Chapter Text
From: Bartholomew Brimsley <[email protected]> [on behalf of Charlotte Mecklenburg-Strelitz]
Date: 5 June 2026, 16:30
To: Phillip Crane <[email protected]>
Cc: Robert Gunning <[email protected]>
Subject: Appointment Review Decision
Dear Dr. Crane,
We regret to inform you that your review for promotion to a permanent contract at Mayfair College London was unsuccessful. This email serves as the official notification of this decision.
Your contributions to MCL have been greatly valued, and this decision was not made lightly. You are invited to return on a one-year, fixed-term appointment, 1 July 2026 – 30 June 2027, with the possibility of renewal and future permanent appointment.
We invite you to meet with your Department Head to discuss your review in greater detail if you so wish.
We wish you success in your future endeavors.
Regards,
Charlotte Mecklenburg-Strelitz, MA, MBA, Ph.D.
Chancellor, Mayfair College London
For all communications: Bartholomew Brimsley | [email protected]
********************
“Did they share anything I could’ve improved on?”
Phillip has spent the better part of the last ten minutes shredding the hangnail on his thumb, while Gunning scrolls through the file he was sent following the board’s review decision.
“I’ve told you, I’m confident this decision is less about you and more about them.”
“I just get the sense that you’ve only given me excerpts.”
Gunning snorts and raises an eyebrow, not unkindly. Phillip is used to this expression, has been on the receiving end of it many times in the past five years. Gunning has been his boss and mentor since he interviewed Phillip as a post-doc, and there is very little that the men have not grown accustomed to about each other.
“Your skills of observation have never wavered.” Gunning pushes back from his computer and turns to face Phillip fully. “There’s a bit of feedback in there that’s useful, but most of it is bureaucratic fluff. I know what will happen. You’ll hear it, latch onto it, and spin your wheels for a year trying to rectify it until your next review, instead of focusing on things better worth your effort.”
“Just give me an example, please.”
Gunning sighs, recognizing this as an instance of Phillip’s dogged pursuit of any relevant data, and pushes his readers back up his nose. He squints to focus, scrolls around for another moment.
Finally, Gunning recites: “Mayfair and its leaders recognize the growing need for educational training that will set students up for immediate competitiveness in the post-grad job market, as well as longevity in rapidly evolving professional landscapes. Therefore, many of our decisions for staffing and contracts in the coming year prioritize resources for industry-applicable studies, which have shown exponentially growing enrollment demands among prospective students across all campuses.”
Phillip blinks several times.
“It means they’re investing more in tech, as they have every year for the past decade,” Gunning remarks wearily.
“They’re suggesting environmental science isn’t ‘industry applicable’?”
Gunning winces.
“There were tornadoes in Galway last week. Fires in Los Angeles in the winter, and always. Hell, I’m trying to create crop strains that adapt more readily to shifting climates, and they think it’s not useful?”
“Apparently not.”
“But they’ll invest in shiny AI rubbish and let their data centers poison the water.”
“I’d like to remind you,” Gunning says gently after a pause, not wanting to interrupt the rare instance of Phillip unburdening himself, “that they indicated you will be up for reconsideration, and that they see value in your work. I have seen less promising emails to others in the past.”
Phillip nods absently, his mind already on his lab. Two of his post-docs entering their last year. Three undergraduates in their third and fourth years. Grant proposals up for renewal in the fall, ever tenuous with current politics. This work has value, and he knows it, but if Mayfair refuses to christen him with their stamp of permanent support, it means proposals with his signature lack legitimacy; lab staff stay uncertain of whether they can count on a set location long-term.
And then the twins, Mel. He has a modest amount of control over his schedule now, much better than when he first set on this path of study. But his Aunt is getting older and so are the twins, busier with school and activities and life, and he feels them all slipping through his grasp no matter how tightly he holds; every time clothes go up a size or a tooth falls out; every time Mel needs to sleep an extra hour on her days off from caring for them. A permanent appointment would mean he’d no longer be expected to accept every class schedule without complaint; that he could push for more budget to hire additional staff, thin out the hours between himself and his exhausted post-docs and his undergrads who mean well but have full-time courseloads to balance.
