Ro's flat was smaller than it should have been for the rent she paid. The bedroom barely fit her bed, the kitchen was a corridor with appliances, and the bathroom had a shower that ran either scalding or icy, never the promised middle ground. She'd lived there eighteen months and had never hung a picture. Temporary, she'd told herself when she moved in. Just until she saved enough. Just until...
She sat at the kitchen table—a fold-out thing she'd found on the street, one leg shorter than the others, stabilized with cardboard—and opened her laptop.
The debt tracker loaded. She'd made it herself, color-coded, with formulas that calculated payoff dates based on payment amounts. It was the most organized thing in her life. The rest might be chaos, but the debt was tracked. Measured. Controlled.
Current balance: £34,212. Down from the original £38,000. Eighteen months of night shifts, of picking up extra weekend hours, of eating beans and rice and pretending it was a choice. She was making progress. Slow, grinding progress, but progress.
She added last night's tips—eighty pounds, plus the heavy coins she'd found in her pocket that she hadn't put there herself. The computer didn't have a category for supernatural currency. She logged it as "miscellaneous" and moved on.
The phone rang at 11:47 AM. She knew who it was before she looked.
"Hello, Dad."
"Rowan." Her father's voice was thick, the way it got when he'd been drinking. Not drunk, exactly. Just... lubricated. Enough to make phone calls he wouldn't remember. "Didn't wake you, did I?"
"I work nights, Dad. It's noon."
"Right. Right, the night job. The diner." He paused. She heard the clink of a glass. "How's that going?"
"Fine."
"Making tips?"
"Some."
"Good, good. Tips are good." Another pause. Longer. "Your mother used to make tips. When she bartended. Before she got sick."
Ro closed her eyes. Counted to five. "I know, Dad."
"She was good at it. The talking. The remembering faces." The glass clinked again. "You're more like me. Quiet. Keep to yourself."
"Is there something you need?"
Direct questions usually worked. Got him to the point, such as it was. But today he seemed determined to wander.
"Just checking in. Father's prerogative. How's the degree? You were going to finish the degree."
"I need four thousand more pounds. Then I can re-enroll."
"Four thousand. That's... that's a lot."
"It's what it is."
Silence. The kind that had weight, that had history behind it. Her father's breathing, slightly labored. The distant sound of a television playing something with laugh tracks.
"I could send something," he said finally. "Not much. Pension doesn't stretch. But something."
"Dad—"
"Don't. Don't say no. Let me... let me help. This once."
Ro looked at her debt tracker. At the number that defined more of her life than she wanted to admit. She thought about accepting—about the complications it would cause, the conversations it would require, the way it would tie her back to him in ways she'd spent years trying to untie.
"Save it," she said. "For something you need."
"I need—" He stopped. Started again. "I need you to be okay, Rowan. I need that."
"I'm okay, Dad."
"Working nights. In a diner. With your degree half-finished and your mother—" His voice broke, just slightly. "Your mother would have hated this. You know that. Hated seeing you throw it away."
Ro felt something cold settle in her chest. "I'm not throwing anything away. I'm paying off the debt. Her debt, Dad. The hospital. The treatments. The private room at the end."
"She didn't ask for that."
"You did." The words came out sharper than she meant. "You asked for everything. Every treatment, every specialist, every—"
"She was my wife."
"And I was your daughter. And I'm still paying for the choices you made."
The silence that followed was absolute. Ro could hear her own breathing, too fast, too shallow. She hadn't meant to say it. Had promised herself years ago that she wouldn't say it. But here it was, out in the air, impossible to take back.
"I'll let you go," her father said. Quiet now. The quiet of someone who'd been hit and was still deciding if it hurt. "Work hard. Be safe."
"Dad—"
The line went dead.
She sat there for a long time, phone in her hand, looking at the debt tracker. The green cells showing progress. The red cells showing what remained. The whole thing a kind of map, a territory she'd committed to crossing no matter what she found along the way.
