Scene 31

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Notes26-01-21e

Emily Original

Scene 31 — “Maternal Conflict” (Lauren POV)

✨ Maternal Conflict ✨

[26-01-21]

I drove to Celeste’s with my hands locked on the wheel in a way that made my knuckles ache.

Not because the road was difficult.

Because I needed something physical to hold.

There are a thousand kinds of fear a mother learns to live with—ordinary ones, predictable ones, the daily background noise of watching a child move through a world that can bruise them without meaning to.

This was not that.

This was a sharp, private fear: the kind that arrives when you realise your child has been quietly trying to solve something alone.

And that the solution could have hurt her.

By the time I parked, I’d already rehearsed twenty versions of what I might say.

Are you all right? Why didn’t you tell me? What were you thinking? How long? What if—

But when I opened Celeste’s door and stepped inside, all of it fell away.

Charli was sitting on the sofa with her knees tucked up, arms wrapped around them like a brace. Hair damp. Face scrubbed clean. No costume, no cap, no kerchief—just a girl in a t-shirt and track pants, and in the rawness of that I saw what the room at Wardrobe had been protecting.

Not a theory.

A person.

Celeste stood near the kitchen table like a sentry. Not hostile. Not soft. Just… planted. The sort of posture that said: I’ve already decided what safety looks like. You can argue later.

Charli’s eyes lifted when I came in.

They were wide, terrified, and bright with held-back tears.

“Mum,” she whispered.

I crossed the room in two steps and stopped just in front of her.

I didn’t hug her. Not yet.

If I hugged her too quickly, she’d crumble, and I couldn’t afford to have us both collapsing at once.

“Are you safe right now?” I asked, voice steadier than I felt.

Charli nodded so fast it was almost comical.

“Yes.”

“Are you in pain?”

“No.”

“Do you feel like you might hurt yourself?”

Her face tightened. She shook her head hard.

“No. No, Mum.”

Only then did my chest loosen enough to let air in.

I sat on the edge of the armchair opposite her, close enough that she could feel me there, not so close that she’d feel trapped.

Celeste didn’t move. She didn’t interrupt. She didn’t try to soften the space with words.

She was letting me be the mother.

I turned my head and saw the bottle on the table.

White plastic. Printed label.

It looked impossibly small for the amount of damage it could have done.

My stomach turned over.

“How long?” I asked, and hated myself for asking it like an interrogation.

Charli’s gaze dropped to her hands. “A while.”

“Charli,” Celeste said, quiet but firm.

The name came out clean—no hesitation, no apology.

Charli flinched anyway, as if the name itself carried consequence.

I swallowed and forced my voice gentler.

“How long, love?”

Her throat moved. “Two months. Maybe.”

Two months.

I stared at her—really looked at her—and felt a wave of something like grief roll up from my gut.

Not grief for a son “lost.” Not that story. That story didn’t fit her face.

This was grief for time.

For the weeks she’d carried this alone.

For the fear she’d swallowed to keep her place in a room of women.

For the fact that she had sat at my table and smiled and I hadn’t understood what the smile was holding together.

And then the anger came.

Not at her being a girl.

At the secrecy.

At the risk.

At the thought of her ordering medication online, swallowing tablets she didn’t fully understand, and calling it a plan.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

Charli’s eyes finally lifted. Wet. Shining. Terrified.

“Because I didn’t want you to stop me,” she said.

There it was.

The honesty you only get when someone has run out of hiding places.

I closed my eyes for a moment and breathed through my nose.

I could have said a hundred things then.

I could have made it about my feelings.

I could have made it about betrayal.

I could have made it about control.

But none of that would have helped her.

So I said the truest thing.

“I’m not angry at you for wanting what you want,” I said. “I’m angry you thought you had to do it without us.”

Charli’s mouth trembled.

Celeste shifted her weight slightly, as if approving the distinction without having to comment.

“I thought…” Charli began, and then her voice broke. “I thought if I told you, you’d… you’d take it away.”

I felt my heart twist.

Because she was right, in one sense.

We had taken it away.

Celeste had confiscated the bottle.

And we would do it again if we had to, because safety mattered more than anyone’s pride.

But the deeper truth—the one Charli didn’t yet trust—was that taking the pills was not the same as taking her away from herself.

I leaned forward, hands clasped, keeping my posture calm.

“We did take it away,” I said carefully. “Because it wasn’t safe. Not because it was wrong.”

Charli blinked rapidly, trying not to cry.

“You don’t understand,” she whispered.

“Then help me,” I said.

She hesitated.

And then, in a voice so small it nearly disappeared, she said: “I didn’t want my body to… to go the other way.”

Celeste’s face didn’t change, but I saw her attention sharpen, the way it did at Wardrobe when someone named a real stress point.

Charli swallowed hard.

“The girls,” she said. “At Wardrobe. They… they started calling me she. And… Charli. And it felt like—” She cut herself off, ashamed of the wanting. “It felt like I was inside. Like I belonged.”

My throat tightened.

“This isn’t about pronouns,” I heard myself say, and realised I was echoing the thought I’d had on the floor. “This is about belonging.”

Charli nodded, miserably.

“And you thought puberty would take that away,” Celeste said, not unkindly. Just accurately.

Charli flinched at Celeste speaking it so plainly, but she nodded again.

“Yes.”

Celeste’s voice was controlled. “And you thought this would stop it.”

Charli’s eyes went to the bottle as if it was a life raft and a crime scene at the same time.

“Yes,” she whispered. “It was working.”

That sentence—so desperate, so pragmatic—hit me harder than anything else.

Because it told me everything.

Her happiness wasn’t accidental.

It wasn’t a mood.

It was something she had been maintaining.

Like a seam she was constantly reinforcing so it wouldn’t split.

I sat back and let my hands unclench slowly.

All right.

If she had built her peace on an unsafe scaffold, then we had to replace it with something real.

Not by yanking it away and leaving her in free-fall.

By building a safer structure around the same truth.

I looked at Celeste.

Celeste didn’t look away.

No competition. No territoriality. Just two women recognising the same job.

“We need professionals,” I said.

Celeste nodded once. “Yes.”

Charli’s face tightened with fear. “Like… doctors?”

“Yes,” I said. “Doctors who will monitor you. Who will take this seriously. Who will do bloodwork. Who will make sure you don’t harm yourself chasing relief.”

Charli’s mouth opened. Closed. She looked like a person trying to decide whether help was another kind of punishment.

“And—” I added, choosing my words carefully, “—someone who can help us confirm what you already seem to know about yourself. Properly. Not through fear. Not through secrecy.”

Charli’s eyes widened.

Celeste’s gaze stayed steady.

“We’re not doing this as a hobby,” Celeste said. “We’re not doing it alone. And we’re not doing it behind anyone’s back.”

Charli nodded once, small. “Okay.”

Her voice made it sound like surrender.

I wanted it to sound like safety.

So I reached across the space and, this time, I touched her—fingers to her hand, a contact light enough that she could pull away if she needed to.

“You don’t have to be brave alone,” I said.

Charli’s breath hitched. A tear slid down her cheek.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“No apology theatre,” Celeste said immediately, blunt as ever. “Just compliance.”

It should have sounded harsh.

It didn’t.

It sounded like structure.

And Charli—Charli gave a tiny, broken laugh through her tears.

“I can do that,” she said, voice shaking. “I can… I can be boring.”

The three of us sat with that for a moment—the absurd relief of it.

Then the practicalities took over, because that was how women made panic survivable: by giving it a timetable.

Celeste pulled out her phone and started searching for clinics with the same ruthless efficiency she used to source silk thread. I opened my own and began calling numbers, leaving calm messages, collecting wait times, asking for referrals.

Charli sat between us, wrapped in her towel like armour, and watched us do it.

Watched two women build a structure around her.

Not to trap her.

To hold her.

When it was arranged—when the first appointment was booked, when the bloodwork was scheduled, when the referral had been requested, when the pathway was no longer a hazy “we should” but a series of boring, numbered steps—Charli’s shoulders eased in a way I hadn’t realised they could.

It wasn’t joy yet.

It was something more basic:

Relief at being supervised.

Relief at not having to be her own clinician.

Relief at not having to hide.

The next weeks moved, as these things do, in practical increments. Paperwork. Forms. Questions. Waiting rooms that smelled like disinfectant and old magazines. Conversations that were not romantic and not dramatic—just necessary.

We did not narrate the details to each other like a project.

We did not turn her body into a topic of public discussion.

We treated it the way Wardrobe treated any complex work:

With privacy. With competence. With adult oversight.

And gradually, without fanfare, the dangerous private solution in the bottle was replaced by something safer.

Something supervised.

Something that didn’t require secrecy as its fuel.

Charli began to sleep more deeply. Her appetite steadied. Her laughter stayed. The fear that had been hovering behind her eyes—what if I lose my place, what if I’m pushed back outside—began to loosen its grip.

One evening, after an appointment, we walked out into the late light and Charli turned her face up toward the sky as if she was tasting the air.

She looked at me then—not as a child begging permission, not as a person bracing for rejection.

As a girl checking whether she was still inside the door.

“You’re okay,” I said before she could ask.

Her eyes shone.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “Yeah, I think… I think I am.”

I took her hand—properly this time, no half-measures—and squeezed once.

Celeste walked beside us, hands in her pockets, expression controlled as ever.

But she didn’t pull away from the trio.

She stayed in step.

And I understood something with a clarity that made my throat ache:

My child wasn’t disappearing.

She was arriving.

And this time, she wasn’t arriving alone.

---

Notes26-01-25orig

From 26-01-??

[No Links]

✨ --- ✨

Lauren arrived the way she did everything lately: fast, contained, already braced.

I heard her before I saw her—the firm knock that didn’t ask permission, the quick shift of keys, the familiar scrape of the latch. No hesitation. No dawdle at the threshold. She came in as if the doorway itself was something she could correct by force of will.

When she stepped into the kitchen, her eyes went briefly to me, then quickly to Charli.

Charli had been sitting in the same spot for too long, towel gripped like a security blanket, damp hair still uncombed, face raw from crying. She looked up when Lauren entered, and something in her expression rearranged itself—not relief exactly, not comfort.

More like recognition.

This is the person who can actually undo me.

Lauren crossed the room in three steps and stopped in front of her daughter.

For a second, she didn’t touch her.

That restraint—the pause before contact—was so precise it made my throat tighten. It was the kind of restraint you learned the hard way: the knowledge that sometimes touch feels like a verdict.

Then Lauren did what mothers do when they cannot afford theatre.

She cupped Charli’s cheek with her palm, thumb sliding once, gentle.

“You okay?” she asked. The words were soft. The question was not.

Charli’s mouth trembled. “I’m—” she started, then broke. “I didn’t—”

Lauren turned her head, just enough to look at me. Not accusing. Not grateful. Measuring.

I held her gaze.

“She’s safe,” I said. “She’s not in danger right now. But it can’t continue.”

Lauren’s hand stayed on Charli’s face. She didn’t stop touching her even while she processed the rest. That told me more than any sentence could have: whatever she was feeling, she wasn’t going to let her daughter be alone inside it.

Charli looked between us. Mother and me. Two women, two kinds of authority.

And there it was—the smallest, sharpest flicker in me.

Not anger. Not rivalry.

Something more primitive than either.

Mine.

Not in the possessive sense a man would claim, or a lover would claim, but in the sense that Wardrobe had trained me to feel about vulnerable things under my care: a duty that turned into ownership of outcome. Responsibility so fierce it bordered on jealousy.

I swallowed it before it could touch my face.

I did not want Charli to see it. I did not want Lauren to see it.

I wanted to be the adult.

Lauren’s gaze moved to the bottle. She didn’t pick it up. She didn’t read it again. She didn’t ask for more proof.

She simply nodded, once, and the nod was almost invisible—but it was a decision.

“How long?” she asked Charli.

Charli flinched. Her eyes slid away. “Almost four months.”

Lauren’s hand dropped from Charli’s cheek to her shoulder, firmer now. Anchoring.

“Four months,” Lauren repeated quietly, as if saying the number out loud would make it manageable.

Charli started to shake her head, quick, panicked. “Mum, I— I wasn’t— I didn’t do it because—”

Lauren cut in, not loud, but clean.

“Don’t explain it to me like I’m going to misunderstand,” she said. “I’m your mother. I know why you did it.”

Charli’s breath hitched. Something like shame flared and then collapsed.

Lauren kept her hand on her shoulder.

Then Lauren looked at me again.

“You took it off her,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m holding it.”

Lauren’s face did something complicated—relief mixed with fear, as if she didn’t want to admit how grateful she was that someone else had been present for the first collision.

“Thank you,” she said, very quietly.

I nodded once. I didn’t soften. Not yet. Softness can become permission to fall apart, and I needed them both upright.