He abruptly realizes that Gunning has been a silent observer as Phillip hopelessly picks at the tangle of his own thoughts. “Sorry,” he murmurs, willing his mind to return to the room his body is in.
“What for? You’ve just been sitting there.” Gunning smiles fondly, understanding traveling between the two of them.
Another pause, then Phillip feels his original question nagging again. “Did they offer any suggestions?”
“Not explicitly. I have an idea, though you might not like it.”
Phillip shrugs. What else does he have?
“You’ve heard of the school’s Writing and Rhetoric requirement for first years. The intro course for academic writing basics.”
Phillip nods. He vaguely understands the concept of the course. Since his first year instructing, he’s taught mostly upper-level courses in his own lane of study, along with a few foundational bio courses, and gen eds had never been added to his plate. Likely a result of Gunning’s thoughtful intervention, he now realizes.
Gunning continues, “The school designs it so pairs of instructors teach each section and develop their individual section topics together. Finding enough instructors to volunteer each term is a nightmare.”
“Then why do it?”
“Academia isn’t exactly known for streamlining its more convoluted practices. In any case, the curriculum office randomly pairs instructors together from different divisions. You don’t pick who you teach with. It’s supposedly meant to encourage interdisciplinary thought. If I had to guess, it also avoids interpersonal calamities and favoritism between instructors.”
Phillip, aware that he is probably the least social person on campus, tries not to cringe at the idea. Gunning’s raised eyebrow tells him he has been unsuccessful.
“Everyone has to volunteer in the first place – so everyone is on board with what they’ve signed up for. Most pairings turn out to be perfectly neutral, if not amicable. Total hatred is rarely an issue.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It is, really. And you share the work of teaching with another person; it’s not as if you’ll take on a full new course all on your own.”
“You’re forgetting I’m awful with words.”
“Not true. Your writing has always been your strong suit. It’s one of the things that makes you so good in this field; when you have the chance to compose your thoughts, you shine. We can forgive your shyness face-to-face.”
Phillip goes quiet again, surprised to find that he’s seriously considering it.
An additional course he only has to take on half the work for. Just one term, maybe two. His lab. Mel, the twins. A contract that would give him any modicum of greater control in his life, could help push his research closer to actual impact.
“Okay.”
“I’ll send you the sign-up form from the registrar next week. Now, please go home and don’t do any work for a single minute until Monday.”
He ensures he leaves with enough time to get home before the rain hits, abandoning a few leftover tasks in the lab that can wait through the weekend. He parks in front of his building and heads up to the third floor to collect the twins from Mel. She’s lived in the same flat for thirteen years; he’s two floors down as of four years ago, three months after losing George and Marina, because Mel could never handle the twins alone in their grief and they both knew it. Even in the throes of his dissertation, moving flats across the entire city and shouldering the weight of it all was better together than alone.
His aunt pecks him on the cheek in her doorway, her smile unsuccessful in masking her exhaustion.
“Remember camp starts tomorrow at ten o’clock. Amanda is having growing pains and it’s everyone’s problem. Oliver has asked three separate times if we can go to the library Sunday so he can find books about bridge design. They want pasta for dinner.”
“Thank you. I love you. Get some rest.”
“I love you too.” Mel squeezes his shoulder once, grateful.
“Can we go to the library on Sunday?” Oliver appears in the doorway, holding his shoes in one hand and a stack of Architectural Digest magazines from Mel’s coffee table in the other.
“Yes, we can.”
Amanda comes out from the kitchen, scowling. “I don’t want to go.”
“You don’t have to go,” Phillip replies. “But we’re not going now anyway.”
“I want to go to bed,” Amanda announces.
“You haven’t had dinner.”
“I want dinner and then a hot bath and bed.”
“I’ll add it to the list.”
He extracts the twins from Mel’s flat, walks back down two flights of stairs to his own door, and shepherds them in. Oliver does not stop talking about bridges. Amanda does not stop mocking Oliver for talking about bridges. This continues as Phillip puts together pasta and sauce from a jar and frozen meatballs.
