The Weight of It

The studio was the kind of room that had been built for someone else and never quite adapted. High windows, originally a warehouse, let in a rain that was not so heavy it was dramatic but heavy enough to be an opinion. The floor was polished concrete with a crack that ran from the door to the kitchenette and stopped, as if even the crack had decided that far was enough. On the wall a single sheet of tracing paper was pinned at the corners with tape, and on the desk, between two lamps that did not quite reach the centre, was a model of a theatre.

Celia was sitting at the desk. She had been sitting at the desk since ten in the morning, and she had a mug of tea on the right of the model and a mug of tea on the left, and both of them were cold. She was forty, she was an architect, and she had a building that could not stand.