Charli’s eyes were bright. She looked between us again, like she couldn’t decide which failure she was meant to confess to first.

Lauren’s voice changed then, fractionally. Not gentler. More controlled.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to do this properly.”

Charli blinked. The phrase hit her like a threat.

Lauren glanced at the bottle again and then back to Charli.

“Not ‘properly’ as punishment,” she said. “Properly as in: safe.”

Charli swallowed. “It was safe. I— I checked—”

“No,” Lauren said. Still not loud. “You read. You didn’t check. You don’t have bloodwork. You don’t have a doctor. You don’t have anyone watching what it’s doing to you.”

Charli flinched at the word watching, as if it sounded like surveillance instead of care.

I understood that too well. I’d watched her in Wardrobe: how she responded to scrutiny like a person expecting to be judged.

Lauren looked at me again.

“She said she bought it online,” Lauren said.

“Yes,” I replied. “Scripted medication. No oversight. No labs. It’s not acceptable.”

Lauren inhaled through her nose, slow. Her jaw tightened.

Then she did something that made my chest tighten again.

She turned to Charli and said, very simply:

“Do you have more?”

Charli’s eyes widened. “No— I—” She hesitated. That hesitation was an answer.

Lauren’s face didn’t change.

Charli rushed, frantic. “No, I mean— I have— there’s— I have a second bottle, but it’s— it’s not— it’s for later—”

Lauren held up her hand. A stop sign made of flesh.

“Where,” she asked.

Charli’s breathing went shallow. Her eyes darted toward the hallway.

“In my room,” she whispered. “In the drawer.”

Lauren’s hand tightened on Charli’s shoulder—not painful, just firm.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to get it.”

Charli panicked. “Mum, please—”

Lauren’s voice stayed flat. “Charli.”

The name landed like a hand closing around a moving wrist.

Charli went still.

I watched her obey, and something in me loosened a fraction. Not comfort.

Recognition.

Lauren was the adult too. A real one. A woman who could hold a line without cruelty.

Lauren moved toward the hallway.

Charli looked at me, helpless.

The look did something sharp inside my ribs. It felt like being chosen in a way I hadn’t consented to. Like suddenly I was part of her definition of safety.

I kept my face steady.

“I’m coming,” I said, and followed.

---

Charli’s room was neat in that anxious way: things arranged, not lived in. The bed made too tightly. Clothes folded too carefully. The kind of order that came from fear of being criticised rather than pleasure in calm.

Lauren went straight to the dresser.

“Which drawer?” she asked.

Charli pointed without speaking.

Lauren opened it.

There it was: another white bottle, less empty than the first. A printed label that tried to make a dangerous thing look routine.

Lauren picked it up, held it a moment, and then—without looking at Charli—she slid it into her pocket.

Charli made a small sound that wasn’t quite a sob. More like a protest caught in the throat.

Lauren turned and faced her then.

“Listen to me,” she said. “You are not in trouble for wanting what you want.”

Charli blinked hard.

“You are in trouble,” Lauren continued, “for risking your body in secret.”

Charli’s mouth trembled. “I didn’t want it to stop.”

Lauren’s eyes softened, just slightly, and in that softness I saw the mother’s grief: the knowledge that her child had felt alone enough to do this.

Lauren’s voice lowered.

“Nothing that’s real,” she said, “requires you to hurt yourself to keep it.”

Charli crumpled on the edge of the bed, towel still clutched to her chest like a child. Her shoulders shook once.

I had to force my hands to stay at my sides.

Every instinct in me wanted to step forward, to touch her hair, to tuck it behind her ear, to do something small and intimate that would say: I see you. I’ve seen you. I won’t unsee you.

I did nothing.

Not because I didn’t want to.

Because I wanted it too much.

Lauren glanced at me then—not accusing, not territorial. Something else.

Awareness.

She could see it. Or she could see enough to suspect.

I held her gaze, steady, and gave her something she could work with: the practical.

“We need a plan for tomorrow,” I said. “Not vague. Not emotional. A list.”

Lauren nodded once, grateful for the handrail.

“Yes,” she said. “A list.”

Charli looked up, confused, watery-eyed. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I said, and my voice softened without losing its edge. “Tomorrow.”

She flinched as if the word meant confiscation forever.

Lauren sat on the bed beside her—not quite touching, but close enough to be felt.

“Tomorrow,” Lauren said, “we make appointments.”

Charli swallowed. “What if they—”

“They won’t,” Lauren said sharply, then corrected herself into something calmer. “And if someone does, we change doctors. We’re not begging for dignity.”

Charli stared at her, stunned by the certainty.

I felt another flicker in me—admiration, yes, but also that jealous responsibility again.

Because it was so easy, watching Lauren, to imagine how Charli’s loyalty could split: mother on one side, me on the other. Two women offering structure. Two women claiming outcome.

Charli’s gaze did the thing again—back and forth between us.

I could almost see the question behind her eyes:

Which one do I belong to?

My throat tightened.

I swallowed it.

For now.

“We’ll start with your GP,” I said, and kept it simple. “Bloodwork. Baselines. Then referrals to someone who’s actually experienced. We don’t do this on vibes.”

Charli’s lips trembled, but her shoulders eased a fraction at the word baselines—as if numbers could soothe her, as if structure could be a substitute for fear.

Lauren nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “And until then?”

I didn’t look at Charli when I answered. I looked at Lauren. Adult to adult.

“Until then,” I said, “no more doses. We keep her safe. We watch for symptoms. We don’t guess.”

Charli’s face tightened.

Lauren’s hand found Charli’s forearm and squeezed.

“It’s not forever,” Lauren said to her. “It’s ‘until we can do it right.’”

Charli’s eyes filled again.

“But it was making the… the horrible feeling stop,” she whispered.

I felt that in my chest like a bruise. Because I understood something now that I hadn’t admitted to myself before:

Her happiness wasn’t a mood.

It was relief.

It was safety.

It was the easing of a long, private terror.

I stepped closer.

Not to touch her.

Just to be nearer.

“Charli,” I said, and my voice was slow. Careful. “I’m not taking your future away.”

She looked at me, searching.

“I’m taking danger away,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

Her mouth trembled. She nodded, but it was the nod of a person who didn’t fully believe life would keep its promises.

Lauren stood.

“I’m staying tonight,” she said, not asking.

Charli’s eyes widened. “Mum—”

“Not negotiable,” Lauren said, and then—softening, just a little—“I’m not leaving you alone with your fear.”

Charli’s shoulders shook again, and this time she let the tears come.

Lauren turned toward me.

“Thank you,” she said again. This time it had more weight.

I nodded.

And then, because honesty matters between women, because it’s the only thing that keeps power clean, I said:

“I care about her,” I said quietly. “More than I realised.”

Lauren’s eyes stayed on mine.

She didn’t blink. She didn’t flinch.

She simply nodded, once—accepting the truth as data, not as drama.

“Good,” she said. “Then help me do this properly.”

It should have felt like relief.

Instead, the word help slid under my ribs and hooked itself there.

Because help, in this context, meant a future that included me.

A future that could ask more of me than I’d planned to give.

Charli looked between us again, tears on her cheeks, hair damp, face open and frightened.

And I felt that jealous responsibility rise again—quiet, fierce.

I swallowed it.

For now.

Tomorrow would give me lists and appointments and numbers to hold onto.

Tonight, I would hold my distance like a discipline.

And I would learn how long I could keep doing it.

---

Notes26-01-22e-orig

Emily Original

[26-01-22]

✨ The Arrival ✨

Yes — there’s absolutely enough material for another Scene, and it’s the right place to do it. This “Lauren arrives” beat is where the story can quietly declare: Celeste is no longer an observer. She is now implicated — emotionally, ethically, and practically.

Below is a new scene that follows directly from Scene 30. I’ve kept it Celeste POV, kept her in command, and let the internal conflict show in small, controlled flashes: a swallow, a withheld touch, a moment of possessive responsibility that she converts into structure.

---

Scene 31 — “The Arrival” (Celeste POV)

Lauren arrived the way she did everything lately: fast, contained, already braced.

I heard her before I saw her—the firm knock that didn’t ask permission, the quick shift of keys, the familiar scrape of the latch. No hesitation. No dawdle at the threshold. She came in as if the doorway itself was something she could correct by force of will.

When she stepped into the kitchen, her eyes went to the table first.

The bottle sat where I’d left it, plain and ugly in the centre of the wood, like a fact that refused to become a conversation.

Then her eyes went to Charli.

Charli had been standing in the same spot for too long, towel gathered at her chest like a shield, damp hair still uncombed, face raw from fear. She looked up when Lauren entered, and something in her expression rearranged itself—not relief exactly, not comfort.

More like recognition.

This is the person who can actually undo me.

Lauren crossed the room in three steps and stopped in front of her daughter.

For a second, she didn’t touch her.

That restraint—the pause before contact—was so precise it made my throat tighten. It was the kind of restraint you learned the hard way: the knowledge that sometimes touch feels like a verdict.

Then Lauren did what mothers do when they cannot afford theatre.

She cupped Charli’s cheek with her palm, thumb sliding once, gentle.

“You okay?” she asked. The words were soft. The question was not.

Charli’s mouth trembled. “I’m—” she started, then broke. “I didn’t—”

Lauren turned her head, just enough to look at me. Not accusing. Not grateful. Measuring.

I held her gaze.

“She’s safe,” I said. “She’s not in danger right now. But it can’t continue.”

Lauren’s hand stayed on Charli’s face. She didn’t stop touching her even while she processed the rest. That told me more than any sentence could have: whatever she was feeling, she wasn’t going to let her daughter be alone inside it.

Charli looked between us. Mother and me. Two women, two kinds of authority.

And there it was—the smallest, sharpest flicker in me.

Not anger. Not rivalry.

Something more primitive than either.

Mine.

Not in the possessive sense a man would claim, or a lover would claim, but in the sense that Wardrobe had trained me to feel about vulnerable things under my care: a duty that turned into ownership of outcome. Responsibility so fierce it bordered on jealousy.

I swallowed it before it could touch my face.

I did not want Charli to see it. I did not want Lauren to see it.

I wanted to be the adult.

Lauren’s gaze moved to the bottle. She didn’t pick it up. She didn’t read it again. She didn’t ask for more proof.

She simply nodded, once, and the nod was almost invisible—but it was a decision.

“How long?” she asked Charli.

Charli flinched. Her eyes slid away. “Almost four months.”

Lauren’s hand dropped from Charli’s cheek to her shoulder, firmer now. Anchoring.

“Four months,” Lauren repeated quietly, as if saying the number out loud would make it manageable.

Charli started to shake her head, quick, panicked. “Mum, I— I wasn’t— I didn’t do it because—”

Lauren cut in, not loud, but clean.

“Don’t explain it to me like I’m going to misunderstand,” she said. “I’m your mother. I know why you did it.”

Charli’s breath hitched. Something like shame flared and then collapsed.

Lauren kept her hand on her shoulder.

Then Lauren looked at me again.

“You took it off her,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m holding it.”

Lauren’s face did something complicated—relief mixed with fear, as if she didn’t want to admit how grateful she was that someone else had been present for the first collision.

“Thank you,” she said, very quietly.

I nodded once. I didn’t soften. Not yet. Softness can become permission to fall apart, and I needed them both upright.

Charli’s eyes were bright. She looked between us again, like she couldn’t decide which failure she was meant to confess to first.

Lauren’s voice changed then, fractionally. Not gentler. More controlled.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to do this properly.”

Charli blinked. The phrase hit her like a threat.

Lauren glanced at the bottle again and then back to Charli.

“Not ‘properly’ as punishment,” she said. “Properly as in: safe.”

Charli swallowed. “It was safe. I— I checked—”

“No,” Lauren said. Still not loud. “You read. You didn’t check. You don’t have bloodwork. You don’t have a doctor. You don’t have anyone watching what it’s doing to you.”

Charli flinched at the word watching, as if it sounded like surveillance instead of care.

I understood that too well. I’d watched her in Wardrobe: how she responded to scrutiny like a person expecting to be judged.

Lauren looked at me again.

“She said she bought it online,” Lauren said.

“Yes,” I replied. “Scripted medication. No oversight. No labs. It’s not acceptable.”

Lauren inhaled through her nose, slow. Her jaw tightened.

Then she did something that made my chest tighten again.

She turned to Charli and said, very simply:

“Do you have more?”

Charli’s eyes widened. “No— I—” She hesitated. That hesitation was an answer.

Lauren’s face didn’t change.

Charli rushed, frantic. “No, I mean— I have— there’s— I have a second bottle, but it’s— it’s not— it’s for later—”

Lauren held up her hand. A stop sign made of flesh.

“Where,” she asked.

Charli’s breathing went shallow. Her eyes darted toward the hallway.

“In my room,” she whispered. “In the drawer.”

Lauren’s hand tightened on Charli’s shoulder—not painful, just firm.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to get it.”