While everything heats, Phillip leans against the counter and just observes them, bickering at the speed of light across the table. It would be entertaining if some of their insults were not so artisanally designed to hurt each other.
The rain rolls in while they eat. He watches both twins’ eyes flit again and again to the window and pretends he does not notice. They’re quieter now. He wishes, not for the first time, that he could go back two years and never answer their questions about the crash; that he’d known at the time he was planting a weed in their minds that he cannot begin to know how to eradicate.
Once Amanda is off to the bath, Oliver is appeased by Phillip giving him thirty minutes of television time. Phillip disobeys Gunning’s orders and checks his email on his phone, rereads the rejection email, puts his phone back down and definitely does not think about it while he tidies the kitchen from dinner.
The twins stall on bedtime – it is a sacred tradition – until he finally ushers them down the hall and into their room at half past nine. The room was marketed as a study in the rental listing, but now houses two twin beds in opposite corners, crammed alongside a small dresser and child’s wardrobe each divided evenly between the twins. There’s a nearly identical setup with smaller storage pieces in Mel’s apartment.
He watches them get into their beds and wrap up in their sheets. Amanda asked him to stop tucking her in a year ago, and Oliver had asked him the same the very next night, glancing across the room for Amanda’s approval.
“I love you both,” he says, his chest aching with it. The rain is still going outside.
“Love you too,” they both echo at once.
He turns off the light and shuts the door. He returns to the sofa with his laptop. He disobeys Gunning again, checking the shared drive for his lab and noting the progress on the grafting tests and the chemical levels in the soil samples; any remarks in the progress logs from the post-docs on signs of mutations or abnormalities; any questions or requests to pursue experiments from the undergrads.
“Uncle Phil?” Amanda’s voice wafts from the end of the hall after thirty-seven minutes.
“Yes?”
“Can’t sleep.”
“You or your brother?” He already knows the answer.
“Both.”
He closes his eyes, apologizes silently to the progress logs, and shuts his laptop.
“Give me five minutes.”
He retreats to his room, changes into an old shirt and sweats, then goes through the motions of washing his face and brushing his teeth. When he exits the bathroom, Oliver and Amanda are standing in his bedroom doorway, watching and waiting.
“We’re sorry if you were still working,” Oliver tells him as he puts a hand on each of their shoulders and squeezes.
“I was, and it can wait. Don’t be sorry.”
He takes them back out to the living room, picks up the usual book from the top shelf, and returns to the middle of the sofa that is just large enough for him to sit with two average-sized eight year olds laying length-wise on either side of him. Oliver presses his absolutely freezing cold feet to Phillip’s leg. Phillip flinches theatrically, earning a snicker from Oliver. Amanda also laughs but pretends she doesn’t, tucks a decorative pillow against his thigh and rests her head there.
“I can’t remember where we left off,” she tells him.
“Me either,” Oliver adds. “It’s been a while.”
“We’ll let the fates decide.”
Phillip runs his thumb over the pages of the paperback front-to-back, back-to-front, then opens to a random page. He turns to the beginning of the next chapter from there and reads aloud, measuring the cadence of his voice, trying his best to mimic the narrators from the meditation app on his phone.
“You can smell it before you see it, a sweetgrass meadow on a summer day. The scent flickers on the breeze, you sniff like a dog on a scent, and then it’s gone, replaced by the boggy tang of wet ground. And then it’s back, the sweet vanilla fragrance, beckoning.”
He keeps reading until he feels the dead weight of Amanda’s sleeping head on the pillow; until he sees Oliver’s mouth agape, his head twisted at a frankly alarming angle that would put Phillip in a neck brace but which Oliver will not even think about tomorrow. Rain is still falling outside, and the flat is totally quiet for the first time since he’s been home. He closes the book, carefully moves to place it on the coffee table and then sinks back into the sofa without rousing either twin. He lets his head fall back to the wall behind the sofa. He closes his eyes and can feel sleep barreling toward him even as he’s sitting up.
