On Ritual, Rot, & Rescue Pt. 01

She stands in the doorframe with that red hair in a state of rebellion, like rust lifted in weather, and her green eyes doing their restless dance--glancing, dropping, darting back. She can't be more than twenty, the skin on her face a soft thing still, unhardened by years or bad light. Her legs--long in black leotards that peek above the waist of loose, stone-washed jeans--seem pitched inward, her feet canted like ballet slippers gone slack, the posture of someone trained into quiet contortion.

I'm a veteran of this little ritual--the room shown, the polite refusals, the foot-shufflers with full eyes and empty wallets. I watch her with the dull alertness that nursing once demanded. Three weeks wasted. Six viewings. And this girl, Imogen, steps through the door like breath finding its chest again. Her body, lean and accustomed to space, veers towards the corners first--along the skirting board, the play of afternoon light on off-white paint, the dulled scar in the carpet by the sill where furniture once sat heavy and unmoved. She bends there slightly, not looking at me, but at the window. Her voice comes warm but casual, like a hand passed across linen.

"I love it," Imogen says. "It's perfect. There's plenty of space."

It's true. The room is the largest in the house. Big enough to call indulgent, especially when compared to the narrow-skulled lounge downstairs with its sunken couch and crooked blinds. I watch Imogen drift, a finger trailing along the walls in a motion not quite reverent, not quite searching. A dancer's way of touching--a method of knowing with the skin.

"I had it as my room for a time," I offer. I cross my arms again, tighter this time, my forearms grazing the edge of my chest. "But it's wasted on me. Just a place to sleep between shifts."

Imogen stops at the window. Her palm presses flat against the pane, the condensation smudging slightly beneath her fingers. Sheffield lies beyond--steel-spined, sky a hard grey shelf above chimneys. The light finds her jaw and the gentle tension in her cheek.

I shift my weight back, only half a step but enough. The girl's gaze, when it holds, is oddly deep and flat. I have spent two decades among bodies touched by pain and morphine, by God and misadventure, and can tell when something flinches beneath the skin, some kind of light, undirected and errant.

"References first," I say. "Deposit. The usual things."

"Yes, of course." She's already thumbing her phone, nimble and absorbed. "I can send them now. My dance instructor will vouch for me. And my last landlady. Though she might be a bit..." She pauses, eyes averted.

"A bit what?"

"Nothing. Just, you know how some people get weird about dancers? All the practice, the music?" She looks up through lashes, not coy so much as calculated. "I promise I'm quiet when I need to be."

I should tell her no. No, thank you. No more clutter. No more stories that fall apart after three weeks and one broken teacup. But there's something here--in the face, in the posture, those legs crossed from the hips--that feels familiar, in the way a scar might remind you of who you were when it came.

"Tea?" I say.

Her face brightens. "Please."

The kettle complains as it warms. Imogen moves like something just released from its case--not hurried but unfurling. She touches cupboard handles as if they're braille, fingertips grazing tile, formica, the rim of my old breadbin. I take two mugs down from beside the sink, the ceramic warm still from the light.

"Sugar?"

"No, thanks. Just milk." Imogen settles into a chair, knee tucked beneath her, small and folded like a napkin set aside. "Do you mind me asking--what's with the rent? It's a big room."

I shrug, feeling the old honesty kick against the newer impulse to lie. "Money isn't everything," I say, though the overdraft sharpens each envelope's fold. "Besides, I don't like the idea of exploiting others."

"So you live here alone?"

"Yes." I pour. The steam rises. "My daughter moved out two years ago. She's at university. Sheffield, actually."

"Oh? What's she studying?"

"Business management." The words don't fall easily; they were never my choice. I had wanted bandages, lives stitched back together. But Chloe had chosen numbers and systems.

"Sounds boring," Imogen says, then lifts a hand to her mouth. "Sorry! I didn't mean..."

A laugh escapes me, dry and involuntary. "No, you're right, it is boring. But I'm guessing it'll end up paying better than dancing."

"Everything pays better than dancing." Imogen cups the mug, both hands around it as if she's afraid the warmth might try to leave. Her wrists are willow-thin, the kind of fragility that tricks you--hiding the blisters, the corded tendons beneath. Her palms, I notice, are rough, the kind of rough you get from touching floors and bars and unforgiving wood again and again until the skin stops protesting.

"But nothing *feels* better," she goes on. "When I'm dancing, it's like... like everything makes sense. Right? Even the pain makes sense."

I'm trained to see pain not as poetry but as symptom--something to be scored, measured, managed--but I resist the tug to classify. My instinct reaches for clipboard and chart. Instead, I watch the young student blow lightly across the tea's surface, stirring small ripples.

Then Imogen's eyes flick down, catch the slogan on my mug, and she laughs, sudden and clean.

"That's funny."

*Nurse by day, zombie by night*, the black letters say, some half-faded from dishwasher wear. I smile, not ashamed of the cliché. It was a gift from Chloe, bought in one of those novelty stores full of fart jokes and sparkly notebooks.

