But I needed the job.

That is the whole trap of it, the thing that people who have never been poor do not understand.

I could have refused, made a scene, quit on the spot, told Julian exactly what I thought of him.

And then I would have had no job, no income, no way to make rent in two weeks, and Chloe would have paid for my pride.

That is the sentence that keeps people like me in jobs like that, absorbing treatment we should never absorb: someone I love would have paid for my pride.