She didn't cry. She'd used up her tears for family drama years ago.
Instead, she opened her email. Scrolled through spam, through newsletters she'd never signed up for, to the one that mattered: Edinburgh University, Art History Department. The acceptance letter she'd received two years ago, before her mother's diagnosis, before the withdrawal, before the night shifts and the diner and the learning not to see.
*We would be pleased to welcome you to the MA program...*
She'd deferred twice. The department secretary had been kind, understanding, in the way of people who'd seen other students break on similar rocks.
*One more term available for deferral. Please confirm by November 30th.*
November 30th was six weeks away. Four thousand pounds away.
She closed the laptop. Stood up. The flat felt smaller than ever, the walls pressing in, the ceiling too low. She needed to get out. To move. To remember that there was a world beyond the diner, beyond the debt, beyond the things she was trying not to see.
She dressed—jeans, sweater, the good coat she'd bought secondhand and had tailored to fit—and went outside.
London in October afternoon was grey and damp and alive. Ro walked without purpose, letting her feet carry her where they wanted. Past the corner shop where she bought milk. Past the laundromat where she recognized no one. Past the park where she'd decided, six months ago, not to cut through anymore.
The city hummed. Delivery drivers argued in three languages. A dog barked behind a fence. Someone was playing piano in an upstairs window, badly, the same four bars repeated with increasing desperation.
Normal. All of it normal. The kind of normal she'd fought for, worked for, sacrificed for.
She ended up at a coffee shop. Not the diner—she couldn't face the diner during daylight, couldn't see it as just another building, just another place. This was a chain place, generic, safe. She ordered a latte she couldn't afford and sat by the window, watching people.
A woman with a pram. Two teenagers sharing headphones. An old man reading a newspaper—today's paper, with actual current events.
No one with eyes the wrong color. No one who moved too slowly, who smiled too sharply, who said things that didn't make sense until later.
Ro drank her coffee. It was too hot, too sweet, nothing like the diner coffee she'd learned to make. She didn't finish it.
Her phone buzzed. A text from Denise: *covering your shift tomorrow? siobhan's sick again*
Ro stared at the message. She'd been looking forward to the day off. A full day of sleep, of not-thinking, of being normal.
But double shift meant double tips. And she needed every pound.
*Yes,* she typed back. *I'll cover.*
The reply came immediately: *ur a lifesaver xoxo*
She put the phone away. Looked out at the grey street, the grey sky, the grey city that had swallowed so many other people with debts and dreams and fathers they couldn't fix.
She'd go back. Of course she would. She'd go back to the diner, to the night shift, to the customers who weren't quite people and the tea drinker who knew her name and the eggs that came back from the trash.
Because the alternative—quitting, running, admitting that something was wrong—meant giving up on Edinburgh. Meant letting the debt win. Meant becoming her father, hiding in a flat with a bottle and a pension that didn't stretch.
She wouldn't do that.
She finished the coffee despite the sweetness. Threw the cup in the bin. Walked home through streets that darkened early now, sunset coming sooner every day.
Her building felt different when she returned. Not wrong, exactly. Just... watched. She checked behind her as she climbed the stairs, saw nothing, told herself it was paranoia.
Three locks. Her flat. Her space.
She made dinner—pasta with sauce from a jar, the kind of meal that kept you alive without pretending to be enjoyable. Ate it sitting on her bed because the kitchen table was too depressing. Looked at her debt tracker again, just to watch the green cells glow.
The phone rang at 8 PM. She ignored it.
Rang again at 8:15. Ignored it again.
At 8:30, a text: *I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—I'm proud of you. For working hard. Sorry.*
She didn't reply. Put the phone face-down. Lay in the dark, listening to the radiator knock, the neighbors argue, the city breathe around her.
Tomorrow she'd go back. Tomorrow she'd serve coffee to things that might not be human, pretend not to notice, collect her tips and go home.
It wasn't the life she'd imagined. But it was the life she had. And she was surviving it.
That would have to be enough.