ACT THREE: Bargaining

A week earlier...

It's not like her to be nervous.

Then again, it's not like her to be late either – that's his shtick, and it's one he's very good at. She would've preferred him not to demonstrate that tonight, though.

It's not a date. Despite the ribbing Laura constantly gives her, it's absolutely not a date. It's just a night out with her closest friend. Alright, so maybe she's treating it as a particularly special night, but that's just because of the fact that she's not-so-secretly wanted to see this concert for a long, long time. Even moreso than the stadium rock gig she'd managed to scrounge tickets for last week.

True, she'd indeed spent a good hour getting ready, picking out her favourite midnight-blue dress, putting on makeup and brushing out her hair into eye-catching curls, but that's just because it's a special night. She knows she looks absolutely dazzling, and she's already attracted many a wide-eyed gaze standing alone outside the theatre as she is – but it's not a date.

It's a night out. And it won't be much of a night out if he doesn't show up soon-

"Sorry! Am I late?" She spins around to see him running up the path towards her, looking ridiculous as ever and quite dashing in equal measure, owing to his rather striking choice of tux and tails. It's the same combination he'd worn to her wedding, and just quietly she finds it just as hot now as she had back then.

But she has other things on her mind. "What took you so long, ya moron?"

"Got held up. Traffic. Weather. Potential Cyberman invasion. Usual things. Still not used to running at a human pace, I have to say," he rattles off, at his usual double-speed. Having said his piece, he finally takes a breath and a chance to look at her properly. "You look absolutely wonderful."

She smiles. "Ha. So do you, for once," she jibes, giving his white silk bowtie a gentle tweak. "I was worrying that you weren't going to show up."

"Wouldn't have missed this for the world, Pond," he replies, before his playful smile settles into something… warmer, somehow. "I know you've wanted this for a long time."

"And you got us front row seats, yeah?"

"Of course."

Their eyes meet for a moment — and driven by some nameless urge, she steps forward and gives him a soft kiss on the cheek.

"Thank you."

"My pleasure." He offers his hand, and she takes it gently. "Shall we?"

She'd given him twenty minutes.

He takes thirty.

It's a struggle to say the least. With herself, first of all, as there's nothing enjoyable or perversely satisfying about this. But she does it anyway because she has to, because it's necessary. And besides, he gives her enough of a fight without her own self-doubt assisting him.

She'd expected no less, to be fair. He's a clingy sort of guy, and she can see in his eyes that he's genuinely sorry, he's genuinely desperate to make amends. And so he'd pleaded, he'd argued, he'd apologised again and again and again – but she doesn't budge.

If anything, it just cements in her mind that what she's doing is absolutely, completely necessary.

Otherwise it'll just continue. He'll barge into her life, like he always does, tempt her with the promise of something amazing, like he always does, and then prance straight out again with a trail of destruction in his wake. While he's with her, it's worth it, it's always worth it – but sometimes he isn't.

He leaves. He always leaves.

So if she's going to be eventually left high and dry anyway, then why not break it off on her own terms?

It's not like she's breaking up with him, after all. She's just firewalling her life, not letting him dominate it so thoroughly. One day she'll let him back. Maybe. If she feels like it.

Though no one would have known it, given how he desperately he pleads with her to stay.

"Amelia, I'm sorry-"

But she just shoves a bag full of his stuff into his arms and slams the door in his face.

An hour later, the house is silent at last.

For a while it hadn't been – he'd continued to beg and hammer on the door, but eventually even that had stopped. She knows that if he wants to, if he really wants to, he can just barge back in and deep down she's thankful that he doesn't.

Instead, he seems to have left at last. Though he hasn't taken the TARDIS, which is still parked as ever on the opposite side of the street, but there's no sign of him in person. So at least he hadn't lied about it being locked – unless he's sticking around voluntarily, an idea she finds difficult to imagine.

In the meantime, the whole point of this exercise had been to allow her to get on with her life. So that's what she does.

Plus, she has to concentrate whilst cooking, lest she cut herself whilst trying to chop meat or burn herself on the stove. That leaves her less time to think, or reminisce, or wallow in her own emotions. Which is definitely a good thing right now.

She gets out a bunch of carrots, the last ingredient she needs to round off the beef stew she's making, and starts chopping. Though given how shaky her hands are, she has to be careful.

Chop.

