It had been there all along.

Twelve years of being told, in a thousand small silent ways, that my proper sphere was the home had not actually taken it from me.

It had only convinced me to stop using it.

My colleagues did not know I was in the middle of a divorce.

To them I was simply the new associate director, sharp and capable, and being seen that way, by people who had no idea about the wreckage at home, was its own kind of medicine.

Julian had spent years slowly convincing me, without ever quite saying it, that I had become small.