Page 5 of Bad Girl
The double wooden doors to our section were straight ahead. I swiped my card. The lock clicked.
The doors opened onto the familiar low roar of the office—keyboards, murmured calls, someone’s Teams notification going off every forty seconds like a metronome of mild suffering.
Inside, the morning was already in full swing. Heads bent over screens. A project lead at the whiteboard talking through a delivery timeline to a small cluster of people who were nodding with the focused energy of people being watched by someone senior. Presentations happening in the glass-walled rooms along the far wall, slides reflected faintly in the windows.
Everyone busy. Everyone going somewhere.
I reached our bank of desks.
Andy was the only one there, laptop open, not looking up.
“Morning,” I said, setting my bag down.
“Morning.” He still didn’t look up.“You wouldn’t mind grabbing me a coffee when you get yours, would you?”
I stood there for a beat.
And so it began.
Chapter 3
Nika
After several missed calls and a string of text messages, he finally responded.
Finley:I’m out with the guys. Don’t know when I’ll be back.
I read it twice.
He’s probably out on the prowl.
I put the phone down on the couch cushion, face down, and sat with that for a moment. The flat was very quiet. The kind of quiet that had texture to it — the hum of the fridge, a bus passing outside, the muffled television from the flat next door living its own life without me.
I’d cooked. That was the thing. I’d actually come home, changed out of my work clothes, and cooked a proper meal because it was Friday and I’d thought—stupidly, it turned out—that it might be nice. That we might sit together and eat something that hadn’t come in a paper bag and maybe talk like two people who shared a life.
I stood up and went to the kitchen.
The vegetables were lukewarm. The chicken skin that had been perfectly crispy an hour ago had gone soft and a bit sad. I stood over the tray for a moment looking at it before serving it up.
Then I grabbed my plate, picked up the bottle of wine, and didn’t bother with a glass.
Back on the couch I pulled up Netflix and scrolled. The recommendations stared back at me—things we’d been meaning to watch together, things he’d added to the list, things I’d forgotten I’d saved. I kept scrolling until I hit something I didn’t recognise and hit play without reading what it was.
It didn’t matter what it was.
Somewhere between the second and third fork of food I became aware that my vision had gone blurry.
I blinked.
Oh. Apparently I was crying. Not dramatically—no gasping, no sound. Just the quiet, pathetic kind that happened when you’d been holding something at arm’s length for too long and your body got tired of the effort.
I raised my fork and ate.
The wine was cheap, but I didn’t care. The show played. Outside, London carried on being London—indifferent and loud and completely unbothered by someone like me. Insignificant.
I questioned, not for the first time, what the fuck I was doing with my life.
I didn’t answer myself.
