The weekend had been long in the specific way weekends were long when you were trying not to think about something and failing at regular intervals.
Ava had cleaned the flat on Saturday with the focused energy of someone who needed their hands occupied while their mind went somewhere. She was not ready to follow it. She had reorganized her bookshelf by color, which Zara had observed with a single raised eyebrow that communicated volumes without requiring a single word. She had gone for a run on Sunday morning that was twenty minutes longer than her usual route, and she had spent those twenty minutes thinking about a kitchen table conversation at ten thirty at night and telling herself, with diminishing conviction, that she was not thinking about it at all.
She arrived at the office at se
