The filing arrives two hours after I get back from the council building.
I am in the project room with the east corridor samples spread across the table when Damien walks in. He is carrying a folder and he sets it on the table in front of me without a word and stands back. I look at the folder. I look at him. His face is doing the very controlled thing, the thing where the mask is fully in place and doing a great deal of work, which means what is inside the folder is bad.
I open it.
It is worse than I expected and I had expected it to be bad.
Seraphine has my formal rejection record, which is a sealed pack document that should not be accessible to anyone outside the direct parties. She has my full pack history going back to my first registration at seven years old, the elder’s notes in
