She Started It by Sian Gilbert

Author:Sian Gilbert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

Eighteen

Esther

May 21, 2023

The hangover hits me as I sit up, making me moan and close my eyes again. The throbbing never seems to subside, crashing against my skull. Did we really drink that much? Even holding my head gives me no comfort, my vision blurring and refocusing a number of times before it settles.

Maybe this is just the after-effects of yesterday reaching me. Part of me wishes it was all just some awful fever dream, but the dry mouth and aching kidneys remind me all too well it wasn’t. I’ve really lost my job. Everyone at my work has seen me naked.

For a second I think I might throw up there and then on the bed, and I have to lean over the side and take deep breaths. There’s no telling what is going on back home. My office might have been packed up already, my stuff in little boxes in a dreadful back room somewhere waiting to be collected. Oh God, and I’d have to walk through to get them too. Past everyone whilst they look at me in horror. Actually, would they even let me in after that? I’m not sure what’s worse. Facing everyone again or being humiliated waiting in the foyer for someone to come and bring me everything.

I won’t let it happen. There will be a way to prove it was Poppy who sent the pictures. Surely they can’t get rid of me so fast.

I wonder if my parents have found out. My mother, who got me the job interview in the first place. Jesus.

The room feels hot and stifling. I need to get out of here.

As I fling the covers off, I gasp.

My stomach is red. I think I’ve been injured when I realise it’s from the red lipstick. A word, written on me. No, an insult. BITCH. When the hell did that happen? Was it Tanya? Poppy?

I try to rewind my brain for last night’s events but come up stubbornly blank. Only a few key memories stick in my mind. For a second I think I must have overslept, a first for me, but then the sunrise starts to filter through the window and I realise it’s dawn.

My hands fly to my phone, which now sits on the bedside table. The black screen reminds me that there is no charge; the crack reminds me how shattered our lives have become. Those emails come flooding back to me again, and even though it achieves nothing, I turn the phone upside down so the screen no longer faces me.

It’s very quiet. Despite how I’m feeling, I can’t imagine not going for a run. It’s like breathing for me, as natural as other people who desperately reach for caffeine in the morning. There’s a moment as I stand up when the world seems to tilt on its axis and I think I’m going to fall, grabbing the bedpost. Mercifully, it rights itself, and I take slow movements. The lipstick lies on the floor, cap missing. I shove it into a drawer, desperate not to see it.

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