Status Updates From Our Hideous Progeny

The difference between a proper young lady and a beastly little thing was that ladies were never angry, they took their moods and wove them into lace, stuffed them into pillows. They learned to hold their tongue. But I have always been a beastly little thing at heart, it seems. "Finish your damned article on your own," I snapped.

It was a subject of constant debate between the two of us, whether the curtains ought to be left open or shut to prevent the books from fading. Evidently I won that day - for it was through a haze of that rare London sunshine that I watched through the doorway as an envelope slid from the letterbox and landed with a gentleness that did not match the gravity of its contents, on the chequered hallway floor.