. Giant."

A pause. Gosh, really? In the background, I can hear a deep, hollow dog’s bark. (Ralph works as a cashier at a huge pet shop with its own on-site groomers. He calls the dogs themselves customers. Walter, one of our customers, really enjoys the pigs’ ears…) Millie, are you all right?

No, I say. I really don’t think I am OK, Ralph, and I don’t know what to do. I imagine Ralph’s round, bespectacled face on the other end of the phone now, his troubled forehead scrunching up, his shiny windbreaker peppered with rain, done up, as always, right to the Adam’s apple. Oh, poor Ralph. Moments ago, plodding along to work, probably listening to that Tea and Fungi podcast he listens to, then along I come, steamrolling into his simple, sensible life of swimming groups and neat Tupperware lunches, firing flares into the sky. Ralph, it’s my emails.

What, is it all still offline?

"No. No, the servers came back on, but—my emails. They’re gone. They’re all sent."

What?

"When the servers came back on, all my emails somehow got sent. All my… drafts."

"Your drafts? Your—oh. The penny drops, and Ralph makes a doomy-sounding noise—a mini death rattle that makes me gasp an I know! down the line. Ralph is one of the only people on earth who know about The Drafts. Well. Besides Lin on the sales team. It was originally Lin—unconventional, principled, girl’s girl Lin Kye—who had casually suggested the whole thing two years ago. Try writing an email, and just don’t send it to the fucker, she’d said after finding me puffy-eyed in the work kitchen a few weeks after Owen had broken up with me. Something about writing to them. Tricks the brain, you know? Helps you process it all."

And after a few weeks of writing them, I’d proudly told Ralph about it. I hadn’t long moved in with him as his lodger, and it was one of the first late-night, bonding conversations of our friendship. I’ll always remember it. Me, Ralph, chatting standing up at the breakfast bar with midnight cups of tea, the soft, barley sugar glow of the low, pendant lights, Ralph smiling sleepily, me feeling a weight starting to lift. And I’d told him because writing them had helped, and I was so relieved something had. It felt like progress. These emails, quietly contained in that safe, going-nowhere folder. And yet, here we are. Here. We. Bloody. Are.

How many? Ralph asks simply, now.

So many.

How many is so many?

One hundred— I swallow, scrunch my eyes closed. "One hundred and seven, Ralph." And the numbers rush out like a last-minute confession on one of those daytime murder mystery series my dad loves. It wasn’t Father Frederick who stole the church’s money. It was… me!

"Christ, Millie. Shit."

I don’t know what to do, I say, and tears pool now, wobbling at the edges of my eyes. I’m in hell. Like, absolute hell, and I don’t even know how or why this has even happened. I mean, I’m a good person, right? You always talk about karma, and giving out good energy, and I… I smile at dogs. I try to never gossip. I… I rinse my recycling!

And on the loo seat as an extractor fan rattles on the wall above me like wind-up chattering teeth, I give Ralph a slightly hysterical capsule version of what happened this morning. From