Charli panicked. “Mum, please—”

Lauren’s voice stayed flat. “Charli.”

The name landed like a hand closing around a moving wrist.

Charli went still.

I watched her obey, and something in me loosened a fraction. Not comfort.

Recognition.

Lauren was the adult too. A real one. A woman who could hold a line without cruelty.

Lauren moved toward the hallway.

Charli looked at me, helpless.

The look did something sharp inside my ribs. It felt like being chosen in a way I hadn’t consented to. Like suddenly I was part of her definition of safety.

I kept my face steady.

“I’m coming,” I said, and followed.

---

Charli’s room was neat in that anxious way: things arranged, not lived in. The bed made too tightly. Clothes folded too carefully. The kind of order that came from fear of being criticised rather than pleasure in calm.

Lauren went straight to the dresser.

“Which drawer?” she asked.

Charli pointed without speaking.

Lauren opened it.

There it was: another white bottle, less empty than the first. A printed label that tried to make a dangerous thing look routine.

Lauren picked it up, held it a moment, and then—without looking at Charli—she slid it into her pocket.

Charli made a small sound that wasn’t quite a sob. More like a protest caught in the throat.

Lauren turned and faced her then.

“Listen to me,” she said. “You are not in trouble for wanting what you want.”

Charli blinked hard.

“You are in trouble,” Lauren continued, “for risking your body in secret.”

Charli’s mouth trembled. “I didn’t want it to stop.”

Lauren’s eyes softened, just slightly, and in that softness I saw the mother’s grief: the knowledge that her child had felt alone enough to do this.

Lauren’s voice lowered.

“Nothing that’s real,” she said, “requires you to hurt yourself to keep it.”

Charli crumpled on the edge of the bed, towel still clutched to her chest like a child. Her shoulders shook once.

I had to force my hands to stay at my sides.

Every instinct in me wanted to step forward, to touch her hair, to tuck it behind her ear, to do something small and intimate that would say: I see you. I’ve seen you. I won’t unsee you.

I did nothing.

Not because I didn’t want to.

Because I wanted it too much.

Lauren glanced at me then—not accusing, not territorial. Something else.

Awareness.

She could see it. Or she could see enough to suspect.

I held her gaze, steady, and gave her something she could work with: the practical.

“We need a plan for tomorrow,” I said. “Not vague. Not emotional. A list.”

Lauren nodded once, grateful for the handrail.

“Yes,” she said. “A list.”

Charli looked up, confused, watery-eyed. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I said, and my voice softened without losing its edge. “Tomorrow.”

She flinched as if the word meant confiscation forever.

Lauren sat on the bed beside her—not quite touching, but close enough to be felt.

“Tomorrow,” Lauren said, “we make appointments.”

Charli swallowed. “What if they—”

“They won’t,” Lauren said sharply, then corrected herself into something calmer. “And if someone does, we change doctors. We’re not begging for dignity.”

Charli stared at her, stunned by the certainty.

I felt another flicker in me—admiration, yes, but also that jealous responsibility again.

Because it was so easy, watching Lauren, to imagine how Charli’s loyalty could split: mother on one side, me on the other. Two women offering structure. Two women claiming outcome.

Charli’s gaze did the thing again—back and forth between us.

I could almost see the question behind her eyes:

Which one do I belong to?

My throat tightened.

I swallowed it.

For now.

“We’ll start with your GP,” I said, and kept it simple. “Bloodwork. Baselines. Then referrals to someone who’s actually experienced. We don’t do this on vibes.”

Charli’s lips trembled, but her shoulders eased a fraction at the word baselines—as if numbers could soothe her, as if structure could be a substitute for fear.

Lauren nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “And until then?”

I didn’t look at Charli when I answered. I looked at Lauren. Adult to adult.

“Until then,” I said, “no more doses. We keep her safe. We watch for symptoms. We don’t guess.”

Charli’s face tightened.

Lauren’s hand found Charli’s forearm and squeezed.

“It’s not forever,” Lauren said to her. “It’s ‘until we can do it right.’”

Charli’s eyes filled again.

“But it was making the… the horrible feeling stop,” she whispered.

I felt that in my chest like a bruise. Because I understood something now that I hadn’t admitted to myself before:

Her happiness wasn’t a mood.

It was relief.

It was safety.

It was the easing of a long, private terror.

I stepped closer.

Not to touch her.

Just to be nearer.

“Charli,” I said, and my voice was slow. Careful. “I’m not taking your future away.”

She looked at me, searching.

“I’m taking danger away,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

Her mouth trembled. She nodded, but it was the nod of a person who didn’t fully believe life would keep its promises.

Lauren stood.

“I’m staying tonight,” she said, not asking.

Charli’s eyes widened. “Mum—”

“Not negotiable,” Lauren said, and then—softening, just a little—“I’m not leaving you alone with your fear.”

Charli’s shoulders shook again, and this time she let the tears come.

Lauren turned toward me.

“Thank you,” she said again. This time it had more weight.

I nodded.

And then, because honesty matters between women, because it’s the only thing that keeps power clean, I said:

“I care about her,” I said quietly. “More than I realised.”

Lauren’s eyes stayed on mine.

She didn’t blink. She didn’t flinch.

She simply nodded, once—accepting the truth as data, not as drama.

“Good,” she said. “Then help me do this properly.”

It should have felt like relief.

Instead, the word help slid under my ribs and hooked itself there.

Because help, in this context, meant a future that included me.

A future that could ask more of me than I’d planned to give.

Charli looked between us again, tears on her cheeks, hair damp, face open and frightened.

And I felt that jealous responsibility rise again—quiet, fierce.

I swallowed it.

For now.

Tomorrow would give me lists and appointments and numbers to hold onto.

Tonight, I would hold my distance like a discipline.

And I would learn how long I could keep doing it.

---

If you like this, the next scene practically writes itself: the “boring appointments” montage as a kind of quiet courtship. Celeste accompanies them at least once, “only for support,” and realises she’s watching Charli in waiting rooms the way you watch someone you love without permission to say so. Lauren notices. Says nothing. Yet. 😌💛

---

Edited Take

Emily's

[No Links]

Scene 31 — “The Arrival” (Celeste POV)

Lauren arrived the way she did everything lately: fast, contained, already braced.

I heard her before I saw her—the firm knock that didn’t ask permission, the quick shift of keys, the familiar scrape of the latch. No hesitation. No dawdle at the threshold. She came in as if the doorway itself was something she could correct by force of will.

When she stepped into the kitchen, her eyes went briefly to me, then quickly to Charli.

Charli had been sitting in the same spot for too long, towel gripped like a security blanket, damp hair still uncombed, face raw from crying. She looked up when Lauren entered, and something in her expression rearranged itself—not relief exactly, not comfort.

More like recognition.

This is the person who can actually undo me.

Lauren crossed the room in three steps and stopped in front of her daughter.

For a second, she didn’t touch her.

That restraint—the pause before contact—was so precise it made my throat tighten. It was the kind of restraint you learned the hard way: the knowledge that sometimes touch feels like a verdict.

Then Lauren did what mothers do when they cannot afford theatre.

She cupped Charli’s cheek with her palm, thumb sliding once, gentle.

“You okay?” she asked. The words were soft. The question was not.

Charli’s mouth trembled. “I’m—” she started, then broke. “I didn’t—”

Lauren turned her head, just enough to look at me. Not accusing. Not grateful. Measuring.

I held her gaze.

“She’s safe,” I said. “She’s not in danger right now. But it can’t continue.”

Lauren’s hand stayed on Charli’s face. She didn’t stop touching her even while she processed the rest. That told me more than any sentence could have: whatever she was feeling, she wasn’t going to let her daughter be alone inside it.

Charli looked between us. Mother and me. Two women, two kinds of authority.

And there it was—the smallest, sharpest flicker in me.

Not anger. Not rivalry.

Something more primitive than either.

Mine.

Not in the possessive sense a man would claim, or a lover would claim, but in the sense that Wardrobe had trained me to feel about vulnerable things under my care: a duty that turned into ownership of outcome. Responsibility so fierce it bordered on jealousy.

I swallowed it before it could touch my face.

I did not want Charli to see it. I did not want Lauren to see it.

I wanted to be the adult.

Lauren’s gaze moved to the bottle. She didn’t pick it up. She didn’t read it again. She didn’t ask for more proof.

She simply nodded, once, and the nod was almost invisible—but it was a decision.

“How long?” she asked Charli.

Charli flinched. Her eyes slid away. “Almost four months.”

Lauren’s hand dropped from Charli’s cheek to her shoulder, firmer now. Anchoring.

“Four months,” Lauren repeated quietly, as if saying the number out loud would make it manageable.

Charli started to shake her head, quick, panicked. “Mum, I— I wasn’t— I didn’t do it because—”

Lauren cut in, not loud, but clean.

“Don’t explain it to me like I’m going to misunderstand,” she said. “I’m your mother. I know why you did it.”

Charli’s breath hitched. Something like shame flared and then collapsed.

Lauren kept her hand on her shoulder.

Then Lauren looked at me again.

“You took it off her,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m holding it.”

Lauren’s face did something complicated—relief mixed with fear, as if she didn’t want to admit how grateful she was that someone else had been present for the first collision.

“Thank you,” she said, very quietly.

I nodded once. I didn’t soften. Not yet. Softness can become permission to fall apart, and I needed them both upright.

Charli’s eyes were bright. She looked between us again, like she couldn’t decide which failure she was meant to confess to first.

Lauren’s voice changed then, fractionally. Not gentler. More controlled.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to do this properly.”

Charli blinked. The phrase hit her like a threat.

Lauren glanced at the bottle again and then back to Charli.

“Not ‘properly’ as punishment,” she said. “Properly as in: safe.”

Charli swallowed. “It was safe. I— I checked—”

“No,” Lauren said. Still not loud. “You read. You didn’t check. You don’t have bloodwork. You don’t have a doctor. You don’t have anyone watching what it’s doing to you.”

Charli flinched at the word watching, as if it sounded like surveillance instead of care.

I understood that too well. I’d watched her in Wardrobe: how she responded to scrutiny like a person expecting to be judged.

Lauren looked at me again.

“She said she bought it online,” Lauren said.

“Yes,” I replied. “Scripted medication. No oversight. No labs. It’s not acceptable.”

Lauren inhaled through her nose, slow. Her jaw tightened.

Then she did something that made my chest tighten again.

She turned to Charli and said, very simply:

“Do you have more?”

Charli’s eyes widened. “No— I—” She hesitated. That hesitation was an answer.

Lauren’s face didn’t change.

Charli rushed, frantic. “No, I mean— I have— there’s— I have a second bottle, but it’s— it’s not— it’s for later—”

Lauren held up her hand. A stop sign made of flesh.

“Where,” she asked.

Charli’s breathing went shallow. Her eyes darted toward the hallway.

“In my room,” she whispered. “In the drawer.”

Lauren’s hand tightened on Charli’s shoulder—not painful, just firm.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to get it.”

Charli panicked. “Mum, please—”

Lauren’s voice stayed flat. “Charli.”

The name landed like a hand closing around a moving wrist.

Charli went still.

I watched her obey, and something in me loosened a fraction. Not comfort.

Recognition.

Lauren was the adult too. A real one. A woman who could hold a line without cruelty.

Lauren moved toward the hallway.

Charli looked at me, helpless.

The look did something sharp inside my ribs. It felt like being chosen in a way I hadn’t consented to. Like suddenly I was part of her definition of safety.

I kept my face steady.

“I’m coming,” I said, and followed.

---

Charli’s room was neat in that anxious way: things arranged, not lived in. The bed made too tightly. Clothes folded too carefully. The kind of order that came from fear of being criticised rather than pleasure in calm.

Lauren went straight to the dresser.

“Which drawer?” she asked.

Charli pointed without speaking.

Lauren opened it.

There it was: another white bottle, less empty than the first. A printed label that tried to make a dangerous thing look routine.

Lauren picked it up, held it a moment, and then—without looking at Charli—she slid it into her pocket.

Charli made a small sound that wasn’t quite a sob. More like a protest caught in the throat.

Lauren turned and faced her then.

“Listen to me,” she said. “You are not in trouble for wanting what you want.”

Charli blinked hard.

“You are in trouble,” Lauren continued, “for risking your body in secret.”

Charli’s mouth trembled. “I didn’t want it to stop.”

Lauren’s eyes softened, just slightly, and in that softness I saw the mother’s grief: the knowledge that her child had felt alone enough to do this.

Lauren’s voice lowered.

“Nothing that’s real,” she said, “requires you to hurt yourself to keep it.”

Charli crumpled on the edge of the bed, towel still clutched to her chest like a child. Her shoulders shook once.

I had to force my hands to stay at my sides.