He loves them. He is not enough for all of it.
********************
From: Bartholomew Brimsley <[email protected]> [on behalf of Charlotte Mecklenburg-Strelitz]
Date: 5 June 2026, 16:00
To: Eloise Bridgerton <[email protected]>
Cc: Agatha Danbury <[email protected]>
Subject: Appointment Review Decision
Dear Dr. Bridgerton,
We regret to inform you that your review for promotion to a permanent contract at Mayfair College London was unsuccessful. This email serves as the official notification of this decision.
Your contributions to MCL have been greatly valued, and this decision was not made lightly. You are invited to return on a one-year, fixed-term appointment, 1 July 2026 – 30 June 2027, with the possibility of renewal and of future permanent appointment.
We invite you to meet with your Department Head to discuss your review in greater detail if you so wish.
We wish you success in your future endeavors.
Regards,
Charlotte Mecklenburg-Strelitz, MA, MBA, Ph.D.
Chancellor, Mayfair College London
For all communications: Bartholomew Brimsley | [email protected]
********************
Eloise materializes in the doorway of Danbury’s office no less than ten minutes after the email lands in their inboxes.
“I wondered how soon I’d see you.” Danbury peers at Eloise over the top of her monitor, not stopping whatever she’s typing.
“Did they at least have the courtesy to give an explanation?” Eloise drops into the seat across the desk from her.
“They indicated an intent to ‘prioritize resources for industry-applicable studies.’”
“So, leadership having a wank over their AI investments blowing a hole in the budget. Brilliant.”
“You have never held back your opinions on the matter, and I don’t disagree. But you could have shown some discretion online.”
“I haven’t posted a word about it!”
“No, but you have liked and shared several posts directly criticizing Mayfair’s new AI strategy.”
“So the decision is retaliatory? Any chance we could appeal?”
“You know as well as I do that they would not deign to respond to an appeal on this. And you could kiss your ‘possible future permanent appointment’ goodbye.”
“But–”
“I won’t lead you to a chopping block, let alone help you build it with your own hands.”
Eloise exhales sharply through her nose, jaw clenched, knowing Danbury is absolutely right and hating herself for acknowledging it.
“I have done everything that was laid out for me in the last review, and then some.” She counts on her fingers: “I’ve begun new research. I’ve taught additional courses. I’ve done degree advising for students. I’ve helped establish five separate partnerships in non-profits and Civil Service this year alone.”
“And you’ve done marvelously.” Danbury is being sincere, but Eloise is in the mood to bristle at compliments.
“And I’m denied because I bruised the egos of a few rich old men who don’t even know how to use the shoddy tech they’re salivating over?”
“This is academia. I’m not sure why you’re surprised.”
Eloise slumps and folds her arms. With anyone else of Danbury’s rank she’d never act so openly foul. Agatha Danbury has remained close with the Bridgertons since influencing Anthony along the path to and through law school, when Eloise was barely a teenager. Eloise is comfortable enough to let down her guard here, in no small part because she knows Danbury will not let her wallow, and right now she wants to abandon this entire ugly tangle of disappointment as quickly as possible.
Danbury’s voice is gentler when she breaks the silence.
“They said that your work has not gone unnoticed –”
“More HR drivel,” Eloise mutters.
“Did you come here to pout, or do you want my advice?” Danbury snips, right on cue, though not bitter in tone. When Eloise has the decency to meet her eyes again and nod, Danbury proceeds:
“Your work has not gone unnoticed, and you’ll be reconsidered for a permanent appointment in a year. These things are not uncommon, even in the rare case that there’s no politicking involved. In addition to better judgment on social media, some patience might do you good.”
“So my instructions for the next year are to delete my socials and sit on my hands?”
“If that’s what you wish. But I’d recommend a gesture on your part that shows some good will.”
“That would be dishonest.”
Danbury’s eyes and mouth turn to thin lines, one eyebrow arching. Do not keep testing my patience, darling.
“What do you suggest?”
