Part 4 — On Christmas Eve, my eight-year partner announced he was leaving for another woman, but his face changed when he saw my calmness

Someone tried to cancel your departure in your name…

Amalia’s words remained in the room, like the shards of a fallen glass.

“Who?” I asked.

“The airline is requesting additional confirmation. The request sent to your email came from your address.”

Adrian looked toward the door.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“No one has accused you yet,” the lawyer told him. “But put your phone on the table now.”

“Who are you to talk to me like that?”

“The person who stopped you from destroying someone else’s life.”

Adrian did not put down the phone. Instead, he stared at the screen. His fingers began moving quickly.

Amalia said calmly:

“If you do not stop right now, we will add this to the statement.”

He stopped.

A few seconds later Clara’s phone rang. She looked at the screen and immediately turned it off.

“Who was it?” Adrian asked.

“The bank.”

“Why are they calling you?”

Clara looked into his eyes.

“Because you have also submitted an application in my name.”

The color left Adrian’s face.

“It was only temporary.”

“Were you using my signature too?”

“You can’t understand everything.”

“No, I understand everything now.”

She picked up her bag and left the room. She gripped the red door handle tightly, but this time she did not look back.

Adrian remained in front of me.

“Elene, please.”

“No.”

“Was eight years nothing?”

“It was something. That is why it hurts.”

“I didn’t do it because of Clara.”

“You didn’t do it because of me either.”

The lawyer played the recording again. This time Adrian’s words sounded sharper in the room.

“Elene will sign everything. The main thing is not to scare her.”

Adrian stood motionless.

His own voice no longer came from his own mouth. Now he heard it from someone else—cold, calculated, certain that I would always stay.

“Can it be stopped?” he asked quietly.

“No,” I told him.

The recording continued.

“The apartment will remain with me, and Clara will move in after Christmas.”

Adrian lowered his eyes.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“That is exactly what you said.”

“Then I was thinking badly.”

“You were thinking badly for eight years?”

He could not find an answer.

The next morning the lawyer filed an application with the bank. They froze the additional loan process, stopped the attempt to sell the apartment, and sent all the documents for examination. Adrian’s phone did not stop ringing.

His mother was calling me.

“My child, you shouldn’t destroy a family because of one mistake.”

“It wasn’t one mistake.”

“He is very nervous.”

“I was nervous for eight years too.”

“Where will you go?”

“Where I will decide my life myself.”

“Adrian will get lost without you.”

I stood by the window and watched the cars floating along the street.

“Then for the first time he will have to find himself.”

I hung up the phone.

Three days later I returned to the apartment to take my things. Adrian was sitting in the living room, but now his height, his voice, and the space he occupied in the room no longer frightened me.

The bedroom wardrobe was half empty. My dresses were already packed in the suitcase. Under the Christmas tree lay the old watch I had bought for him.

Adrian looked at the watch.

“You’re not taking it?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because it should serve as a reminder of your father. And I no longer want to be in your family memories.”

He picked up the watch. The bronze-colored dial cracked in his hand when it accidentally hit the corner.

For a moment we both listened to the sound.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Then the watch stopped.

“Elene, stay,” he said.

“No.”

“I’ll return everything.”

“Return what you took. But don’t bring me back.”

Amalia came with me to the airport. She held a small bag, and inside it was the dark green folder that had first turned my life back toward me.

“Are you afraid?” she asked.

“Very.”

“Are you going anyway?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re ready.”

I sat by the window on the plane. When the city became illuminated lines below, for the first time I did not feel that I was leaving something behind.

I felt that I was taking something back.

The first weeks in London were not easy. I lived in a small room where a brick wall could be seen from the window. In the morning I practiced in a cold hall, at midday I went to rehearsal, and in the evening I returned so tired that I ate bread and soup for dinner.

But every morning was mine.

I did not ask a single person whether it was permissible to dream.

Three months later I danced in my first performance. Behind the stage my hands were trembling. The audience’s sound came from far away, like waves of the sea.

When the music began, my body itself knew what it had to do.

At the final moment of the movement I raised my head and saw Amalia’s face in the lights. She held a small paper on which it said: “Don’t stop now.”

After the performance my mother called me.

“Your voice is different,” she told me.

“What kind?”

“Calm.”

“Because I’m no longer waiting for someone to leave me.”

A few weeks later I received a letter from Adrian. It was short.

“I understood everything. Clara left. The problem with the bank was resolved. Your place is still in the house. Come, let’s start again.”

I held the letter in my hand for a long time.

Then I wrote a reply.

“There is no longer a place for me in your house. And there is no longer a place for you in my life. I wish you to deal with your own decisions.”

I pressed the send button, and for the first time I did not need to explain to anyone why.

Six months later I rented a small apartment near the theater. I grew rosemary in a pot by the kitchen window. Every evening I watered it, then turned on music in the room and practiced.

On the day of the first snow, my neighbor’s little girl, Nora, knocked on my door. She held a drawing: a woman on a stage, with her arms spread wide.

“Is this you?” I asked.

“Yes. You are no longer sad.”

I attached the drawing to the refrigerator.

That same evening I accidentally came across the bronze-colored watch in a drawer. I had not taken it to the airport, but Adrian had mailed it to me several weeks later. The glass was broken, but the small indentation by the six was still visible.

The watch no longer worked.

I did not repair it.

Instead, I placed it on the windowsill, beside the rosemary pot.

When time stopped, I began living for the first time.