Every instinct in me wanted to step forward, to touch her hair, to tuck it behind her ear, to do something small and intimate that would say: I see you. I’ve seen you. I won’t unsee you.

I did nothing.

Not because I didn’t want to.

Because I wanted it too much.

Lauren glanced at me then—not accusing, not territorial. Something else.

Awareness.

She could see it. Or she could see enough to suspect.

I held her gaze, steady, and gave her something she could work with: the practical.

“We need a plan for tomorrow,” I said. “Not vague. Not emotional. A list.”

Lauren nodded once, grateful for the handrail.

“Yes,” she said. “A list.”

Charli looked up, confused, watery-eyed. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I said, and my voice softened without losing its edge. “Tomorrow.”

She flinched as if the word meant confiscation forever.

Lauren sat on the bed beside her—not quite touching, but close enough to be felt.

“Tomorrow,” Lauren said, “we make appointments.”

Charli swallowed. “What if they—”

“They won’t,” Lauren said sharply, then corrected herself into something calmer. “And if someone does, we change doctors. We’re not begging for dignity.”

Charli stared at her, stunned by the certainty.

I felt another flicker in me—admiration, yes, but also that jealous responsibility again.

Because it was so easy, watching Lauren, to imagine how Charli’s loyalty could split: mother on one side, me on the other. Two women offering structure. Two women claiming outcome.

Charli’s gaze did the thing again—back and forth between us.

I could almost see the question behind her eyes:

Which one do I belong to?

My throat tightened.

I swallowed it.

For now.

“We’ll start with your GP,” I said, and kept it simple. “Bloodwork. Baselines. Then referrals to someone who’s actually experienced. We don’t do this on vibes.”

Charli’s lips trembled, but her shoulders eased a fraction at the word baselines—as if numbers could soothe her, as if structure could be a substitute for fear.

Lauren nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “And until then?”

I didn’t look at Charli when I answered. I looked at Lauren. Adult to adult.

“Until then,” I said, “no more doses. We keep her safe. We watch for symptoms. We don’t guess.”

Charli’s face tightened.

Lauren’s hand found Charli’s forearm and squeezed.

“It’s not forever,” Lauren said to her. “It’s ‘until we can do it right.’”

Charli’s eyes filled again.

“But it was making the… the horrible feeling stop,” she whispered.

I felt that in my chest like a bruise. Because I understood something now that I hadn’t admitted to myself before:

Her happiness wasn’t a mood.

It was relief.

It was safety.

It was the easing of a long, private terror.

I stepped closer.

Not to touch her.

Just to be nearer.

“Charli,” I said, and my voice was slow. Careful. “I’m not taking your future away.”

She looked at me, searching.

“I’m taking danger away,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

Her mouth trembled. She nodded, but it was the nod of a person who didn’t fully believe life would keep its promises.

Lauren stood.

“I’m staying tonight,” she said, not asking.

Charli’s eyes widened. “Mum—”

“Not negotiable,” Lauren said, and then—softening, just a little—“I’m not leaving you alone with your fear.”

Charli’s shoulders shook again, and this time she let the tears come.

Lauren turned toward me.

“Thank you,” she said again. This time it had more weight.

I nodded.

And then, because honesty matters between women, because it’s the only thing that keeps power clean, I said:

“I care about her,” I said quietly. “More than I realised.”

Lauren’s eyes stayed on mine.

She didn’t blink. She didn’t flinch.

She simply nodded, once—accepting the truth as data, not as drama.

“Good,” she said. “Then help me do this properly.”

It should have felt like relief.

Instead, the word help slid under my ribs and hooked itself there.

Because help, in this context, meant a future that included me.

A future that could ask more of me than I’d planned to give.

Charli looked between us again, tears on her cheeks, hair damp, face open and frightened.

And I felt that jealous responsibility rise again—quiet, fierce.

I swallowed it.

For now.

Tomorrow would give me lists and appointments and numbers to hold onto.

Tonight, I would hold my distance like a discipline.

And I would learn how long I could keep doing it.

---

Notes26-01-22-bis

Fortuity

[26-01-22]

Scene 31 — “Fortuity” (Lauren POV)

I drove over on autopilot.

Not because I wasn’t thinking—because thinking was useless. Thinking was what you did after you had your child in front of you, breathing, intact, not bleeding from a mistake you couldn’t reverse.

My hands were steady on the wheel. My chest was not.

At every red light I checked my phone again, as if the words might change: Spironolactone. Online. Months.

The kind of sentence that didn’t belong in your life until it did.

When I got to Celeste’s door, I didn’t knock politely. I knocked like a mother.

She opened it immediately.

Celeste looked calm. Not casual—calm like someone holding a line on purpose. Her hair was tied back. Her face was composed, eyes clear.

In her kitchen, Charli stood with a towel clutched to her chest like armour. Damp hair. Bare feet. A familiar, hated shape of fear: the old braced posture, the waiting-for-punishment posture.

And then I saw the bottle on the table.

White plastic. Printed label.

My stomach dropped in a way that felt physical, like my organs were trying to get out.

I crossed the room and stopped in front of my daughter.

For a second I didn’t touch her. I needed to see her eyes. I needed to know whether she was present, whether she was thinking, whether she was safe enough to be reached.

Charli looked at me like she’d been holding her breath for days and didn’t know whether I’d come to rescue her or finish her.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

The words came out soft. The meaning did not.

Charli’s mouth trembled. “I’m— I didn’t—”

Her voice broke. That alone told me what I needed to know: she hadn’t done this because she was reckless. She’d done it because she was terrified.

I lifted my hand and cupped her cheek. A single thumb swipe, gentle.

“I’m here,” I said, and felt her lean into it—only a fraction, only for a heartbeat—before she remembered she wasn’t allowed to need.

I looked at Celeste then.

Not because I doubted her. Because she’d called me. Because she’d held this until I could get here. Because I needed the facts in the cleanest form possible.

“She’s safe,” Celeste said before I asked. “Right now. But this can’t continue.”

Good.

No drama. No soothing. No excuses. Just the truth.

Celeste’s tone did something else too—it carried the shape of controlled fear. Not panic. Not performative concern.

Something deeper. Something disciplined.

I registered it and stored it away.

“How long?” I asked Charli.

Charli flinched. Looked down. “Almost four months.”

Four months.

I repeated it in my head without letting it touch my face. Four months of unmonitored medication. Four months of her body being altered by a decision she had no right to bear alone.

And four months of her believing she had to.

I kept my palm on her cheek.

“You have more?” I asked.

Her hesitation was too long.

“Yes,” she whispered. “In my drawer.”

“Okay,” I said.

Not “why.” Not “how could you.” Not yet.

“Show me.”

Charli’s eyes snapped to Celeste, not to me.

That told me something too.

Not betrayal. Not preference. Something else: orientation. Like Charli’s compass had learned a new north and didn’t know what to do about it.

Celeste moved first.

“I’m coming,” she said.

I watched her as she followed us down the hall: controlled posture, steady breath, hands not reaching. She was doing the thing women do when they want to touch someone and refuse to make it about that.

It was restraint.

It was also effort.

In Charli’s room the second bottle was exactly where it would be: hidden, but not well. A girl’s hiding. Not criminal, not cunning—just desperate.

I took it, turned it in my hand, read the label like reading could change what it said.

Then I slipped it into my pocket.

Charli made a sound—small, strangled. Like an animal losing its last piece of cover.

“Mum—”

I held up one hand.

“Charli.”

Her name, clean. Not loud.

She stopped.

I turned fully toward her.

“Listen to me,” I said. “You are not in trouble for wanting what you want.”

Her eyes flickered up, disbelieving.

“You are in trouble,” I continued, “for risking your body in secret.”

Tears started, fast and humiliating, and she wiped them as if she could erase them before anyone saw.

My throat tightened. I didn’t allow it to turn into softness that would blur the line. I kept my voice firm, because firm is kinder than unstable.

“I need you to understand something,” I said. “Nothing real requires you to hurt yourself to keep it.”

Charli’s shoulders folded. She sat on the bed’s edge like she couldn’t hold herself up anymore.

Beside her, Celeste stood still.

I glanced at Celeste again and—there it was.

Not pity.

Not professional concern.

A kind of tenderness that had teeth.

She wasn’t looking at Charli as a “case.” She was looking at her as if Charli mattered in a way that made the air more dangerous.

Celeste caught my eye.

She didn’t look away.

She didn’t soften into apology either.

She simply offered the practical, because practical is what you offer when your feelings are too big to trust.

“We need a plan for tomorrow,” she said. “A list.”

I nodded once.

Yes. A list. A structure. Something that could hold.

Charli looked between us again, mother and Celeste, as if she didn’t know which authority was going to be more painful.

And in that look I saw it: Charli wasn’t trying to manipulate anyone. She was trying to find out where she belonged.

Celeste’s face didn’t change, but I saw the tiny tell in her throat—a swallow, controlled, like she’d had to push something down.

Jealousy? No.

Not in the petty sense.

In the responsible sense.

Like she’d already started to feel accountable for my child’s outcome.

I didn’t resent it.

I felt—briefly, shockingly—relief.

Because if my daughter was going to attach to someone, if she was going to fall into a gravity well, then this was the kind of woman you wanted at the centre of it.

A woman with standards. A woman who didn’t do drama. A woman who didn’t blur boundaries for her own comfort.

And Charli… Charli would be fulfilled with a woman like that. Not indulged—anchored. Seen.

I turned back to Charli.

“Tomorrow,” I said, “we make appointments.”

Charli blinked, frightened. “What if they—”

“They won’t,” I snapped, then corrected my tone before it became sharp enough to cut her. “And if someone does, we change doctors. We’re not begging for dignity.”

Celeste made a quiet sound of agreement—barely audible. Not possessive. Not claiming. Simply aligned.

“We start with bloodwork,” Celeste said. “Baselines. Then referral. Someone experienced.”

I nodded again.

“And until then,” I added, “no more doses.”

Charli’s face tightened.

“It was making the horrible feeling stop,” she whispered.

My heart pinched. I didn’t let it turn my voice watery.

“I know,” I said. “That doesn’t make it safe.”

Charli looked at Celeste then, searching.

Celeste stepped closer—not close enough to touch, but close enough to be felt.

“I’m not taking your future away,” Celeste said, slow and deliberate. “I’m taking danger away. There’s a difference.”

Charli’s mouth trembled. She nodded, but it was a fragile nod.

I looked at Celeste again.

I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t seen it now: the way Celeste had placed herself between my child and a cliff without making it a show. The way she’d kept her hands to herself like a discipline. The way she’d spoken with the calm authority of someone who didn’t need to win, only to keep Charli alive.

It wasn’t a project.

If it had ever started as observation, it wasn’t that anymore.

This ran deeper.

And the beautiful, almost ridiculous part was: I didn’t think Celeste had intended it. I didn’t think she’d set out to become anything to my child beyond a safe adult, a competent woman at work, a leader.

This—whatever this was—had happened because Charli had been seen.

Because she’d been allowed to belong.

Because she’d been guided, not mocked. Directed, not handled.

Fortuity.

The rare kind.

I stayed the mother. I stayed the adult.

But inside, something settled into place with a quiet certainty that surprised me.

If Charli was going to have a wife one day—if she was going to have a partner who could hold her steady without swallowing her whole—I could not imagine a better woman than this one.

I met Celeste’s eyes.

“Thank you,” I said again, and this time it meant more than gratitude. It meant trust.

Celeste nodded once.

Then, because women can be honest without making it melodrama, I saw Celeste’s jaw tighten as if she’d decided not to say something.

I said it for her, clean and simple—mother to adult.

“She’s going to be okay,” I told her. Not a question. A directive. “But we do it properly.”

Celeste’s shoulders eased by a fraction, as if she’d been holding more fear than she’d allowed herself to admit.

“Yes,” she said. “Properly.”

Charli looked between us again.

Two women, two kinds of safety.

And for the first time since I’d walked in, I saw her breathe as if she believed she might be allowed to live.

---

Notes26-01-22Coda

The List

Coda — “The List” (Lauren POV)

Celeste made tea without asking.

Not as hospitality, exactly—more like a reset. A small act that said: we are still in a world with kettles and mugs and ordinary choices. A world where something could be handled.

Charli sat at the kitchen table with her towel finally dropped from her chest to her lap, damp hair combed back with an imperfect middle part that made her look younger than she was. She kept her shoulders drawn in, the way she did when she didn’t trust herself to be seen.

Celeste moved around her quietly. Not hovering. Not fussing. Just… present in a way that altered the room. She didn’t look at Charli as if she were fragile. She looked at her as if she were real.

I found paper and a pen.

If I didn’t write, I would think. If I thought, I would spiral.

A list was a handrail.

I wrote the heading in block letters.

TOMORROW

Then I drew a line under it so my brain would understand it was a boundary.

