The Kettleworth Family Services water cooler is drowning again—same gurgle, same plastic chairs, same fluorescent hum that makes everyone look like they've been dead for about a week.
Diane Pruitt opens my updated folder without surprise, reading glasses at the midpoint of her nose, as if she pencilled me into today's calendar the moment I walked out last time.
"Employment letter from Ashford & Hale, payslip dated this week, holding deposit receipt for a two-bedroom flat in SE6." She turns each page with the same mechanic's precision I remember. "You've been busy, Cora."
"Sleep is overrated." I sit straighter in the plastic chair, which has developed a new creak since my last visit. "I told you I'd meet the standard."
"And you've made genuine progress." She sets the folder down and folds her hands over it—palms flat, fingers laced, the practiced posture—I wonder if she had an exam for this kind of look specifically. "But emergency kinship placement has requirements beyond employment and a lease."
"Such as." My nails find the chair's armrest and press into the plastic hard enough to leave marks.
"Home inspection, background check, and a panel review." She counts them the way she counted requirements last time—on her fingers, each one a gate I have to pass through while the ground keeps shifting. "You'll be added to the list of potential carers for Blythe, which is a step forward."
"But." I can hear it sitting behind her teeth, patient, dressed up in professional language and waiting for its entrance cue.
"But the process favours stability over speed." She removes her glasses and sets them beside the folder. "Your file shows no independent housing history prior to this week. Your employment start date is very recent. The panel assesses patterns, not single data points."
"I'm building the pattern. That's why I'm sitting in this chair again—same chair, same office, different paperwork." My jaw works once around the next question. "What else?"
Diane's pen taps the desk twice, and the rhythm sounds like a door being tested from the other side. "Dennis remains Blythe's legal custodial parent. Until his parental rights are formally challenged through the courts, the system's default position is reunification."
"Reunification." The word comes out like I've bitten into something rotten and I'm trying to be polite about it. "With the man who held a broken bottle six feet from her face."
"He's been charged, and that works in your favour at a hearing. But the hearing hasn't happened, and family court moves on its own calendar." She meets my eyes without insulting me by pretending to offer hope. "I'm being straightforward because you asked me to be."
"Then be straightforward about my chances." My folder sits in my lap, thinner than when I walked in—she kept the employment letter, the deposit receipt, copies of things that belong to me now living in her filing cabinet. "If the panel met tomorrow."
Diane's mouth presses into a line I'm starting to recognise as the place where her training meets whatever she actually thinks. "Another candidate with a longer track record—established housing, years of documented stability—would be prioritised over you."
"Right." My thumb traces the folder's edge, back and forth, wearing a groove into cardboard. "And Blythe stays wherever she is while I build a track record."
"I'll push for the earliest review slot." She stands, which means this meeting has reached its designated capacity for devastating news. "Keep documenting. Every payslip, every bill in your name."
I thank her with a voice that works fine and legs that carry me past the drowning water cooler and into daylight that doesn't care about panel reviews. The folder is lighter under my arm. The list in my head is longer.
Ashford & Hale's lobby smells like someone else's certainty—leather, fresh coffee, the ambient confidence of a building where people solve problems that have solutions. I take the lift to the third floor and turn the corner toward my desk.
Edmund is sitting in my chair. Not hovering, not leaning—sitting, forearms on his knees, in a posture that says he's been there long enough to stop checking the time. His jacket is off, sleeves pushed past the wrists, bruised knuckles darkened to a colour that won't be forgotten soon.
"I'm not going to pretend the other night didn't happen." He doesn't stand. "And I'm not going to ask you if you're fine."
"Refreshing approach." I set the folder on the desk beside him, keeping my hands busy because idle hands have to deal with the proximity—cedar and coffee and the quiet weight of his attention. "Most people lead with the second one."
"How does the custody process work?" He's watching me the way he watches client briefs—not with sympathy, with focus. "Timeline, requirements, what does the system actually need from you?"
My mouth opens and closes around three different deflections before I abandon all of them. These aren't sympathy questions—they're operational ones, the kind that come with a spreadsheet and a plan, and the precision catches me between breaths.
"Stable income. Independent lease. Panel review." I lean against the desk's edge because standing at full height makes the directness easier to manage. "Home inspection, background check, a file thick enough to convince strangers I'm fit to raise the person I've been raising since seventeen."
"And the timeline?" His forearms stay on his knees, close enough that I can count the tendons, which I'm not doing, which is why I'm studying the wall behind him with academic interest.
"Weeks. Months. Depends on which bureaucrat draws the short straw." I cross my arms against my ribs. "Diane Pruitt says the system favours stability over speed. Polite way of saying I'm too new at everything to matter yet."
Edmund nods slowly—processing, not performing. His thumb runs along the edge of his split knuckle without flinching, and the quiet between us has a texture I can almost touch.
"Can a third party apply for emergency foster placement?" He asks it the way he asked about the Whitmore margins—neutral, informational, already thinking three steps past the question. "Someone with an established household, existing infrastructure."
My arms tighten across my chest, fingers gripping my own elbows. "I don't know. I haven't looked into it."
"I'm just asking." He stands, and the chair rolls back, and the space he occupied holds warmth for a half-second after he's vacated it. "Let me know if you need anything on the Whitmore revisions."
He walks into his office. The glass door closes without sound, and through it I watch him sit, open his laptop, and not look at me once.
I sit in my chair. Cedar and coffee cling to the leather headrest—faint enough to deny, strong enough that my next breath carries both and the one after that goes back for more.
Can a third party apply for emergency foster placement? It replays while I open the Whitmore file, while I answer emails, while I walk past Edmund's office without glancing in—which requires a muscular effort no training programme has prepared me for.
He didn't ask it like a man making conversation. He asked it like a man who already knew the answer and was measuring whether I'd let him use it.