The sky was already getting dark when Kathleen made it home. Long shadows marked the suburbs: ghostly doubles of trees, dark duplicates of still dimmed lampposts, unpainted fences gaining colour upon the ground instead, the sole bus stop already abandoned for the day.

She parked her five-seater Vauxhall in the driveway. The house stood next to her, a terrible monument to everything that had gone wrong. They’d chosen it because it had room for them to grow into. The ground floor had a nice kitchen with a big oven; she’d imagined cooking Christmas dinner there, how there would be just enough space for all the food in the oven, how both her and Cameron would bring their parents over, Kathleen would even try to invite her siblings, how they would be one big family. The living room would have a big TV where they could all watch films together as a family; she’d introduce the kids to the Disney films she grew up on, and as they got older they’d be able to watch some of the media that defined her: Friends, The 2005 Pride and Prejudice adaptation, Eat Pray Love. There was plenty of space in the living room for the kids to have toys too, and for them to bring friends over from school. They’d spent a year searching for this place, the home where they’d been meant to grow old together.

She turned the key in the front door and entered into a dark and empty house. She flicked the light switch to the living room. A half-built IKEA sofa faced a TV screen stacked atop cardboard boxes. There was no coffee table. She walked through the living room into the kitchen. A spice rack was empty next to a giant American fridge-freezer. The pantry loomed over a bread bin, an empty threat. A dirty wok was on the stove top; she’d get to it tomorrow. Kathleen took a ready meal from the fridge and stuck it in the microwave.

She stared at the spinning Chicken Korma. She unbuttoned her blue chambray work shirt a little and loosened her bra. She was seeing Cameron again tomorrow. They still had some things to work through about their separation. He owned half this house, after all. If she couldn’t find someone willing to buy out his half, she’d probably have to leave. Sell it. Abandon everything she’d worked for.

He was still trying to make things work. He’d wanted them to stay together, even as he wanted to become a woman. He’d wanted to stay friends. Co-parent. Have some freakish modern family structure with two kids and four parents. Ha. As if.

The microwave kept beeping even after she’d opened it. She removed the plastic tray. She scooped the rice onto a plate, then scooped the chicken korma mush onto it. She stayed there, standing, with the microwave door still open, as she fed herself mouthfuls of ultra-processed hyper palatable Indian style cooked food. Yum.

She checked her phone. No new messages. She swiped right for a while on Tinder but couldn’t bring herself to message anyone. She thought about calling Shannon and stopped herself. Salty tears found their way into her mouth as she ate, giving the food some much needed flavour.

A few hours passed. She ended up sat watching TV again. A few episodes of friends, some BBC News, and an episode of Pointless on BBC iPlayer. She had an episode of bake-off playing when she remembered what Yasmin had said, about hobbies, about going out, meeting people the old way. Because she couldn’t keep going like this.

She pulled open her laptop while bake-off continued to play. Cameron had bought her this laptop. He’d bought it for her as a birthday present a few years ago, before they’d moved in together. Her old laptop had broken from a spilt latte, because her and Cameron liked going to Starbucks together at the weekends, sitting in there with their laptops, working or writing or even gaming when he could talk her into it. He’d knocked over her latte, and he was so apologetic, and just a month later, there was the replacement one, gift wrapped with a note that said, “I’m sorry and I love you”

She tried to forget about Cameron as she searched for ‘Social Groups Burton’ and was surprised at the large number of results. A lot of them were Queer support groups, which she ignored. There were board gamers and LARPers, which were too nerdy for her. She considered a book club, then glanced down at the still half-read copy of Jane Eyre she kept by the sofa and thought better of it.

One website caught her eye. ‘Womyn Island: An all women support group for those tired of men and looking for friendship and support. Any men trying to sneak in WILL be reported to the police’

She’d never seen that spelling of women before and thought it was strange. The threat to call the police was a little worrying, but Kathleen knew what men could be like and didn’t think anything further of it. She kept reading.

The webpage was simple, un-modern. No fancy graphics or effects, just a salmon-coloured background with links at the top, and the content below. The home page detailed the origin of the group according to its founder Kellie Falkner.

“I founded Womyn Island because I realised there were no safe spaces for women in Burton to be separate and safe from men. No woman is an island, but it’s better for us to all be together on this one.”

There was a photo of Kellie below. She had short grey hair and a terrible cardigan. Kathleen assumed she was retired, from the terrible fashion sense, and since she had the time to run this group. In the photo, Kellie was out in nature, wearing a green and purple sash. Strange. She was smiling, but her eyes were just sockets. Empty pits. The black and hollow gates of the abyss.

Kathleen shut her laptop suddenly. She felt pain in her fingers on one hand. They’d been caught under the lid. She opened the laptop again, slowly, her fingers throbbing from the pain. There was a sharp red line where the laptop had come down on them, but thankfully no blood.

She looked up from her fingers to the website again. The photo was normal. Just a smiling woman out in nature. She looked happy, smiling so wide. Her eyes-

Kathleen dragged the mouse to the top of the monitor using her still aching fingers, and closed the tab. She didn’t know why, but something felt wrong with Womyn Island. Maybe it was the strange spelling, maybe the threat to call the police, maybe the site just felt like a relic on a modern internet of flashy graphics and plug-ins. Maybe it was that woman’s eyes…

Her fingers still hurt. She looked away from her computer and saw they were still red. She squeezed them with her other hand, checking that the bones weren’t fractured or something. They felt bad, and they might have been swelling a little but they didn’t seem broken. Just how much force had she used to shut the lid? How on earth had she managed to do this to herself?

No, she decided to move on. She gave a little sigh internally at her stupidity, managing to close a laptop on her fingers. Then she browsed a little longer until she found a hiking group that wasn’t far away and would be meeting on Sunday at 7AM.

Kathleen smiled to herself. She’d made a good decision. This walking group was all she needed to find her way back to the path of her life.

She fell asleep on the half-built sofa a few hours later, more bake-off auto playing as she drifted to unconsciousness. Her phone alarm woke her in the morning, and she cursed herself at having forgotten to shower the night before.