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Alli closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure how to deal with this. She didn’t want therapy right now. “People don’t like me.”

“Because you treat them like shit,” countered Izzy. “If you were a bit nicer, maybe they would.”

For a long second, Alli looked at her, then she gave up and walked away. She couldn’t deal with all of this. All of this change, it was like losing pieces of herself at every turn, and she didn’t know what to replace the lost pieces with.

She should never have agreed to meet with Izzy and she was going to block her number as soon as she got home, she decided. And then, then she was going to start looking for a new job and she’d put all of this behind her. Work made her happy, therefore work was going to be the solution to whatever this blackness was that she was feeling.

DARREN WAS LOUNGING against the front door, phone in his hand when Alli returned. She wasn’t sure whether to spit at him or slap him.

“I come in peace,” he said, holding up his hands when she saw him.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m your friend. I’m here to check on you.”

“My friend?” Alli spat. “You fired me.”

Darren sighed. “Can we just go inside, please?”

Alli let him in and then promptly wished that she hadn’t. Her usually pristine flat was a mess, with blankets on the couch and half empty cups on the table. Darren took it all in.

“Taking it well then?” he said.

“How was I supposed to take it?” Alli asked. “You fired me. I lost everything, I had a job and then I didn’t and I had a girlfriend and then I didn’t and—” She stopped, realizing what she’d just said. And then, to her horror, her eyes began to fill with tears.

“Jesus, Al.” Darren took her hand and led her to the couch, sat with her and then, finally, put his arm around her.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Ali sobbed.

“Right, yes, very fine,” Darren said, handing her some tissues from the table.

“I am,” she hiccuped.

“You’re not,” he said. “And you haven’t been for a very long time.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s supposed to mean that as great as you were at your job, it was killing you, Al.” He looked at her. “You think that I didn’t see the bags under your eyes, the massive amounts of antacids that you took? That I didn’t notice the missed meals? The anger that was always there?”

“But that… That was all part of it,” she said.

“No, no, that was someone working their way to a heart attack,” he said softly. “And whilst I wasn’t happy that you lost your temper in front of a client, I did sort of hope that it would be a chance for you to relax, maybe learn to handle the stress better.”

“Then you fired me.”

“No, then you didn’t complete the simple thing that you were asked to do in order to keep your job,” Darren said reasonably.

“But that wasn’t fair!”

“How?” She told him and he shook his head. “The woman made an honest report about you and was just doing her job. Who are you to criticize that? You’d be the first person to say that doing your job well was an important attribute to have. And frankly, it sounds like this woman cared about you.”

“Cared about me?” screeched Alli. “She was my girlfriend and she stabbed me in the back.”

Darren laughed. “She didn’t stab you in the back. She didn’t need to. You did that yourself. She was doing her job. It sounds to me like you need to apologize to her.”

“Yeah, well, she won’t answer my calls,” Alli muttered, balling the tissues into her hand.

Darren sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It must feel like you’ve lost everything.”