Celeste sat opposite me. Not beside. Opposite—adult to adult, as if she understood exactly what I needed: partnership, not consolation. Her phone was face-down on the table like a held tool.

Charli watched the pen move.

Her gaze flicked between us again, too quick to be polite. Mother. Celeste. As if she was trying to figure out which of us she was allowed to want most.

That look did something in my chest I didn’t have time to deal with.

I kept writing.

“Okay,” I said, not to be soothing but to be clear. “First thing: GP.”

Charli’s mouth tightened. “What if—”

“Then we change doctors,” I said. Flat. “We are not begging for dignity.”

Celeste made a small sound—not agreement exactly, but alignment. The quiet click of two women stepping into the same rhythm.

I wrote:

1. GP appointment (urgent)
2. Bloodwork / baselines
3. Referrals
4. No more doses until supervised
5. Watch symptoms

Charli stared at the page as if the ink could sentence her.

Celeste spoke without lifting her voice.

“We don’t have to decide your whole future tomorrow,” she said. “We decide safety. One step.”

Charli’s eyes darted up to her, and for a moment her face did something painfully open—like the relief arrived before her pride could stop it.

I saw Celeste notice it too.

And I saw Celeste not reach for it.

Her hands stayed folded on the table.

That restraint—again—so deliberate it almost hurt to watch.

I wrote SAFETY in the margin and underlined it twice.

Then I took my phone and started making calls.

The first receptionist had the tone of someone who had heard everything and cared about none of it.

“Earliest is next week.”

“No,” I said, and let my voice go cold. “Not next week.”

A pause.

“I can put you in a cancellation slot tomorrow afternoon.”

“Yes,” I said. “Do that.”

I didn’t look at Charli while I spoke. I didn’t need her to feel like this was her audition. This was my job.

When I hung up, Charli looked at me as if she didn’t know whether to thank me or apologise.

I lifted my pen slightly, a stop sign.

“Don’t,” I said.

Her lips pressed together. She nodded.

Celeste slid the mug of tea across to her. She didn’t push it into her hands. She simply placed it within reach, as if assuming Charli would take what she needed.

Charli wrapped her hands around the mug like it was warmth she’d been denied.

I watched Celeste’s eyes follow the movement—briefly, carefully—then lift away as if she’d caught herself doing it.

A stupid, intimate detail landed in my mind: Celeste had put two sugars in that tea.

I hadn’t told her Charli took two sugars.

I didn’t comment.

I didn’t smile.

I wrote it down somewhere private inside myself, in the same place I stored all the other things mothers keep: signs and tells, danger and luck.

Fortuity, I thought again.

Rare.

Then I made the second call: the pharmacy.

Not to ask questions. To establish facts.

“What’s the label say?” I asked Charli, and she flinched at the word label as if labels were the whole problem.

Celeste’s voice cut in softly.

“Give it to your mum,” she said. “Let her read it.”

Not “show her.”

Give it to her.

Charli hesitated, then took the bottle from where Celeste had left it on the table and slid it toward me. Her fingers didn’t touch mine. They hovered, then retreated.

The pharmacy tech’s voice was brisk.

“Yes, that is prescription-only.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know.”

I didn’t say anything else. I didn’t need a lecture. I needed tomorrow and bloodwork and a clinician who understood the difference between harm control and judgement.

I ended the call.

The room went quiet again.

Charli’s breathing was loud in it, like she couldn’t quite remember how to make herself small enough.

Celeste spoke into the silence.

“Tonight,” she said, “you sleep.”

Charli blinked. “I—”

“Sleep,” Celeste repeated, gentle but final. “You can panic tomorrow if you want. Tonight you sleep.”

Charli’s throat moved.

She looked at me, asking permission the way she always had: am I allowed to comply?

“Yes,” I said. “Tonight you sleep.”

Charli’s shoulders loosened, a fraction. Not relief—permission.

I wrote:

1. Food / water / sleep

Then I drew a line.

The list was becoming a map.

---

We didn’t talk about love.

We didn’t talk about identity.

We didn’t talk about any of the words that could turn this into a debate instead of a plan.

We ate something small—toast and eggs, because the body needs fuel whether or not the mind approves. Charli ate like a person who wasn’t sure she deserved it, but she ate.

After, Celeste rinsed dishes with the same efficiency she had at work, then stopped herself and dried her hands as if she’d remembered she was in a home, not Wardrobe.

I saw her glance toward Charli—briefly—and then away, as if she’d looked too long.

It wasn’t shame.

It was discipline.

And I understood, with a clarity that surprised me, what I was watching.

Celeste cared.

Not vaguely. Not as a role. Not as an idea.

With roots.

The kind that make you dangerous to yourself if you’re not careful.

It wasn’t a plot. It didn’t have the shape of a scheme. Celeste didn’t carry herself like someone who’d engineered an outcome. If anything, she looked like someone who had stumbled into something that mattered and was trying to behave correctly inside it.

Which meant the care was clean.

And it meant something else too, something that made my chest ease in a way I hadn’t expected.

If my daughter was going to attach to someone—if she was going to let her future hinge on another person—then thank God it was a woman who treated safety like a non-negotiable, who treated competence like love in its most useful form.

A woman who would not indulge Charli’s fear.

A woman who would not punish her for it either.

Charli drifted toward the couch at some point, folding into herself with the exhausted obedience of someone whose panic had finally run out of fuel. Her head tipped back against the cushion, eyes closing.

Celeste watched her for one heartbeat too long.

Then she looked at me, as if asking, silently, what the rules were.

I answered with my own eyes.

Keep her safe. No drama. No hooks.

Celeste nodded once.

Understood.

I picked up my pen again and added one last thing to the list:

1. No secrecy

Then I hesitated.

And wrote beneath it:

1. No doing this alone

The words sat on the page like a promise I intended to keep.

---

When the apartment finally settled into real quiet, Celeste stood at the window for a moment, arms folded, as if she were holding herself together by posture alone.

I joined her, not close enough to be intimate, close enough to be allied.

“She’s terrified,” Celeste said softly, watching the dark outside.

“I know,” I replied. “So are you.”

Celeste’s breath caught. Not denial. Recognition.

She didn’t look at me.

“I’m fine,” she said, and it was the kind of lie women told when they were trying to stay useful.

I let it pass.

Then I gave her the truth that mattered.

“Thank you,” I said, quiet. “For calling me. For holding the line.”

Celeste nodded once.

“She’s not a problem,” she said, and I heard, underneath the control, the depth of it. “She’s a person.”

I looked at her then.

And I saw what my daughter had been looking at all night: not just competence, not just leadership.

A woman who could be a shelter without becoming a cage.

A woman who would set standards and call it care.

A woman my daughter could grow beside.

The word wife didn’t need to be spoken to be understood.

It settled into place anyway—naturally, almost annoyingly inevitable—as if the world had finally aligned something that had been crooked for too long.

Not because anyone plotted it.

Because sometimes, if you’re very lucky, the best outcome arrives as an accident of decency.

Celeste exhaled, slow.

“Tomorrow,” she said.

“Yes,” I replied. “Tomorrow.”

We stood there for another moment, watching the night.

And in the silence between us, I made my own private vow:

Whatever happened next—whatever doctors said, whatever paperwork came, whatever waiting rooms we had to endure—I would not let my daughter go back to being alone inside her fear.

And I would not be afraid of the good fortune standing beside me.

Not if it meant my child could finally live.

---

Notes26-01-25et

Emily's Tweak A

✨ How We Do Safe ✨

Scene 31 — “Lauren” (Celeste POV, past tense)

Lauren arrived the way she did everything lately: fast, contained, already braced.

I heard her before I saw her—the firm knock that didn’t ask permission, the quick shift of keys, the familiar scrape of the latch. No hesitation. No dawdle at the threshold. She came in as if the doorway itself was something she could correct by force of will.

When she stepped into the kitchen, her eyes went briefly to me, then quickly to Charli.

Charli had been sitting in the same spot for too long, towel gripped like a security blanket, damp hair still uncombed, face raw from crying. She looked up when Lauren entered, and something in her expression rearranged itself—not relief exactly, not comfort.

More like recognition.

This is the person who can actually undo me.

Lauren crossed the room in three steps and stopped in front of her daughter.

For a second, she didn’t touch her.

That restraint—the pause before contact—was so precise it made my throat tighten. It was the kind of restraint you learned the hard way: the knowledge that sometimes touch feels like a verdict.

Then Lauren did what mothers do when they cannot afford theatre.

She cupped Charli’s cheek with her palm, thumb sliding once, gentle.

“You okay?” she asked.

The words were soft. The question was not.

Charli’s mouth trembled. “I’m—” she started, then broke. “I didn’t—”

Lauren’s gaze flicked to me. Not accusing. Not grateful. Measuring.

I held it.

“She’s safe,” I said. “She’s not in immediate danger. But it can’t continue.”

Lauren didn’t take her hand away. She kept contact while she processed that sentence, as if touch was the only thing she trusted not to lie.

Charli looked between us. Mother and me. Two women, two kinds of authority.

And there it was—the smallest, sharpest flicker in me.

Not anger. Not rivalry.

Something more primal than either.

A responsibility so fierce it bordered on jealousy.

I swallowed it before it could touch my face.

Lauren’s eyes moved to the bottle on the counter.

She didn’t pick it up. She didn’t read it again. She didn’t ask for more proof.

She simply nodded once—almost invisible—and in that nod I felt the click of a decision.

“How long?” she asked Charli.

Charli flinched. Her eyes slid away. “Almost four months.”

“Four months,” Lauren repeated quietly, as if saying the number out loud would make it manageable.

Charli shook her head quickly. “Mum, I— I wasn’t— I didn’t do it because—”

Lauren cut in, not loud, but clean.

“Don’t explain it to me like I’m going to misunderstand,” she said. “I’m your mother. I—” Her voice snagged for a fraction. “I know you.”

The slip was small. The meaning wasn’t.

Her hand moved from Charli’s cheek to her shoulder, firmer now. Anchoring.

Then Lauren looked at me again.

“You took it,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” I said. “I secured it.”

Lauren’s face did something complicated—relief mixed with fear, as if she didn’t want to admit how grateful she was that someone else had been present for the first collision.

“Thank you,” she said, very quietly.

I nodded once.

Charli’s eyes were bright. She looked between us again, like she couldn’t decide which failure she was meant to confess to first.

Lauren’s voice changed then. Not gentler.

More controlled.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to do this properly.”

Charli blinked. The phrase hit her like a threat.

Lauren caught it. She adjusted—not softness, exactly, but calibration.

“Properly as in: safe,” she said. “Properly as in: supervised.”

Charli swallowed. “It was safe. I— I checked—”

“No,” Lauren said. Still not loud. “You read. You didn’t check. You don’t have bloodwork. You don’t have a doctor. You don’t have anyone watching what it’s doing to you.”

Charli flinched at the word watching, as if it sounded like surveillance instead of care.

I’d seen that flinch before. Scrutiny, to Charli, still felt like judgement.

Lauren’s jaw tightened. Her gaze went briefly unfocused—somewhere past the room, past the facts—then snapped back.

“This is…” she began, and I felt the denial reaching for language. “This is the environment. This is—”

Her eyes cut to me again. Quick, sharp. A flicker of accusation trying to find a home.

Then it died, because the logic wouldn’t hold.

I had called her.

I had put the bottle on the table and refused to pretend it was nothing.

Lauren inhaled through her nose, slow. Resetting.

“I’m not saying you did this,” she said, and it wasn’t an apology. It was an admission of the thought she didn’t want to own. “But I need to know if anyone has been… pushing her.”

“No one has been pushing her,” I said. My voice stayed low, steady. “Lauren, she did this because she was scared of what was starting in her body. That’s what she told me.”

Lauren’s eyes went back to Charli. Her grip on Charli’s shoulder tightened—not painful, just firm. Holding the line against panic.

Charli stared down at her towel.

Lauren’s voice dropped, and under it I heard that basso-continuo again—How did I fail him?—the old pronoun humming like a bruise.

“I thought…” Lauren said carefully. “I thought we had time. I thought we could let things settle.”

“I think you were trying to,” I said. “And I think she ran out of time in her own head.”

Silence.

In the kitchen’s bright stillness, the apartment felt like Wardrobe after hours—intentional, waiting.

Then Lauren did something that made my chest tighten again.

She turned to Charli and asked, very simply:

“Do you have more?”

Charli’s eyes widened. “No— I—” She hesitated.

That hesitation was an answer.

Lauren’s face didn’t change.

Charli rushed, frantic. “No, I mean— I have— there’s— I have a second bottle, but it’s— it’s not— it’s for later—”

Lauren lifted a hand. A stop sign made of flesh.

“Where,” she asked.

Charli’s breathing went shallow. Her eyes darted toward the hallway.

“In my room,” she whispered. “In the drawer.”

Lauren nodded once.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to get it.”

