The Placeholder

~Daphne~

I had waited until two in the morning.

I had sat in the armchair in my wing with my coffee going cold and my eyes on the corridor and my ears trained on every sound in the house—a door, footsteps, the particular sound of someone leaving. I had told myself I was not waiting. I was simply awake. People were awake at two in the morning all the time for completely unrelated reasons.

I fell as