The rain hadn't stopped all week.
It fell like a lullaby across London's tired bones; soft, persistent, and mournful. The kind of rain that seeped into your soul and stayed there. Odette Moreau sat curled into the corner of a cramped café on Kentish Town Road, where the bell over the door chimed dully every time someone entered, shaking off umbrellas and muttering apologies.
It smelled like wet concrete, over-brewed tea, and someone's soaked trench coat. A playlist of slow indie music buzzed faintly under the hum of conversation. Not many people spoke, though. Just quiet nods, bored glances, and the low hiss of the espresso machine steaming milk. Odette fit into the scene perfectly, quiet, melancholic.
Her red hair, darker from the mist, was pulled into a lazy twist, though damp curls escaped to brush her cheeks. Pale skin almost glowed under the amber light, and her hazel eyes, framed by long lashes, blinked slowly as they traced the movement outside. She wore a thick, secondhand coat, the buttons mismatched, the hem damp and fraying. It wasn't that she didn't care. She just didn't have the energy to anymore.
The cigarette between her fingers wasn't lit. It was her last one, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to use it now or save it for the kind of breakdown that made her curl up in the shower and cry silently, like she sometimes did after job rejections.
Instead, she tucked it behind her ear like a hairpin. We'll save it for later.
Twenty-three, broke, and armed with a degree in European Art History from a university that had promised far more than it delivered. Since graduating four months ago, her life had unraveled with the precision of a loose thread. She'd spent the first month applying for museum internships. Then freelance writing gigs. Then retail. Then, shamefully, nothing. The debt crept up slowly like ivy on a crumbling wall.
Her part-time job at the vintage bookstore barely covered bus fare and gas-station dinners.
Odette blinked at the rain. Her tea had gone cold. She wrapped her fingers around the chipped mug anyway. Her phone buzzed.
1 new notification
Landlord: FINAL REMINDER – rent due. You're two weeks behind.
She didn't open the message. She knew what it said.
The attic room she rented wasn't meant for people. It used to be storage, judging by the fact that half the ceiling was slanted and leaking. The only window was crusted with grime, and when it rained, it wailed like a haunted thing. But it was hers, at least barely. And she was dangerously close to losing it.
Odette reached for her bag and pulled out a half-squashed pack of nicotine gum. Her counselor had suggested it after she confessed she was using her pills again to sleep. Nothing heavy. Just anti-anxiety tabs she found from an old flatmate's stash, left behind like forgotten coins. She knew it was a bad idea. That's why she stopped. Or tried to.
She chewed slowly and stared down at her reflection in the dark window. Her freckles were still visible despite the gloom. Her lips were dry. She looked like someone whose hope had quietly slipped out the door one night and never returned.
The café was almost empty now.
She stood, pulling on gloves with a missing fingertip, and stepped back into the gray evening. Her boots splashed in a puddle as she turned toward her street. The wind picked up. Her hair stuck to her cheek.
Home was fifteen minutes away, past the bakery that had closed down last winter and the mural of a lion someone had spray-painted with the words FIGHT BACK. She passed the alley where the local teens smoked and where she once kissed a stranger for a lighter. She passed the corner market where the clerk smiled too wide and asked if she was French or just fancy.
When she finally reached her street, the rain had slowed to a drizzle.
The flat's front door stuck, as always. She shoved it open with her shoulder, climbed two flights of creaking stairs, and unlocked the attic with a key that barely worked anymore. The room greeted her with damp air, the faint scent of mildew, and a flickering bulb that hadn't been replaced in months.
She toed off her boots. Shrugged off the coat. Sat on the mattress on the floor and let her bones sigh.
The radiator clunked but didn't warm. She doesn't remember a time it's ever worked.
She reached for the cigarette behind her ear but her phone buzzed again. She almost didn't check it. But something, boredom perhaps, or desperation, or perhaps just instincts nudged her to.
Miriam:
Feel like getting wasted? My boss screamed at me and I think my soul left my body. Club Nova at 9. You in?
She stared at the message blankly till the words blurred out.
Miriam. Her old roommate. A perpetually tired graphic designer with a soft spot for cheap eyeliner and emotional destruction. Misery loved company, and Miriam was the only person in London who understood how it felt to look good on paper and feel like trash in reality.
She blinked to clear her vision before texting back: Sure. Why the hell not?
Leaning back into her mattress, she exhaled through her nose, and looked up at the peeling ceiling. Maybe she couldn't fix her life, but she could drown it in something loud, dark, and forgettable.