Charli panicked. “Mum, please—”

Lauren’s voice stayed flat. “Charli.”

The name landed like a hand closing around a moving wrist.

Charli went still.

I watched her obey, and something in me loosened a fraction. Not comfort.

Recognition.

Lauren was the adult too. A real one. A woman who could hold a line without cruelty.

Lauren moved toward the hallway.

Charli looked at me, helpless.

The look did something sharp inside my ribs. It felt like being chosen in a way I hadn’t consented to. Like suddenly I was part of her definition of safety.

I kept my face steady.

“I’m coming,” I said, and followed.

---

Charli’s room was neat in that anxious way: things arranged, not lived in. The bed made too tightly. Clothes folded too carefully. The kind of order that came from fear of being criticised rather than pleasure in calm.

Lauren went straight to the dresser.

“Which drawer?”

Charli pointed without speaking.

Lauren opened it.

There it was: another white bottle, less empty than the first. A printed label that tried to make a dangerous thing look routine.

Lauren held it a moment. Then, without looking at Charli, she slid it into her pocket.

Charli made a small sound that wasn’t quite a sob. More like a protest caught in the throat.

Lauren turned to face her.

“Listen to me,” she said. Not loud. Just absolute. “I’m not angry that you wanted relief.”

Charli blinked hard.

“I am angry,” Lauren went on, and her voice tightened on the word, “that you thought you had to do it alone.”

That landed.

It wasn’t punishment language. It was loneliness language.

Charli’s shoulders shook once.

I had to force my hands to stay at my sides.

Every instinct in me wanted to step forward, to touch her hair, to tuck it behind her ear, to do something small and intimate that would say: I see you. I’ve seen you. I won’t unsee you.

I did nothing.

Not because I didn’t want to.

Because I wanted it too much.

Lauren glanced at me then—not accusing, not territorial.

Awareness.

She could see it. Or she could see enough to suspect.

I held her gaze and gave her something she could use: the practical.

“We need a plan for tomorrow,” I said. “Not vague. A list.”

Lauren’s nod was immediate. Grateful for the handrail.

“Yes,” she said. “A list.”

Charli looked up, confused, watery-eyed. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I said, and my voice softened without losing its edge. “Tomorrow.”

She flinched as if the word meant confiscation forever.

Lauren sat on the bed beside her—not quite touching, but close enough to be felt.

“Tomorrow,” Lauren said, “we make appointments.”

Charli swallowed. “What if they—”

“They won’t,” Lauren said sharply, then corrected herself into something calmer. “And if someone does, we change doctors. We’re not begging for dignity.”

Charli stared at her, stunned by the certainty.

I felt another flicker in me—admiration, yes, and that jealous responsibility again, quieter now, less sharp.

Because it was so easy, watching Lauren, to imagine how Charli’s loyalty could split: mother on one side, me on the other. Two women offering structure. Two women claiming outcome.

Charli’s gaze did the thing again—back and forth between us.

I could almost see the question behind her eyes:

Where do I belong?

My throat tightened.

I swallowed it.

“We start with your GP,” I said, keeping it simple. “Bloodwork. Baselines. Then referrals to someone with real experience. We don’t do this on vibes.”

Charli’s lips trembled, but her shoulders eased a fraction at the word baselines—as if numbers could soothe her, as if structure could stand in for fear.

Lauren nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “And until then?”

I didn’t look at Charli when I answered. I looked at Lauren. Adult to adult.

“Until then,” I said, “no more doses. We keep her safe. We watch for symptoms. We don’t guess.”

Charli’s face tightened.

Lauren’s hand found Charli’s forearm and squeezed.

“It’s not forever,” Lauren said to her. “It’s ‘until we can do it right.’”

Charli’s eyes filled again.

“But it was making the… the horrible feeling stop,” she whispered.

I felt that in my chest like a bruise. Because I understood something now that I hadn’t admitted to myself before:

Her happiness wasn’t a mood.

It was relief.

It was safety.

It was the easing of a long, private terror.

I stepped closer.

Not to touch her.

Just to be nearer.

“Charli,” I said, and my voice was slow. Careful. “I’m not taking your future away.”

She looked at me, searching.

“I’m taking danger away,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

Her mouth trembled. She nodded, but it was the nod of a person who didn’t fully believe life would keep its promises.

Lauren stood.

“I’m staying tonight,” she said, not asking.

Charli’s eyes widened. “Mum—”

“Not negotiable,” Lauren said, and then—softening, just a little—“I’m not leaving you alone with your fear.”

Charli’s shoulders shook again, and this time she let the tears come.

Lauren turned toward me.

“Thank you,” she said again. This time it had more weight.

I nodded.

And then, because honesty matters between women—because it keeps power clean—I said it.

“I care about her,” I said quietly. “More than I realised.”

Lauren’s eyes stayed on mine.

She didn’t blink. She didn’t flinch.

She simply nodded once—accepting the truth as data, not drama.

“Good,” she said. “Then help me do this properly.”

It should have felt like relief.

Instead, the word help slid under my ribs and hooked itself there.

Because help, in this context, meant a future that included me.

A future that could ask more of me than I’d planned to give.

Charli looked between us again, tears on her cheeks, hair damp, face open and frightened.

And I felt that fierce responsibility rise again—quiet, sharp, unmistakable.

I swallowed it.

For now.

Tomorrow would give me lists and appointments and numbers to hold onto.

Tonight, I would hold my distance like a discipline.

And I would learn how long I could keep doing it.

---

Notes26-01-25r1

My First Revision

✨ The Brush ✨

Scene 31 — “Lauren” (Celeste POV, past tense)

I had put the bottle on the bench.

Lauren arrived the way she did everything lately: fast, contained, already braced.

I heard her before I saw her—the firm knock that didn’t ask permission, the quick shift of keys, the familiar scrape of the latch. No hesitation. No dawdle at the threshold. She came in as if the doorway itself was something she could correct by force of will.

When she stepped into the kitchen, her eyes went briefly to me, then quickly to Charli.

Charli had been sitting in the same spot for too long, towel gripped like a security blanket, damp hair still uncombed, face raw from crying. She looked up when Lauren entered, and something in her expression rearranged itself—not relief exactly, not comfort.

More like recognition.

This is the person who can actually undo me.

Lauren crossed the room in three steps and stopped in front of her daughter.

For a second, she didn’t touch her.

That restraint—the pause before contact—was so precise it made my throat tighten. It was the kind of restraint you learned the hard way: the knowledge that sometimes touch feels like a verdict.

Then Lauren did what mothers do when they cannot afford theatre.

She cupped Charli’s cheek with her palm, thumb sliding once, gentle.

“You okay?” she asked.

The words were soft. The question was not.

Charli’s mouth trembled. “I’m—” she started, then broke. “I didn’t—”

Lauren’s gaze flicked to me. Not accusing. Not grateful. Measuring.

I held it.

“She’s safe,” I said. “She’s not in immediate danger. But it can’t continue.”

Lauren didn’t take her hand away. She kept contact while she processed that sentence, as if touch was the only thing she trusted not to lie.

Charli looked between us. Mother and me. Two women, two kinds of authority.

And there it was—the smallest, sharpest flicker in me.

Not anger. Not rivalry.

Something more primal than either.

A responsibility so fierce it bordered on jealousy.

I swallowed it before it could touch my face.

Lauren’s eyes moved to the bottle on the kitchen bench.

She didn’t pick it up. She didn’t read it again. She didn’t ask for more proof.

She simply nodded once—almost invisible—and in that nod I felt the click of a decision.

“How long have you been taking these?” she asked Charli.

Charli flinched. Her eyes slid away. “Almost four months.”

“Four months,” Lauren repeated quietly, as if saying the number out loud would make it manageable.

Charli shook her head quickly. “Mum, I— I wasn’t— I didn’t do it because—”

Lauren cut in, not loud, but clean.

“Don’t explain it to me like I’m going to misunderstand,” she said. “I’m your mother. I—” Her voice snagged for a fraction. “I know you.”

The slip was small. The meaning wasn’t.

Her hand moved from Charli’s cheek to her shoulder, firmer now. Anchoring.

Then Lauren looked at me again.

“You took it,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” I said. “I secured it.”

Lauren’s face did something complicated—relief mixed with fear, as if she didn’t want to admit how grateful she was that someone else had been present for the first collision.

“Thank you,” she said, very quietly.

I nodded once.

Charli’s eyes were bright. She looked between us again, like she couldn’t decide which failure she was meant to confess to first.

Lauren’s voice changed then. Not gentler.

More controlled.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to do this properly.”

Charli blinked. The phrase hit her like a threat.

Lauren caught the look in her eyes. She adjusted—not softness, exactly, but calibration.

“Properly as in: safe,” she said. “Properly as in: supervised.”

Charli swallowed. “It was safe. I— I checked—”

“No,” Lauren said. Still not loud. “You read. You didn’t check. You don’t have bloodwork. You don’t have a doctor. You don’t have anyone watching what it’s doing to you.”

Charli flinched at the word 'watching', as if it sounded like surveillance. I’d seen that flinch before. Scrutiny, to Charli, would undoubtably still feel like judgement.

Lauren’s jaw tightened. Her gaze went briefly unfocused—somewhere past the room, past the facts—then snapped back.

“This is...” she began, and I felt the denial reaching for language. “This must be... the environment. This is—”

Her eyes cut to me again. Quick, sharp. A flicker of accusation trying to find a home. Then it died, because the logic wouldn’t hold.

I had called her.

I had pulled the bottle out into the open and refused to pretend it was nothing. Lauren inhaled through her nose, slow. Resetting.

“Look, I’m not saying you had anything to do with this,” she said, and it wasn’t an apology. It was an admission of the thought she didn’t want to own. “But I need to know if someone— anyone —has been... pushing her.”

I shook my head. “No one has been pushing her, Lauren,” I said. My voice stayed low, steady. “Charli did this because she was scared of changes that were happening in her body. That’s what she has told me.”

Lauren’s eyes went back to Charli. Her grip on Charli’s shoulder tightened—not painful, just firm. Holding the line against panic. Charli stared down at her towel. Lauren’s voice dropped, and under it I heard that accusing thrum again—How did I fail him?—the old pronoun just under the surface, sore as a bruise.

“I thought...” Lauren said carefully. “I was going to..." She paused again "I thought we could let things settle.”

“I think Charli ran out of time in her head.”

Silence.

In the kitchen’s bright stillness, the apartment felt like Wardrobe after hours—intentional, waiting. And then, suddenly, Lauren turned to Charli.

“Do you have more?”

I hadn't even thought of that. Charli’s eyes widened.“No— I—” She hesitated.

That hesitation was an answer. Lauren’s face didn’t change. Charli rushed, frantic.

“No, I mean— I have— there’s— I have a second bottle, but it’s— it’s not— it’s for later—”

Lauren lifted a hand. A stop sign made of flesh.

“Where?”

Charli’s breathing went shallow. Her eyes darted toward the hallway.

“In my room,” she whispered. “In the drawer.” Charli went still. Lauren was the adult too. A real one. A woman who could hold a line without cruelty. As Lauren moved toward the hallway, Charli looked at me, helpless.

The look did something sharp inside my ribs. It felt like being chosen in a way I hadn’t consented to. Like suddenly I was part of her definition of safety. I kept my face steady.

“I’m coming,” I said softly, and followed.

---

Charli’s room was neat in that anxious way: things arranged, not lived in. The bed made too tightly. Clothes folded too carefully. The kind of order that came from fear of being criticised rather than pleasure in calm.

Lauren went straight to the dresser.

“Which drawer?”

Charli pointed without speaking. Lauren opened it. There it was: another white bottle, untouched. A printed label that tried to make a dangerous thing look routine. Lauren held it a moment. Then, without looking at Charli, she slid it into her pocket. Charli stared without seeing at the pocket. Lauren lifted her face by her chin.

“Listen to me, Charli” she said firmly. “I’m not upset that you wanted relief.”

Charli blinked hard.

“I just have a hard time,” Lauren went on, and her voice tightened on the word, “with the idea that you thought you had to do it alone. That you couldn't talk to me.”

That landed. Charli’s shoulders shook once.

I had to force my hands to stay at my sides. Every instinct in me wanted to step forward, to touch her hair, to tuck it behind her ear, to do something small and intimate that would say: I see you. I’ve seen you. I won’t unsee you.

I did nothing. I couldn't. Not because I didn’t want to.

Because I wanted to, too much.

Lauren glanced at me, the light of awareness in her eyes. I felt she could see it, see my restraint. Or at least, she could see enough to suspect. I held her gaze and gave her something she could use: the practical.

“We need a plan for tomorrow,” I said. “Not vague. A list.”

Lauren’s nod was immediate. Grateful for the handrail.

“Yes, I agreed,” she said. “A list.”