“They’re looking for replacement instructors for Writing and Rhetoric in the fall.”
Eloise’s slump in her chair deepens; she imagines she’s beginning to resemble an angry shrimp. “I finally had this year free of teaching gen eds, and now you suggest I go backward. For the sake of hoping to go forward?"
“Your past students had some of the highest success rates in their studies, regardless of whatever co-instructor you worked with. Regardless of their skill level coming into the course. That’s considerable.”
“Correlation doesn’t equal causation.”
“And furthermore,” Danbury continues over her, “going back to basics may be good. You’d have a chance to encourage young minds to think for themselves. Discourage AI use. Find ways to get them engaged. Show support for the principles of learning, and all that.”
Eloise chews at the inside of her lip, considering. The idea is attractive, but without a permanent contract and the security to control the material she covers, how much could she possibly get across to these kids? Half of them probably won’t even care. Literacy and critical thought aren’t exactly strong suits for this generation, from what she sees online. Hyacinth would smack her for thinking so.
Then again, if just teaching half of one gen ed course is enough to boost her rapport with leadership, to propel her into a permanent contract, then it could be worth her servitude for a little longer.
She looks back up to Danbury. “One term or two?”
“One is fine. But two could only help.”
Another pause, and then: “Okay.”
“Okay.” Danbury claps her hands once, appeased. She stops to regard Eloise across the desk from her, sees the frustration she’s trying to temper. Softens again. “It’s Friday afternoon. Summer is starting. Go home, have your weekend, do something entirely unproductive.”
Her flat is quiet when she arrives home later. She’d texted the usual suspects, and all took a rain check. Fran and Michaela on a double date; Pen and Colin at a concert; Ben and Sophie sick from the kids’ daycare germs; Cressida currently in Greece and ashamed she forgot to tell Eloise she was going.
She showers. She swaps her work clothes for sweats. She plays music and eats her takeaway with room-temperature wine, skipping every other track because she doesn’t feel like hearing this song at this moment.
She debates whether she’s lonely enough – not lonely, just bored – to text anyone else. Kate and Anthony would be too formal, as much as she loves Kate and tolerates Anthony. Daphne would probably enjoy a night in away from her kids, but would spend half the time bickering over what movie to watch, then commenting on the number of takeaway boxes in the trash or expressing her disagreement with Eloise’s bookshelf layout (alphabetical by author, then in a surgically precise ROYGBV gradient of book covers within each author’s section). Hyacinth is probably already out for the night. Gregory annoys her and is not even in the running.
Rain rolls through. She watches a documentary on bees and cannot be compelled by it. She resists opening her socials to scroll, Danbury’s words fresh in her head. She reads her latest library book – some lesbian necromancers in space, full of sharp wit and curious plot devices – and cannot focus on a single word.
When the evening reaches ten o’clock, she feels it’s a respectable enough hour to go to bed without feeling geriatric. It’s still raining; the mist against her garden unit window is typically soothing, but tonight it leaves her sullen.
The weight of sleep is just beginning to slip over her when she’s awoken by a long, high-pitched yowl. It continues, loudly, and she sits up, gauging the direction it’s coming from. The front window.
She drags herself to the front of the flat, but stops when she registers a kitten-shaped shadow outlined in the drapes.
How could something so tiny possibly be so loud?
She crosses to the window and barely nudges the drapes apart to get a better look. The slight motion still startles the creature, and it darts off toward the hedge beyond her stoop.
Well, that’s that. Good luck, small one.
She returns to bed. The yowling resumes no less than three minutes later.
“Christ’s sake!”
She storms back to the front room. The yowling is now coming from beyond her door. She calls to it from inside with her hand on the doorknob.
“If you bolt again, you’re on your own. I have noise-cancelling headphones.”
The noise stops when she pulls back the door – she tries despite her ire to open it at a measured pace, hoping not to scare the thing again. She watches the kitten leap backward in surprise, appearing every bit like a cricket. A soaking wet, furry, calico cricket. It’s raining harder now, and the irrationally short overhang of her doorway is useless against the water slanting into the flat.
