“What situation?” I ask in a weak voice, and my heart beats immediately against my chest as if I had just run up five hundred stairs.
“I have my lawyers already on it. While it will not change anything regarding the headlines, I will use every single one of my resources to have your life impacted in the slightest way possible.”
“What situation?” I ask, now harsher.
“Someone photographed us at Hamilton’s,” she says, and I’m spiralling down.
She hands me a tablet with screenshots from tabloids and online magazines.
Gold digger or groomed? The shocking affair between Victoria Fitzroy (60) and a 27-year-old primary school teacher.
From classroom to cashmere: How a primary school teacher, Mia Phillips, slept her way into high-society
Inappropriate! Teachers' secret sex life with Victoria Fitzroy
SCANDAL! Victoria Fitzroy’s plaything teaches your children
I can’t breathe properly. My fingers and nose tingle, and somehow everything is suddenly so far away.
There’s a picture of me with Victoria’s thumb in my mouth during our dinner. I stare at it, read the headlines again, and the only thing I feel is coldness. In my limbs and entire body.
This can’t be happening. It must be a nightmare.
Everyone will read this. My colleagues. Parents of the kids. My mother.
I am ruined.
Crushed.
Destroyed.
I don’t even feel myself as a body right now.
There is only this dreadful horror sucking me into the depths.
A hand on my forearm.
Is it even my forearm?
I can’t feel it. Everything tingles.
Suddenly, a slap on my cheek. Heated pain burns on my skin.
“Are you bloody mad?” I shout and jump up.
“I told you to listen to the end, and you not only did not do that, but you are also freaking out.”
“Of course I am!” I shout, words pouring from my mouth. “It’s not you they’re going after, it’s me. You, with all your money andresources, they can’t touch you, I bet scandal is what makes you even more desirable to many. But I? I’ll be dismissed! My life is destroyed! And you do bloody what, slap my face?”
I know I am looking like a mad person right now with my fists clenched, wide eyes, and a body I can’t feel in its entirety.
“Mia,” she says, “I did so to stop the spiralling. Now, you’re turning your rage outside, not inside, which is good.”
“URGH!” I shout so loudly it rings painfully in my own ears because I have no other words. There is so much anger. No, not anger. Rage. I don’t know who I am anymore.
I need to get out.
Out of the clothes.