Charli looked up, confused, watery-eyed. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I said, and my voice softened without losing its edge. “Tomorrow.”

She slumped down onto her bed. Lauren sat on the bed beside her, not quite touching, but close enough to be felt.

“Tomorrow, Charli,” Lauren said, “we make appointments.”

Charli swallowed. “What if they—”

“They won’t,” Lauren said sharply, then corrected herself into something calmer. “And if they do, we find someone else. We’re not begging anyone for your dignity.”

Charli stared at her, stunned by the certainty. I felt another flicker in me: admiration, yes, and that jealous responsibility again, quieter now, less sharp. Because it was so easy, watching Lauren, to imagine how Charli’s loyalty could split: mother on one side, me on the other. Two women offering structure. Two women claiming outcome.

Something in me snapped into place. Practical.

“We start with your GP,” I said, keeping it simple. “Bloodwork. Baselines. Then referrals to someone with a background, a specialist in the field. We don’t do this on vibes.”

Charli’s lips trembled, but her shoulders eased a fraction at the word baselines—as if numbers could soothe her, as if structure could stand in for fear. I stepped closer.

Not to touch her. Just to be nearer.

“Charli,” I said, and my voice was slow. Careful. “This is not about taking your future away.”

She looked at me, searching.

“We're taking danger away,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

Her mouth trembled. She nodded, but it was the nod of a person who didn’t fully believe life would keep its promises.

Lauren stood.

“I’m staying tonight,” she said, not asking.

Charli’s eyes widened. “Mum—”

“Not negotiable,” Lauren said, and then—softening, just a little—“I’m not leaving you alone with your fear.”

Charli’s shoulders shook again, and this time she let the tears come.

Lauren turned toward me.

“Thank you,” she said again. This time it had more weight.

I nodded. And then, because honesty matters between women—because it keeps power clean—I said what hadn't been articulated.

“I care about her,” I said quietly. “More than I realised.”

Lauren’s eyes stayed on mine. She didn’t blink. She didn’t flinch. She simply nodded once—accepting the truth as data, not drama.

“Good,” she said. “Then please help me do this properly.”

It should have felt like relief. Instead, the word help slid under my ribs and hooked itself there. Because help, in this context, meant a future that included me. A future that could ask more of me than I’d planned to give.

Charli looked between us again, tears on her cheeks, hair damp, face open. The fright from early had largely eased. And I felt that fierce responsibility rise again—quiet, sharp, unmistakable.

I swallowed it.

For now.

Tomorrow would give me lists and appointments and numbers to hold onto. Tonight, I would hold my distance like a discipline.And realised with a razor-sharp clarity I was getting tired of holding my distance.I no longer saw a point to keep doing it.

---

Notes26-01-25el

Emily: Lauren's Conflict 1

Lauren didn’t speak for a beat. When she did, it wasn’t panic. It was control so tight it squeaked.

“How did she get that.”

“On her own,” I said. “She sourced it herself.”

“That’s not an answer.” Her voice sharpened. “How does a child get anti-androgens on her own?”

“She’s seventeen,” I said gently, because this mattered. “And she’s smart. And she’s frightened.”

Another pause. Then the denial arrived, dressed as reason.

“So it’s the environment,” Lauren said. “It’s Wardrobe. Those girls—”

“It’s not them,” I said, steady. Not defensive. Certain. “They didn’t do this to her.”

Silence.

I kept my voice low. “Lauren… your child did this because she was scared of what was starting to happen in her body. She wasn’t playing. She wasn’t being dramatic. She was trying to stop something that made her feel sick.”

Lauren exhaled, thin and sharp, as if she’d been punched and didn’t want to admit it.

“You’re sure she’s not being… influenced.”

I didn’t answer the word. I answered the fear underneath it.

“I’m sure she’s been carrying this alone,” I said. “And I’m sure that ends tonight.”

Lauren’s voice shifted—subtly—toward accusation, then caught itself.

“You found it in her bag at your place.”

“Yes,” I said. No flinch. “And I’m calling you because I won’t hold a secret that can harm her.”

A beat.

“Are you taking it away?” Lauren asked.

“I’ve secured it,” I said. “Not as punishment. As safety. We need supervision—bloodwork, a clinician, a plan. Tomorrow.”

Lauren’s breath came through the line—ragged now, the first crack in her control.

“And what is she saying?” she asked. “What is she calling this?”

I chose my words carefully.

“She doesn’t have language for it yet,” I said. “But she knows what it felt like. She knows the direction her body was moving made her afraid.”

Lauren went quiet. When she spoke again, it was lower.

“My son—”

I closed my eyes briefly. Not from anger. From tenderness.

“Your child is here,” I said. “And she’s safe.”

There it was: the basso-continuo, humming beneath the line.

“I don’t understand how I didn’t see it,” Lauren said. “How I—” She stopped. Swallowed. “I thought I was giving him time.”

“I think you were,” I said. “And I think she ran out of time in her own head.”

Lauren’s voice tightened again, trying to regain its old shape.

“So what are you asking me to do.”

I didn’t soften it. I didn’t dramatise it.

“Come tonight,” I said. “And tomorrow, we start properly. Supervised. Together. No secrets.”

A pause.

Then, very quietly: “Is she… upset with me?”

The question broke my heart a little.

“No,” I said. “She’s scared. Mostly of losing the life she’s just started to breathe in.”

Lauren’s inhale hitched.

“Okay,” she said, on a long exhale. Not agreement yet—decision. “Okay. I’m coming.”

“She’s not alone,” I said.

“I’m on my way,” Lauren replied.

And the line went dead.

---

Notes26-01-25pp

Scene 31 PrePub [P]

[26-01-25]

Scene 31 — “Lauren” (Celeste POV, past tense)

✨ How We Do Safe ✨

[Celeste]

I had put the bottle on the kitchen bench.

Lauren arrived the way she did everything lately: fast, contained, already braced.

I heard her before I saw her—the firm knock that didn’t ask permission, the quick shift of keys, the familiar scrape of the latch. No hesitation. No dawdle at the threshold. She came in as if the doorway itself was something she could correct by force of will.

When she stepped into the kitchen, her eyes went briefly to me, then quickly to Charli.

Charli had been sitting in the same spot for too long, towel gripped like a security blanket, damp hair still uncombed, face raw from crying. She looked up when Lauren entered, and something in her expression rearranged itself—not relief exactly, not comfort.

More like recognition.

This is the person who can actually undo me.

Lauren crossed the room in three steps and stopped in front of her daughter.

For a second, she didn’t touch her.

That restraint—the pause before contact—was so precise it made my throat tighten. It was the kind of restraint you learned the hard way: the knowledge that sometimes touch feels like a verdict. Then Lauren did what mothers do when they cannot afford theatre.

She cupped Charli’s cheek with her palm, thumb sliding once, gentle.

“You okay?”

The words were soft. The question was not.

Charli’s mouth trembled. “I’m—” she started, then broke. “I didn’t—”

Lauren’s gaze flicked to me. Not accusing. Not grateful. Measuring.

I held it.

“She’s safe,” I said. “She’s not in immediate danger. But it can’t continue.”

Lauren didn’t take her hand away. She kept contact while she processed that sentence, as if touch was the only thing she trusted not to lie.

Charli looked between us. Mother and me. Two women, two kinds of authority. And there it was—the smallest, sharpest flicker in me. Not anger or rivalry.

Something more primal than either: a responsibility so fierce it bordered on jealousy. I swallowed it before it could touch my face.

Lauren’s eyes moved to the bottle on the kitchen bench. She didn’t pick it up. She didn’t read it again. She didn’t ask for more proof. She simply nodded—and in that nod I felt the click of a decision.

“How long have you been taking these?”

Charli flinched. Her eyes slid away. “Almost four months.”

“Four months,” Lauren repeated quietly, as if saying the number out loud would make it manageable.

Charli shook her head quickly. “Mum, I— I wasn’t— I didn’t do it because—”

Lauren cut in, not loud, but clean.

“Don’t explain it to me like I’m going to misunderstand,” she said. “I’m your mother. I—” Her voice snagged for a fraction. “I know you.”

The slip was small. The meaning wasn’t. Her hand moved from Charli’s cheek to her shoulder, firmer now. Anchoring. Then Lauren looked at me again.

“You took it,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” I said. “I secured it.”

Lauren’s face did something complicated—relief mixed with fear, as if she didn’t want to admit how grateful she was that someone else had been present for the first collision.

“Thank you,” she said, very quietly.

I nodded once.

Charli’s eyes were bright. She looked between us again, like she couldn’t decide which failure she was meant to confess to first.

Lauren’s voice changed then. Not gentler.

More controlled.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to do this properly.”

Charli blinked. The phrase hit her like a threat. Lauren caught the look in her eyes. She adjusted—not softness, exactly, but calibration.

“Properly as in: safe,” she said. “Properly as in: supervised.”

Charli swallowed. “It was safe. I— I checked—”

“No,” Lauren said. Still not loud. “You read. You didn’t check. You don’t have bloodwork. You don’t have a doctor. You don’t have anyone watching what it’s doing to you.”

Charli flinched at the word watching, as if it sounded like surveillance. I’d seen that flinch before. Scrutiny, to Charli, still felt like judgement.

Lauren’s jaw tightened. Her gaze went briefly unfocused—somewhere past the room, past the facts—then snapped back.

“This is...” she began, and I felt the denial reaching for language. “This must be... the environment. This is—”

Her eyes cut to me again. Quick, sharp. A flicker of accusation trying to find a home. Then it died, because the logic wouldn’t hold.

I had called her.

I had pulled the bottle out into the open and refused to pretend it was nothing. Lauren inhaled through her nose, slow. Resetting.

“Look, I’m not saying you had anything to do with this,” she said, and it wasn’t an apology. It was an admission of the thought she didn’t want to own. “But... I need to know if someone— anyone —has been... pushing her.”

I shook my head. “No one has been pushing her, Lauren,” I said. My voice stayed low, steady. “Charli did this because she was scared of changes that were happening in her body. That’s what she has told me.”

Lauren’s eyes went back to Charli. Her grip on Charli’s shoulder tightened—not painful, just firm. Holding the line against panic. Charli stared down at her towel. Lauren’s voice dropped, and under it I heard that accusing thrum again—How did I fail him?—the old pronoun just under the surface, sore as a bruise.

“I thought...” Lauren said carefully. “I was going to..." She paused again "I thought we could let things settle.”

I looked Lauren in the eyes.

“I think Charli ran out of time in her head.”

Silence.

In the kitchen’s bright stillness, the apartment felt like Wardrobe after hours—intentional, waiting. And then, suddenly, Lauren turned to Charli.

“Do you have more?”

The question landed like a door I hadn’t known to lock. Charli’s eyes widened.“No— I—” She hesitated.

That hesitation was an answer. Lauren’s face didn’t change. Charli rushed, frantic.

“No, I mean— I have— there’s— I have a second bottle, but it’s— it’s not— it’s for later—”

Lauren lifted a hand. A stop sign made of flesh.

“Where?”

Charli’s breathing went shallow. Her eyes darted toward the hallway.

“In my room,” she whispered. “In the drawer.”

Charli went still.

Lauren was the adult too.

As Lauren moved toward the hallway, Charli looked at me, helpless. The look did something sharp inside my ribs. It felt like being chosen in a way I hadn’t consented to. Like suddenly I was part of her definition of safety. I kept my face steady.

“I’m coming,” I said softly, and followed.

---

Charli’s room was neat in that anxious way: things arranged, not lived in. The bed made too tightly. Clothes folded too carefully. The kind of order that came from fear of being criticised rather than pleasure in calm.

Lauren went straight to the dresser.

“Which drawer?”

Charli pointed without speaking. Lauren opened it. There it was: another white bottle, untouched. A printed label that tried to make a dangerous thing look routine. Lauren held it a moment. Then, without looking at Charli, she slid it into her pocket. Charli stared without seeing at the pocket. Lauren lifted her face by her chin.

“Listen to me, Charli” she said firmly. “I’m not upset that you wanted relief.”

Charli blinked hard.

“I just have a hard time,” Lauren went on, and her voice tightened on the word, “with the idea that you thought you had to do it alone. That you couldn't talk to me.”

That landed. Charli’s shoulders shook once.

I had to force my hands to stay at my sides. Every instinct in me wanted to step forward, to touch her hair, to tuck it behind her ear, to do something small and intimate that would say: I see you. I’ve seen you. I won’t unsee you.

I did nothing. I couldn't. Not because I didn’t want to—because I wanted to too much.

I caught Lauren glance in my direction. The light of awareness shone in her eyes. I felt she could see it, see my restraint. Or at least, she could see enough to suspect. I held her gaze and gave her something she could use: the practical.

“We need a plan for tomorrow,” I said. “Not vague. A list.”

Lauren’s nod was immediate, grateful for the handrail.

