9:45.

And the cold in me sharpened into something with an edge, because 9:45 meant I had fifteen minutes, and fifteen minutes changed everything.

I want to describe that cold accurately, because it was not rage.

Rage is hot and stupid and spends itself fast; what I felt was closer to the opposite — a clarity so complete it was almost restful.

For a decade I had lived inside a low, constant static of accommodation, the background hum of a woman always half-managing a man’s moods, always softening, always adjusting the temperature of a room to suit him.

And in the car, with my hair in ruins and my marriage dead on the floor behind me, that static simply switched off.