The letter arrived on Monday.
The actual post which was unusual enough that Julia stood at the letterbox looking at it for a moment before opening it. Most things arrive by email now. Physical letters had a different weight to them. A different kind of intention.
The envelope was from a communications company based in Edinburgh. A good one: she knew the name, had known it for years, had applied to them once when Nora was two, and they'd been politely uninterested, and she'd filed the rejection away in the place she kept things that hadn't worked out.
She opened it at the kitchen table.
Read it once.
Read it again.
It was an offer. A proper one, not an inquiry, not a preliminary conversation, a formal offer with a number at the bottom that made her set the letter down and look at
