Chapter 18: Screenshots

By four o'clock the post had eleven thousand comments.

I sat on the edge of Maud's desk and read them with my coffee going cold.

*Imagine texting someone this many times.*

*She needs help.*

*Poor Hugh, he looks so tired in every photo.*

Tansy had cropped every screenshot to show only my side.

*Where are you.*

*Did I do something.*

*I'll wait up, it's fine.*

There were four years of them, laid end to end, and they looked exactly as bad as she wanted.

"I'm going to break her glasses," Maud said.

"Don't."

"Just the left lens."

"Maud."

My phone buzzed with an email from Tidewell's HR director, subject line *Brief conversation,* and I did not open it.

I opened a different folder instead.

I had named it *Hugh* years ago, when I was twenty-four and started backing up the things I could not bear to lose.

Every night I had copied every reply he ever wrote me into one long list.

I had not done it to prove anything. I had done it so I could read them back when I started to think I was crazy.

I scrolled through it now.

*Be patient, Jo. It's just work.*

*You're too much sometimes. Do you hear yourself?*

*Tansy is a colleague. Don't be childish.*

*I'll be home Thursday. Don't wait up.*

*Stop texting. I'm with my parents.*

His parents had never met me. He had never been with them.

"Jo," Maud said softly. "That is the whole thing."

"It's four years of him saying no."

"So you post it."

"No."

"Why?"

"Because then it's two people yelling on a screen." I stood up. "I want to say it to his face, in a room, with his boss listening."

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