“Well, come on.” She steps to one side and motions a line from the tiny creature to her floorboards. It stares back at her and does not move.
She squats and steps forward with her hand outstretched. The kitten releases a vehement hiss and swats at her, claws extended. Eloise yanks her fingers back.
“Alright! You approached me, you twat!”
She retreats, shuts the door and shakes some moisture off, though her pajamas are well on their way to dripping.
This is absurd.
She marches into the kitchen and returns with a too-expensive tin of sardines that Anthony and Kate gifted her for Christmas, which she has no intention of ever eating, though she’d happily consumed the wine they’d gifted to pair with it. She grabs an empty shipping box from her overfull recycling pile on the way back.
The kitten is still there when she reopens the door, maybe three centimeters closer than when she’d closed it. She places the box on its side with the open end facing out, peels the lid off the fish tin and tucks it in the back corner of the box. She sits cross-legged just out of the reach of the rain near the threshold, the box beside her on the floor.
She stares at the kitten, eyebrows raised in expectation. The kitten stares back.
“We have sardines, cool boxes, and no rain on this side,” she offers.
The kitten blinks. Its tail twitches.
“I’d like to go to bed, so please make a decision soon.”
Several minutes pass. Eloise is seconds away from calling the whole thing off when the kitten stands and unceremoniously walks into the box, like it had been planning to do that all along. It sniffs at the tin a few times, then begins to inhale the contents.
Eloise blinks in disbelief, then comes to and pushes her door shut. She lifts the tin into the air just enough to turn the box over so that the open side faces up, keeping the kitten corralled to some extent. The damn thing shrieks, latches onto her arm with industrial strength, and unleashes a flurry of scratches.
“OwowowowowOW OW FUCK OKAY I’M GIVING IT BACK! FUCK!”
She grabs the kitten around its midsection, subjecting her remaining hand to its talons for the sake of freely placing the tin back in the box without spilling oil and fish everywhere.
“There, you absolute demon.” She releases the kitten from her hand. It unlatches its paws from her arm and falls flailing back into the box.
“Ow,” she grits out, examining both arms. “You’re fucking welcome.”
She inspects her hands more closely and notices smears of blood where she’s certain the gremlin’s claws didn’t reach, with no discernable path for the blood to have traveled from the claw marks elsewhere on her skin. She looks back to the box, sees smears of blood like brushstrokes where the kitten has been shuffling around.
God dammit.
Three hours later, far too many pounds poorer, and feeling shellshocked, Eloise parks back at the curb near her flat. The staff at the nearest emergency vet clinic had cheerfully sent her off with, “Thankfully she doesn’t have worms!” As if forgetting they’d needed to snatch the creature into what can only be described as a cat-sized straightjacket, in order to assault her with gentle cleansing wipes, examine her belly, and give her all the necessary shots.
She looks down at the kitten, who leers from inside a donated carrier from the vet sitting in the passenger seat. The staff also sent her home with a few cat food tins, some treats, one of those toys like a fishing rod, and some ointment that Eloise is apparently now responsible for applying to the shallow wounds on her new ward’s stomach for the next two weeks.
“Don’t act like you’re the only one traumatized.” She jabs a stern, bandaged finger at the crate. A hiss is the only reply she receives.
Inside, Eloise drops all the supplies in a pile – she’ll organize that later, after sleep – and opens the crate door. The kitten darts forth and disappears immediately under her sofa.
“Fine. Great. Goodnight.”
She lowers herself onto her belly a safe distance from the sofa, locking eyes with the cat once more.
“So rude of me; I just realized I never asked your name.”
Another staring contest ensues. Eloise notices, for the first time, that the tip of the kitten’s left ear has been partially ripped off, probably in whatever fight led to the gashes on her belly. The effect is a scalloped, jagged edge leading away from the apex of its ear.
“Is it weird to say I think it suits you?” She nods at the imperfect ear, and then thinks.
Virginia Woolf, for starters; it’s only right, if this goblin is to be hers.
V-W. Vee-Dub. Vee.
“Hello Vee.”