To be honest, as far as emotional messes go, this had been fairly clean – her last boyfriend had taken a week to get rid of. That had been no fun, and it had only been through a few pointed reminders that she was no harmless wallflower than she'd shaken him off.

Chop.

In this case, she's gone from sleeping in the Doctor's arms to alone but okay – not brilliant, but okay – in the space of less than a day.

Then again, it wasn't an actual break-up.

Chop.

Indeed, now that she thinks about it – and she isn't quite sure why she is – it's lifted a burden. Chop. It's proof, once and for all, that she needs, genuinely needs, no one. Chop. Not Rory. Chop. Not the Doctor. Chop.

No one. She has other people in her life, of course: Sophia, Laura, her other friends, her family... but she doesn't need them. Hardly any of them had been there during her childhood – well, one of them anyway – and she'd gotten by. She'll get by now as well.

She's become what she's always hoped to be: completely and utterly self-reliant.

She pours the roughly sliced carrot into the simmering pot, savouring the rich aroma rising from the stew. Really, these are the things that matter; aliens and other universes and historical legends are well and good, but this what counts. Life.

She starts on the next carrot, and is halfway through when there's a loud knock on the door.

She jumps, startled slightly, and in the process cuts her hand with the knife.

"Ow – fuck," she hisses, immediately burying the injured hand in her apron. It soon turns out to be a bad idea, as red stains soon appear in the cream-coloured fabric, so she quickly starts searching the drawers for a cloth.

There's another knock, this time more insistent. She ignores it, a little hot spark of anger building inside her. If it's him-

"Amelia, I know you're in there," a familiar female voice drifts in through the open window. "Can you open up?"

Soph.

She quickly jogs over to the door – whilst busily wrapping her bleeding hand in a makeshift bandage – and wrenches it open.

"Thanks, I just wanted to – are you alright?" Sophia asks, noting with obvious concern the red patch in the midriff of Amelia's apron as well as the stained, messy wrappings around her left hand. Then, as if struck by some horrible possibility, her face goes bone-white and her eyes widen to saucers. "What did you—"

"No, no, it's fine," Amelia cuts over her with a reassuring smile, ushering her friend in. "Seriously. Just an accident."

"Alright." Sophia doesn't look awfully convinced but she steps inside, before meeting Amelia's eyes with a deepening frown. "You look terrible, like you've been crying."

"Really?" Amelia touches her cheeks lightly to check, and to her surprise finds them rather moist – has she been in tears this whole time? She's so emotionally worn that she honestly must have missed it. "Oh."

"Laura told me about what happened." Of course she has. "It's been a tough day, hasn't it?"

"A bit, yeah." Bloody hell, she must look a state if it's that obvious. "Want to come in?"

"I'd love to." They both head inside, and Sophia soon finds the merrily simmering stew. "Mm, smells good." She then notices the spots of blood on the chopping board. "Oh – right. Was that because of me?"

"You startled me a bit, yeah. I was doing carrots at the time."

Sophia picks up the large kitchen knife, which has a thin streak of red on its blade, before eyeing Amelia carefully over the top, those kind but probing eyes searching out god-knows-what – probably her hands, which are still trembling. "You aren't invincible, Amelia, you know that?"

Amelia grinds her teeth – sure, she might not be, but since when has mere impossibility stopped her trying? "Look, if you're going to-"

"I'm not. You know I'm not." Sophia sighs, an exhausted, almost dejected sound. "Okay. But you don't mind it I help finish up, do you?"

"Of course not," Amelia replies with a manufactured half-smile. Well, now that Sophia's here, she could use the company, and it's tough to cook with an injured hand. "But did you want a chat too?"

"I did," Sophia says, finding and taking the spare apron whilst Amelia finds a bottle of wine.

"How's Laura, by the way?"

"She's still upset after you hung up so quickly — no, don't apologise," Sophia warns when she notices Amelia opening mouth. Christ, she can be predictable when she's coming off an emotional extreme. "She's upset over what happened, not over what you did. She'll be around in a few minutes."

It mollifies the guilt, but Amelia isn't totally convinced that Sophia is being truthful. Nonetheless, she leaves it for now – no point picking any fights this evening, and if Laura is indeed coming around she can ask the question in person. "Right. So, what's up?"

"Just popping by to see how you're doing, that's all," Sophia says, accepting the offered wine glass as Amelia takes the seat opposite. She looks around. "Where's the Doctor?"