“Yes,” she said, and I could hear gratitude in her voice. “A list.”

Charli looked up, watery-eyed, weary. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I said, and my voice softened without losing its edge. “Tomorrow.”

She slumped down onto her bed. Lauren sat on the bed beside her, not quite touching, but close enough to be felt.

“Tomorrow, Charli,” Lauren said tenderly, “we make appointments.”

Charli swallowed. “What if they—”

“They won’t,” Lauren said sharply, then corrected herself into something calmer. “And if they do, we find someone else. We’re not begging anyone for your dignity.”

Charli stared at her, stunned by the certainty. I felt another flicker in me: admiration, yes, and that jealous responsibility again, quieter now, less sharp. Because it was so easy, watching Lauren, to imagine how Charli’s loyalty could split: mother on one side, me on the other. Two women offering structure. Two women claiming outcome.

Something in me snapped into place. Again, practical.

“We start with your GP,” I said, keeping it simple. “Bloodwork. Baselines. Then referrals to someone with a background, a specialist in the field. We don’t do this on vibes.”

Charli’s lips trembled, but her shoulders eased a fraction at the word baselines—as if numbers could soothe her, as if structure could stand in for fear. I stepped closer.

Not to touch her. Just to be nearer.

“Charli,” I said, and my voice was slow. Careful. “This is not about taking your future away.” She looked at me, searching. “We're taking danger away,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

Her mouth trembled. She nodded, but it was the nod of a person who didn’t fully believe life would keep its promises.

Lauren stood.

“I’m staying tonight,” she said, not asking.

Charli’s eyes widened. “Mum—”

“Not negotiable,” Lauren said, and then—softening, just a little—“I’m not leaving you alone with your fear.”

Charli’s shoulders shook again, and this time she let the tears come.

Lauren turned toward me.

“Thank you,” she said again. This time it had more weight. I nodded.And then, because silence can be its own kind of manipulation, I let the truth out. Honesty matters between women.

“I care about her,” I said quietly. “More than I realised.”

Lauren’s eyes stayed on mine. She didn’t blink. She didn’t flinch. She simply nodded once—accepting the truth as data, not drama.

“Good,” she said. “Then please help me do this properly.”

It should have felt like relief. Instead, the word help slid under my ribs and hooked itself there. Because help, in this context, meant a future that included me. Charli looked between us again, tears on her cheeks, hair damp, face open. The fright from earlier had largely eased. And I felt that fierce responsibility rise again—quiet, sharp, unmistakable.

I swallowed it.

For now.

Tomorrow would give me lists and appointments and numbers to hold onto. Tonight, I would hold my distance like a discipline. And yet, as Charli’s breathing slowed and the room softened around her, I felt it: the point of keeping that distance was growing obscure.

She didn’t need me far away to prove I was safe.

She needed me close enough to mean it.

---

Tweak DA 26-01-27

✨ How We Do Safe ✨

[Celeste]

I had put the bottle on the kitchen bench.

Lauren arrived the way she did everything lately: fast, contained, already braced.

I heard her before I saw her—the firm knock that didn’t ask permission, the quick shift of keys, the familiar scrape of the latch. No hesitation. No dawdle at the threshold. She came in as if the doorway itself was something she could influence by force of will.

When she stepped into the kitchen, her eyes went briefly to me, then quickly to Charli.

Charli had been sitting in the same spot for too long, towel gripped like a security blanket, damp hair still uncombed, face raw from crying. She looked up when Lauren entered, and something in her expression rearranged itself—not relief exactly, not comfort. More like recognition.

This is the person who can actually undo me.

Lauren crossed the room in three steps and stopped in front of her daughter.

For a second, she didn’t touch her.

That restraint—the pause before contact—was so precise it made my throat tighten. It was the kind of restraint you learned the hard way: the knowledge that sometimes touch feels like a verdict. Then Lauren did what mothers do when they cannot afford theatre.

She cupped Charli’s cheek with her palm, thumb sliding once, gentle.

“You okay?”

The words were soft. The question was not.

Charli’s mouth trembled. “I’m—” she started, then broke. “I didn’t—”

Lauren’s gaze flicked to me. Not accusing or grateful: measuring.

I held it.

“She’s safe,” I said. “She’s not in immediate danger. But it can’t continue.”

Lauren didn’t take her hand away. She kept contact while she processed that sentence, as if touch was the only thing she trusted not to lie. And there it was—the smallest, sharpest flicker in me. Something more primal than either anger or rivalry: a responsibility so fierce it bordered on jealousy. I swallowed it before it could touch my face.

Lauren’s eyes moved to the bottle on the kitchen bench. She didn’t pick it up. She didn’t read it again. She didn’t ask for more proof. She simply nodded—and in that nod I felt the click of a decision.

“How long have you been taking these?”

Charli flinched. Her eyes slid away. “Almost four months.”

“Four months,” Lauren repeated quietly.

Charli shook her head quickly. “Mum, I— I wasn’t— I didn’t do it because—”

Lauren cut in, not loud, but clean.

“Don’t explain it to me like I’m going to misunderstand,” she said. “I’m your mother. I—” Her voice snagged for a fraction. “I know you.”

The slip was small. The meaning wasn’t. Her hand moved from Charli’s cheek to her shoulder, firmer now. Anchoring. Then Lauren looked at me again.

“You found this,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” I said. “And I secured it.”

Lauren’s face did something complicated: relief mixed with fear, as if she didn’t want to admit how grateful she was that someone else had been present for the first collision.

“Thank you,” she said, very quietly.

Charli’s eyes were bright. She looked between us again, like she couldn’t decide which failure she was meant to confess to first. Lauren’s voice changed then.

Not gentler. More controlled.

“Okay,” she said. “We’re going to do this properly.”

Charli blinked. The phrase hit her like a threat. Lauren caught the look in her eyes. She adjusted—not softness, exactly, but calibration.

“Properly as in: safe,” she said. “Properly as in: supervised.”

Charli swallowed. “It was safe. I— I checked—”

“No,” Lauren said firmly, still not loud. “You read. You didn’t check. You don’t have bloodwork. You don’t have a doctor. You don’t have anyone watching what it’s doing to you.”

Charli flinched at the word 'watching', as if it sounded like surveillance. I’d seen that flinch before. Scrutiny, to Charli, still felt like judgement.

Lauren’s jaw tightened. Her gaze went briefly unfocused—somewhere past the room, past the facts—then snapped back.

“This is...” she began, and I felt the denial reaching for language. “This must be... the environment. This is—”

Her eyes cut to me again. Quick, sharp: a flicker of accusation trying to find a target. Then it died, because the logic wouldn’t hold.

I had called her.

I had pulled the bottle out into the open and refused to pretend it was nothing. Lauren inhaled through her nose, slow. Resetting.

“Look, I’m not saying you had anything to do with this,” she said with a sigh. It wasn’t so much an apology as an admission of a thought she didn’t want to own. “But... I need to know if someone— anyone —has been... pushing her.”

I shook my head. “No one has been pushing her, Lauren,” I said. My voice stayed low, steady. “Charli did this because she was scared of changes that were happening in her body. That’s what she told me.”

Lauren’s eyes went back to Charli. Her grip on Charli’s shoulder tightened, holding the line against panic. Charli stared down at her towel. Lauren’s voice dropped, and under it I heard that accusing thrum again—How did I fail him?—the old pronoun just under the surface, sore as a bruise.

“I thought...” Lauren muttered. “I was going to..." She paused. "I thought we could let things settle.”

I looked Lauren in the eyes.

“I think Charli ran out of time in her head.”

Silence.

In the kitchen’s bright stillness, the apartment felt like Wardrobe after hours: intentional, waiting. And then, suddenly, Lauren turned to Charli.

“Do you have more?”

The question landed like a door I hadn’t known to lock. Charli’s eyes widened.“No— I—” She hesitated.

That hesitation was an answer. Lauren’s face didn’t change. Charli rushed, frantic.

“No, I mean— I have— there’s— I have a second bottle, but it’s— it’s not— it’s for later—”

Lauren lifted a hand. A stop sign made of flesh.

“Where?”

Charli’s breathing went shallow. Her eyes darted toward the hallway.

“In my room,” she whispered. “In the drawer.”

Charli went still.

Lauren was, again, the adult. As she moved toward the hallway, Charli looked at me, helpless. The look did something sharp inside my ribs. It felt like being chosen to play a role I hadn’t consented to, like I had become her definition of safety. I kept my face steady and nodded towards the hallway.

“I’m coming,” I said softly, and followed.

---

Charli’s room was neat in that anxious way: things arranged, not lived in. The bed made too tightly. Clothes folded too carefully. The kind of order that came from fear of being criticised rather than taking pleasure in calm. Lauren went straight to the dresser.

“Which drawer?”

Charli pointed without speaking. Lauren opened it. There it was: another white bottle, untouched. A printed label that tried to make a dangerous thing look routine. Lauren held it a moment. Then, without looking at Charli, she slid it into her pocket. Charli stared at her pocket without seeing.

With a sigh, Lauren lifted her tear-stained face gently by her chin.

“Listen to me, Charli,” she said firmly. “I’m not upset that you wanted relief.”

Charli blinked hard.

“I just have a hard time,” Lauren went on, and her voice tightened on her words, “with the idea that you thought you had to do it alone. That you couldn't talk to me.”

That landed. Charli’s shoulders shook once.

I had to force my hands to stay at my sides. Every instinct in me wanted to step forward, to touch her hair, to tuck it behind her ear, to do something small and intimate that would say:

I see you. I’ve seen you. I won’t unsee you.

I did nothing. I couldn't. Not because I didn’t want to—because I wanted to too much.

I caught Lauren glance in my direction, the light of awareness shining in her eyes. I felt she could see it, see my restraint. Or at least, she could see enough to suspect. I held her gaze and gave her something she could bite down on: the practical.

“We need a plan for tomorrow,” I said. “Not vague. A list.”

Lauren’s nod was immediate, grateful for the handrail.

“Yes,” she said, and I could hear appreciation in her voice. “A list.”

Charli looked at me, watery-eyed, weary, bleary. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I said, and my voice softened without losing its edge. “Tomorrow.”

She slumped down onto her bed. Lauren sat on the bed beside her, touching her hands, holding her child's heart as only a mum can.

“Tomorrow, Charli,” Lauren said tenderly, “we make appointments.”

Charli swallowed. “What if they—”

“They won’t,” Lauren said firmly, then softened her tone again. “And if they do, we find someone else. We’re not begging anyone for your dignity.”

Charli stared at her, as if unsure she could hope. I felt another flicker of admiration. Yes, and that jealous responsibility again, quieter now, less sharp. Because it was so easy, watching Lauren, to imagine how willingly Charli would yield to her mother's guidance if she thought her an ally.

Charli did have two allies, two women offering structure. Two women claiming outcome. Something in me snapped into place. Again, practical.

“We start with your GP,” I said, keeping it simple. “Bloodwork. Baselines. Then referrals to someone with a background, a specialist in the field. We don’t do this on vibes.”

Charli’s lips trembled, but her shoulders eased a fraction at the word 'baselines', as if numbers could soothe her, as if structure could stand in for fear. I stepped closer.

Not to touch her, just to be a bit nearer.

“Charli,” I said, and my voice was slow, careful. “This is not about taking your future away.” She looked at me, searching. “We're taking danger away,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

Her mouth trembled. She nodded, but it was the nod of a person who didn’t fully believe life would keep its promises. Lauren stood.

“I’m staying tonight,” she declared.

Charli’s eyes widened. “Mum—”

“Not negotiable,” Lauren said , and then—softening, just a little—“I’m not leaving you alone with your fear.”

Charli’s shoulders shook again, and this time she let the tears come. Lauren turned toward me.

“Thank you,” she said again. This time it had more weight. I nodded; and then, because silence can be its own kind of manipulation, I let the truth out.

Honesty matters between women.

“I care about her,” I said quietly. “More than I realised.”

Lauren’s eyes stayed on mine. She didn’t blink or flinch, but simply nodded, accepting my truth.

“Good,” she replied, voice thick with a mother's care. “Then please help me do this properly.”

It should have felt like relief, but that word help slid under my ribs and hooked itself there: what I felt was much more than just relief. Help, in this context, meant a future for Charli that included me. Charli looked between us again, tears on her cheeks, hair damp, face open. The pinch of panic from earlier had largely been replaced by the trusting softness in her eyes I knew so well. And I felt that fierce responsibility rise again—quiet, sharp, unmistakable. I swallowed it.

For now.

Tomorrow would give me lists and appointments and numbers to hold onto. Tonight, I would hold my distance like a discipline. And yet, as Charli’s breathing slowed and the room softened around her, I felt it: the point of keeping that distance was becoming meaningless.

She didn’t need me distant to prove we were being safe.

She needed me close to feel that safety, herself.

---