"It also happens to be true," I say. The tea tastes over-steeped, slightly metallic, but I drink anyway, watching Imogen's hands twitch and settle, like nervous birds landing on a sill.

"So when do you usually practice?"

Imogen brightens, answers with a kind of professional precision. "Morning classes start at nine. Then afternoon rehearsals from two till six. Sometimes later if we've got a show coming up." Her spine, even seated, extends like a reed snapping to its full length. "But I do most of my personal practice early. Really early. Like five AM early. Is that... would that be okay?"

My eyebrow rises, involuntary. "Every day?"

"Not Sundays." Imogen shifts forward in the chair, eager. "And I use a practice mat to cushion the jumps. You won't even hear me, I promise. The last place, they said they couldn't, and they were an odd bunch, very quiet and--" She stops, swallows the heat from her voice. "Sorry. I'm doing that thing again. Talking too much."

"No, it's fine." My voice softens, as my gaze drifts to the girl's hands again--one now reaching for her neck, thumb and fingers kneading the muscle just above the collarbone, where tension gathers like lint. The motion is practiced, familiar. Watching her, I imagine her moving through the house in darkness--the hall light off, floors creaking, some spectral shape flitting towards the kitchen for water.

"Five AM is fine. Just keep the music down."

The change in Imogen is instant. Something behind the cheekbones shatters--hunger, relief--before it rebuilds itself into a smile.

"Does that mean...?"

"The room's yours if you want it."

Her face cracks open, just for a second, like something starved catching scent of food. But she pulls it back quickly, that curated joy returning, eyes bright as if lit from somewhere beneath the skin.

"Really? You don't need to check the references?"

I nod, lifting my mug again. "I trust my instincts."

Not entirely true. But close enough.

"Thank you," Imogen says. She moves suddenly, a jerk of joy, and the tea in her mug sloshes against the rim. "May I see the room again? I'd like to measure for curtains, if that's okay?"

We take the stairs. Imogen is up them before I have found the railing, her body springing forward, unburdened. I follow slower, knees chiming their quiet protest, something brittle in the joints that wasn't there a decade ago. I try not to resent it. Try not to count how many more stairs I'll climb like this--not just now, but ever.

The room waits at the end of the corridor, the back of the house sunk into an amber silence. Its single window frames the garden gone to rot--tomato vines shrivelled into claws, the dirt below bruised by too little care, too much weather.

Imogen twirls once, arms half-raised. A dancer's spin, neat and self-aware, cutting through a fog of dust stirred by her motion. I stand in the doorway, watching her. The sight carves something deep in the gut--not envy. Not lust. Something duller, older. The ache of what time forgets to return.

"When can I move in?"

"The weekend?" I offer, careful not to seem too eager. "Give you time to sort things out?"

"What about tomorrow?" Imogen's voice hardens. "I can pay extra."

It's the insistence--the *need*--that catches me off-balance. The voice, too firm for the frame it comes from. I picture Chloe again--that same voice, on the phone, sometimes tearful, sometimes clipped, inside that thin-walled flat where strangers cough and stamp above her dreams.

"Tomorrow then," I say.

Imogen lunges forward, arms locking around my waist. The contact is sudden, warm. Her body radiates heat, the sharp, almost sweet sting of something chemical--hairspray or panic, it's hard to tell. I return the embrace slowly, arms unsure, my touch delayed like an echo in fog.

Then Imogen steps back. Her face has already begun to blush, pink bleeding into the skin above her collar. Her arms cross over her chest, fists tucked in.

"God, I'm really sorry."

I drop my chin, just so, the way my mother did before delivering a line meant to soothe or scold. This time it's neither. I just breathe.

"Well. I'm glad you're happy."

Imogen's face lightens, features softening into something younger, stripped of the adult mask.

After seeing Imogen out, I linger. The room settles around me, the silence thickening like flour in old soup. I walk to the window and throw it wide. The night answers--soft, uncertain, a violin climbing in a nearby flat, the player hesitant, pausing between each phrase like someone still learning where the music lives.

My phone hums. I glance. A text from Chloe.

*Can I borrow some money, please? Need to buy books.*

I stare, thumbs unmoving. Then shut the window and turn. The reflection in the wardrobe mirror catches me--a woman blurred by shift work, with grey just starting at the roots and eyes that have seen too many endings. A woman shaped by her tasks, her tending, her years of staying.

I type, *We'll sort something out*, and send it.

The house quiets as I move through it, not living in the rooms so much as managing them. A custodian of their echoes. Behind my wardrobe, I find my old diary--slim, bent at the spine, its pages filled with small, neat worry. Lists written at 2am when Chloe was small, when coughs were still crises and sleep came in slices.

I start a new one.

*Bedsheets*

*Spare key*

*Noise after 9*

*Visitors -- one at a time*

*Don't ask too much*

*Don't give too little*

Light shifts. The sun's last reach stretches across the walls, and I see it--how a dancer might reclaim the corners, how movement might rise where stillness had lived too long. My hand brushes the cracked plaster near the window. My thumb catches at its edge, as if feeling for the pulse beneath.

"Well," I say, not to myself, but to the house, to whatever hears, "here we go."