"Gone," Amelia says brusquely as she takes the seat opposite.

"By 'gone', do you mean-"

"I kicked him out? Yeah."

Sophia's eyes widen momentarily in surprise, but she soon settles and studies her friend in surprise.

"May I ask-"

"He tried to put me and Rory back together, alright?" Amelia interrupts, a bit harshly but she doesn't care. It's too raw, too fresh for it to be otherwise. "So he isn't living here anymore. That's really it."

For a moment, she wonders if that's true, whether it is as simple as the Doctor having tried to put her and the Doctor back together, and indeed whether that's precisely what had happened – but it doesn't matter. She's made her choice and she's absolutely sure that it's the right choice.

She has no regrets, not this time.

And Sophia understands – or, at least, knows Amelia well enough to know that she won't be revealing anything more. It's one of the prerequisites to being a friend of hers: knowing her many, many boundaries.

"So will you be okay?"

Amelia pauses, thinks, and smiles. A small, gentle smile, but determined. In control.

"Yeah. I think so."

Laura arrives half an hour later. Within seconds, Amelia is apologising profusely for hanging up hours before – apologies that Laura point-blank refuses to accept.

"But still," she adds, only with the merest hint of grump, "don't do that to me again."

Dinner is pleasant enough after that, but also a little cold. Sophia and Laura — especially Laura — want to talk, but Amelia is emotionally and physically drained, so she puts her guard up and doesn't let it down all evening.

Well, she knows they'll understand. They're have to – they're her friends, after all. In any case, within half an hour of them leaving, she's collapsed onto the mattress and — amazingly — nodding off, having successfully navigated her way through her first Doctor-free evening of the year.

But she was counting on that – she didn't think she'd have any problems with the first evening. No, it's the first morning afterwards that's the trickiest.

She had expected that, of course. No decision is without consequences, and she's more or less pushed a great big reset button on her life.

Actually, now that she considers it, that's a pretty good metaphor – this isn't like four years ago, not in the slightest. She isn't irrevocably changing her life, she's just bringing it back to where it was just a few months ago. Even so, it surprises her just how settled she'd become into her routine – and hence, how jarring it is when she's wrenched out of it.

Mostly it's really dumb, mundane things that she notices.

First off, she wakes up dangerously late for a work day, having become used to having the Doctor as a walking, talking alarm clock. She then scrabbles around blearily for a good five minutes looking for clothes – before remembering that the Doctor had left them neatly folded in the laundry downstairs.

Then it's breakfast, which she'd failed to budget for in her morning schedule because, of course, he had made usually made breakfast for her since Boxing Day. The coffee she makes herself is decidedly inferior to his blend too – where had he learned how to make it like that? Maybe she'll get Melody to take her there one day. If she sees her again, that is.

But she manages, and all those stupid little annoyances aren't about to worry her. No, what does put her off is that she does all this in complete silence. Not a whisper, not a word leaves her lips – why would it? She's alone.

It's amazing how silence can be the most obvious, the most intrusive noise of all.

There is, however, one lesson that Amelia has had drilled into her again and again and again: causality. Action, reaction. Event, consequence. In this case, the event was her abrupt disappearance from work the previous day. The consequence is a meeting with her boss.

In fairness, it could be worse. Indeed, part of her was expecting to be fired on the spot, or at a minimum yelled at, but instead she's just met with silence. Long, uncomfortable silence.

She shifts nervously, waiting for her editor to speak or move — hell, anything but the unyielding, unceasing stare from her editor. She clears her throat, doing her best cool-and-composed impression. It doesn't quite work.

"So…" she says, once the silence has become definitively unbearable.

"You know what this is about." He doesn't even sound mad, which in some ways makes it even worse.

"I had personal shit come up, I had to go deal with it," she explains, surprising herself at how, well, truthful she is. "It won't happen again." She's sure of that.

"You've said that before." He sounds — he sounds resigned, and that realisation instantly quickens Amelia's pulse.

"I know. I mean — I know this happens a fair bit, but I swear I'm sorting it out and I—"

"Woah, easy," her editor interjects, raising his hands in a disarming gesture. "You're not being fired, if that's what you're worried about."

She won't admit it out loud, but that's precisely what she was worried about. Losing the Doctor is one thing, losing her job—

"Okay. Thanks," she replies, her voice slightly thickened by the bloodrush. Breathe, Amelia. "I mean it, though. It's not going to happen again, I dealt with it."

