On an Ordinary Tuesday, She Took Half a Day Off

Her leave request said 'personal matters'. There were no matters at all: at lunch she'd stared at her screen and felt that if this kept up, another month would slip past unnoticed. She opened her phone and booked three o'clock.

On a weekday afternoon the studio felt like a different time zone. Sunlight slanted through the curtain gap onto the wooden floor. Sinking into the fragrant bath, she thought: so this is what stolen time smells like — flowers, hot water, and a small illicit joy.

Midway through the care she asked the therapist: do many people come on weekday afternoons? The therapist smiled: mostly women like you — the ones who suddenly saw it clearly. She laughed out loud. The world, it turned out, was full of her kind.

She didn't leave right away; in the rest area she finished the last thirty pages of a book she'd been carrying for months. Her warm drink was refilled once, and the light outside slowly went amber.

Work was the next morning's business. A colleague said she looked well and asked if she'd been on holiday. She smiled: yes — somewhere very close by.

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