* Present *
The Kettleworth Family Services office has the aesthetic charm of a place where hope comes to fill out paperwork and die. Fluorescent lights, plastic chairs bolted to the floor, a water cooler making a sound like a small animal drowning every forty seconds.
I’m sitting across from a woman named Diane Pruitt with a folder in my lap that represents every document I own in the world. She opens it without looking up, her reading glasses perched at the exact midpoint of her nose.
"So you're looking to file for legal custody of a minor sibling." She turns a page. "Blythe Whitfield, age sixteen."
"That's right." I straighten in the plastic chair, which creaks under me like it has opinions. "I brought everything—school records, medical history, employment verification, a personal statement."
Diane turns pages the way a mechanic turns over engine parts—efficient, clinical, already diagnosing before she's seen the whole machine. Her pen taps twice against the desk.
"You're currently employed as—" she checks the page, "—a server at Kettleworth Bar and Grill. Part-time."
"Full-time hours, part-time classification." I keep my hands flat on the folder. "They schedule me five nights a week but won't put it on paper."
"Which means no benefits, no employment guarantee, and an annual income of—" she flips to my bank statements and her pen stops tapping. The silence where the number should be say everything the number would.
"It's not a lot," I offer, since someone haі to acknowledge the corpse in the room. "I'm aware of how it looks on paper."
"It's not enough." Diane closes the page with the gentle finality, like a coffin lid. "The court requires evidence of financial stability sufficient to provide for the minor's housing, food, medical, educational expenses."
"I can work more." I lean forward in the plastic chair. "I can get a second job, something that pays—"
"Let me finish." She holds up one finger—not unkind, but immovable. "You also need independent housing—a lease in your name, inspected and approved as suitable for a minor."
"You're currently living at your father's apartment, is that correct?" She glances at the form again. "No lease in your name, no independent address."
"Correct." The word tastes like something I found on the bottom of my shoe, and I swallow it with the same enthusiasm.
Diane removes her glasses and sets them on the desk. "Cora, I'll be straightforward—as it stands, this petition would not be approved."
My fingers find the edge of the folder and press until the cardboard bent. Every document in that stack—every form I’ve filled out at two in the morning, every record I've requested and organised with tabs from the pound shop—amounting to a neat, colour-coded version of not enough.
"What would make it approvable?" My voice comes out steady, which is a miracle of engineering I deserve an award for.
"Stable income, verifiable and on record. A lease in your name." She counts them on her fingers the way I count reasons to keep breathing on the bus home. "A home environment assessment, and demonstrated capacity to meet the minor's needs."
"Tell me the exact standard and I will meet it, every single one." My jaw set so tight my molars ache.
Diane studies me, her mouth pressing into a line that isn’t quite sympathy and isn’t quite doubt—somewhere in the middle, where people who've seen too many files lived permanently.
"Blythe has a living father—he's the legal custodial parent." She folds her hands on the desk. "Why are you, at twenty-five, sitting in my office trying to take over his responsibilities?"
The bruise on my cheekbone has faded to yellow-green under foundation from a sample tube I've taken from a pharmacy display. Diane's eyes drift to it once—just once—then return to mine.
"He's not great with schedules." I keep my voice even and my hands very still. "Blythe needs more structure than he provides."
"Structure." She repeats the word like she is turning it over for cracks. "If there are safety concerns—abuse, neglect, substance issues—you can file a report."
"What happens to Blythe during that process?" My nails dig into my palm under the folder. "Walk me through it."
"An investigation is opened, a caseworker visits the home." Diane's voice shifts into something careful and measured. "If the home is deemed unsafe, the minor is placed in temporary foster care."
"Temporary." I test the word the way you'd test a bridge with one foot—not trusting it to hold.
"Until a suitable alternative is determined, yes." She pauses. "It could be weeks. It could be significantly longer."
"And I'd have no say in where she goes or who she's placed with." My throat is doing something complicated around every syllable.
Diane doesn’t answer immediately, which is its own kind of answer. She places her glasses back on and straightens the folder between us with both hands.
"My recommendation is to address the financial and housing requirements first." Her voice is gentler now, which makes it worse—gentleness from strangers means you are in the category of people who need it. "Come back with a lease and a pay stub that tells a different story."
I stand, tucking the folder under my arm, and thank her with a smile that feels like holding a door shut in a hurricane. The hallway smells like floor polish and microwaved lunch, and I walk through it with my back very straight because if I curve even slightly I might not straighten again.
On the bench outside, I pull out my phone. Job listings load slowly on Kettleworth's signal—bartender, warehouse packer, night cleaner, bartender again.
I scroll past them all, doing the maths in my head: hours times rate, minus bus fare, minus rent I don’t have for a flat I haven’t found.
My thumb stops mid-scroll. I read the listing twice to make sure the numbers aren’t a hallucination brought on by fluorescent lighting and institutional despair.
Executive Assistant to CEO—Ashford & Hale Consulting, Central London, immediate start. The salary is more than double what I earn slinging plates five nights a week—enough for a lease, enough for a pay stub that tells Diane Pruitt a different story.
Requirements: degree preferred, three years corporate experience, proficiency in software I've never touched. The posting might as well include must have been born into a different life entirely.
My thumb hovers over the apply button the same way it hovered over Reactivate Profile two nights ago—same pause, same negotiation between smart and necessary. I press it, upload my CV, and watch the wheel spin for three seconds. Application submitted.
I shove my phone into my bag and stand, because sitting still with Diane Pruitt's gentle voice in my mouth is not something my body can tolerate for one more second. The bus stop is four minutes away if I walk fast, which is the one thing on my CV that is genuinely world-class.
Halfway there, my phone buzzes against my hip. I pull it out expecting Blythe, expecting Dennis, expecting the universe's next small cruelty delivered via notification.
An interview invitation—Thursday, ten in the morning, Ashford & Hale. Two days from now, in a building I've never set foot in, for a job I have no business applying for.
I read it three times on a Kettleworth pavement with my folder of not-enough under my arm, and something behind my ribs shifts—a door I hadn't known existed, cracking open exactly one inch.