He stares at her for a second, then two. She shifts in her seat again.

"Alright," he says with an air of resigned finality. "But I'll hold you to that, you understand? We need you fully on board, Amelia. You do valuable work here."

Minutes later, she's at her desk and preparing herself for another day crammed into an office cubicle. Her first order of business is to prepare the background package for an assignment to Taiwan — though not her assignment, of course. Her work is too valuable for that.

Still, it's at least something she can draw on her experience from — she'd been to the Takoro Gorge once, a breathtaking marble canyon wreathed in pristine mountain fog in the island's east. Not that she'd had a lot of time to stop and admire the view, unfortunately, as she and the Doctor were being chased by fire-breathing bats at the time—

Doctor-free, remember?

She shakes her head and resumes her normal life.

Overall, she manages.

She deals with it. She identifies the things she needs to fix and she fixes them. Packs them into boxes. Locks them away — thinks about throwing away the key too. She has a job, and a life, and damn if anything is going to get in the way of that.

She spends the next three weeks absolutely fixated on everything that is not the Doctor. Everything normal, everything simple, everything earthbound. Work. Shopping. Clothes. Parties. Family. Friends.

And it works. It really does work. She convinces her editor to start up her weekly column again, even if the actual material is all recycled from memory. She starts going to all the cocktail parties she'd skipped because the Doctor had an apocalypse on hand, and she's on time at the bar every Friday.

Of course, that means she starts drinking again, but hey. What is alcohol for if not washing away her troubles?

"Amelia..." Sophia says in a warning tone when Amelia airs this, but Amelia cuts her off.

"Not tonight, Soph, alright?" Another shot goes down. "Just let me me have this."

Sophia doesn't reply.

In the next month or so, Amelia finds other ways to ignore his absence, too: like the radio in her kitchen, providing the constant stream of incessant chatter to fill the spaces between her many walls; like her regular visits to her oft-neglected family; like her writing of applications for any job in the industry that actually involves real journalism.

The sum total of it? She manages, for the most part. For the overwhelming majority of her time, she's calm and collected and dealing with whatever shit comes her way. Yes, every now and then she spends an evening on the couch with wine glass in hand, staring out the window at invisible stars, but that's just the evening. For the rest of the day, she doesn't think about him, she doesn't feel the gaping hole that was once him and she certainly doesn't wait for him—

"Amelia?"

She starts, broken out of her train of thought by a voice whose origin she can't place. She blinks, looks up, and sees Laura frowning at her. Another blink, and it comes back — she's at the pub again. Laura and a few of her friends are here, and Amelia had allowed herself to be dragged along for reasons she can't quite remember. Right.

She isn't sure why it took so long for her to work out where she was, but she suspects the answer has something to do with the glass in her hand. And the one before that, and the one before that.

"Sorry. Drifted off," she says, composing herself.

"You haven't said anything for, like, an hour." Laura's frown isn't going away, and it's making Amelia feel more than a little uncomfortable. "Everything okay?"

"Sure. Why wouldn't it be?"

"You tell me. You've barely spoken all night."

Amelia bristles a little at that, although manages to keep her cool. Letting people care about her in public isn't something that comes naturally to her, and she's not up for anything unnatural tonight. "It's fine, Laura. Just tired."

Laura eyes her carefully, as if probing Amelia's largely expressionless-if-uncoordinated features for any cracks or weaknesses, but she holds firm. Unlike her wife, Amelia can keep Laura out if she needs to. Or if they're drunk. Which they are.

Either way, there's some amazingly fascinating topic of conversation involving one of her mates whose name she swears starts with M, and Laura's quickly drawn away, leaving Amelia largely in solitude with her glass — which she suddenly notices is empty.

She ignores the bartender's stare when she asks for another drink.

The next morning, she wakes up in her bed — and immediately regrets it.

She's not sure precisely when she got a fire alarm instead of a bedside clock, but the noise is like an auditory pipe-bomb detonated against her ears. Her hand reaches blindly for her bedside table — only to have it click off without her intervention.

"Good morning," a gentle, soft voice says, one she recognises as Sophia's.

She sits up slowly, rubbing her head, small explosions detonating behind her eyes with ever move she makes. She hasn't had a hangover like this in a long, long time. "Hey, Soph. What, uh—" God, she feels horrendous— "What time is it?"

"Ten past eleven."

For some reason, a hot rush builds in her spine, electrifying and stiffening as it goes — and then she remembers. It's Friday. "Shit."

"Amelia—" Sophia places a hand on her shoulder, but Amelia's already throwing off the blanket in rapidly rising panic. If she skips work again—

"Amelia, stop." With that, Sophia's grip on her shoulders becomes too strong to ignore and Amelia has no choice but to acquiesce. "It's okay, I called in sick for you."

She relaxes, but only somewhat. "You're supposed to be at work too, aren't you?"

"It's my day off." Sophia smiles, but in a way that doesn't diminish the obvious concern in her eyes. "But I got the feeling that you'll have some explaining to do tomorrow."

"Yeah." This isn't the first time she's had to unexpectedly call in sick due to extreme hangover. It's not great, but she's no angel — and a damn good thing too, given past experience. "What, um, what happened?"

"Not much. Laura called me at about midnight to say you were on the verge of passing out, so I came by and drove you home."

And on cue, the guilt. "Shit — I didn't mean to—"

"It's fine, you looked tired more than ill," Sophia cuts her off, in that inimitably silk-and-steel manner of hers. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I've been hit by a bus," she grumbles, sitting up properly now, her head still in her hands. "I — urgh, I need coffee."

As if conjured up by magic, a steaming mug of coffee appears under her nose. Amelia thanks her friend – before the penny drops. The staying over, the alarm clock, the pick-me-up coffee... "You're really, really mad at me, aren't you?"

Sophia nips her lower lip between her teeth, glances away a little. That's a sure sign if Amelia even needed one that, yeah, Sophia is not her usual happy and sympathetic self today. At least, not completely.

"No," Sophia lies eventually. "But we do need to talk."

"About what?"

"You know what." And sure, Amelia does.

"I told you," she says firmly – at least, as firmly as she can under the conditions – "I did what I needed to do. I'm not regretting it, not for a minute."

"Are we talking about the same thing here? You have—"

A drinking problem—

"—a lot to deal with, I know," Sophia says, much too calmly for the brightness in her eyes. "But this is the fourth time I've had to do this, Amelia."

"Look, I'm sorry, I don't mean to–"

"Just tell me what's going on. You're my best friend; I need to understand."

"I—" She stops, waits, catches her words on her tongue. She ought to be careful here, choose her words with precision, be absolutely disciplined about what she reveals–

Fuck it.

"Look, I don't think you can."

"Amelia—"

"Let me finish. I don't expect you to get it. Or Laura, or Michael, or work, or mum or anyone else. And that's okay," she says, the hard edge dropping from her voice as she continues, "because it's not something you can really get unless you've had it, you know?"

A pause. Then a sigh. "This is about him."

Amelia shakes her head rapidly, decisively. "No. It's about me."

"It's been six weeks, Amelia."

"Six weeks is nothing." Try fourteen years. Or hell, thirty-seven... if her dreams are to be believed. "What I've given up... it's not really anything I can properly describe."

"You told me about what you did, about going to space and all that."

"But that's just telling you. It's nothing like the real thing. Like," she starts, before pausing for a moment, letting the images come oh-so-easily to her mind's eye. "I've met Vincent van Gogh. Actually met him, hugged him, and watched him paint." She smiles a little, but sad, bittersweet. "Tried to make his life a little better. And space, space isn't just all black and empty, you know, but full of light and life and, and blues and reds and–"

She stops, catching herself just before she tumbles over the edge into her own personal vast, swirling ocean of memory. Dimly, she's aware of a little prickling on her cheek – she touches it, and finds it moist.

"Sorry," she mutters. "But all of that – that's what I'm giving up, and more."

Sophia eyes Amelia closely, her shrewd eyes probing, examining – before she nods and takes Amelia's hand in her own. "But you said that you don't regret it."

Amelia doesn't reply straight away.

"No," she says eventually, slowly. She's chosen this life and, for once, it's something which is completely, inviolably hers. No one can take that away from her – no one will take that away from her. "But it still hurts, you know?"

Sophia holds her hand, but her touch is cold.

Laura isn't quite so forgiving, unfortunately.

Though to be fair, that's probably an exaggeration — Amelia knows that Sophia is very, well, disappointed in her despite her little pep talk, and although she's obviously understanding and all that, Amelia definitely notices a change in her behaviour. Only subtly, of course, as Sophia isn't really known or indeed especially capable of anything more than that, but there's definitely a sense in which Sophia is keeping her distance.

If, at least, by "keeping her distance" one meant "barely answering her texts".

If Amelia were to guess — and she's not sure she trusts her judgement enough to do so — she'd say that Sophia still doesn't quite appreciate just how big a deal it is for her to be firewalling the Doctor from her life. It's not exactly surprising, of course, given that the initial picture Amelia had inadvertently given her of the Doctor was of a wrecking ball who came in, dazzled her with extraordinary sights, and completely fucked her over as a result — accurate, but not in all the ways that mattered.

Laura, on the other hand, does seem to get that, incredibly. Which is why she evidently feels absolutely comfortable in giving Amelia both barrels when they next meet. It's the height of summer so they're at a coffee shop, but for some reason Amelia can't feel anything but lukewarm.

Not that Laura's blunt home truths are tailor made to make her feel all warm and fuzzy inside, of course.

"I'm sorry, okay?" Amelia groans over her coffee, feeling both frustrated and justly terrible over the whole situation. "I get it. I fucked up last week."

"Amelia, If it was just once, I wouldn't give a shit. But it's not and you know it."

Amelia opens her mouth to reply, only to find that Laura is a bit too, well, correct for her to find a good one. So she doesn't, and simply lets Laura roll on.

"Like, seriously," Laura continues, taking the open opportunity, "You would not want to hear what my mates were saying as Soph was coming over to pick you up."

Okay, that prickles. "You really think I give a—"

"Oh, quit that crap, alright? You can't just close yourself off to everyone that you don't completely and totally trust, that's just dumb," Laura says, managing to sound both wise and extremely cross at the same time, a rare feat. "Soph and I aren't gonna be your Doctor replacements that you can lean on all the time, which in case you hadn't noticed is why Soph is leaving you alone."

She had twigged that, actually. At least, Sophia had intimated as much in the one text she'd actually received since: if you really me, then I'll be here. "It just – it's dumb, but it kind of feels like you guys are–"

"Abandoning you?" Laura's voice has finally softened, as has her expression, and Amelia can see the apology written on her brow. "Look, I'll talk to Soph. But you kind of get our point, right?"

Amelia nods.

"And you know that if you really want to, you can just come over to our place and cry yourself dry on our couch, right?"

Another nod.

"But I know that's not what you actually want," Laura says firmly and with total conviction. "So that's why we're giving you this space. You know, for you to make your own life."

And she appreciates that, she really does — it's what she's wanted for so very, very long. She's okay with not having their full understanding, so long as she has their support.

There's a problem, though. "Laura, right now my life is basically pushing papers and google searching." Work has not exactly improved on the holding-her-interest front in the last few weeks, and she's really starting to get towards the end of her patience on that front.

Laura looks sympathetic. "Still no luck, huh?"

Amelia makes a face. "Nothing. It's almost as if it's hard to get decent jobs in an industry that's collapsing — oh, stupid thing, hang on-" Her phone has started mid-sentence, and she has to remind herself that it's just an inanimate machine in order to stop herself giving it a death stare. "Yeah?"

"Good afternoon. Is this Amelia Pond?" It's a woman's voice, smooth, sharp, business-like.

"Uh, yeah. Sorry, who am I talking to?" Strangers calling her mobile isn't exactly something she's used to, she tends to not give out her mobile number unless—

"My name is Rebecca Cochrane, I'm the editor-in-chief of the Hyperion. How are you today?"

"I'm, er—"

Hungover—

Depressed—

Lonely—

"—good." She wracks her brain for the moment, trying to work out where she'd heard the name Hyperion. It comes to her after a second or two: an online-only global affairs "magazine", with an emphasis on long-form articles. Right up Amelia's street, but she hadn't seriously expected it to go anywhere, so she guesses this is a courtesy call. "Um, did you get my application?"

"We did indeed, and–"

I'm sorry, but we received many outstanding applicants and unfortunately yours didn't quite make the cut–

"—we were extremely impressed with both your background and your sample pieces you sent us. You do seem to be, as both you and your current editor said, a 'damn good journalist'."

Amelia sits up straighter — much straighter. "Really?"

"Really. If you're still interested, we'd very much like to have you in for an interview, Miss Pond."

Her mouth is hanging slightly open, her eyes are wide and her mind is blank with shock. "Yeah. That would be great."

Opposite her, Laura smiles.