Even on the very worst days Tina had never known a day drag like this one had. Every minute had seemed like an hour and she must have looked at her watch at least a thousand times wishing that time would move that little bit faster. Of course now that the time was 8:55pm she was wishing that time would stand still, just to give her some more time to work out what she was going to say to Bette when she called at the appointed hour of 9pm.

The clock on the bedside table of Tina’s hotel room read 8:59pm. At this point Tina was barely breathing knowing that in less that a minute she was going to be talking to the woman who still meant more than to her than anything else in the world. She sat waiting for the phone to ring, willing it to ring. but nothing was happening.

9:03pm and still nothing. By now Tina was pacing the room contemplating all the reasons why Bette wouldn’t have called her tonight. The more she thought about it the more worried she became. She started to talk to herself out loud.

“Why aren’t you calling me Bette? Every night and now nothing, just when I wanted you to call the most. Come on Tina, this is stupid. If you want to talk to her why don’t you just pick up the phone and dial the number yourself. I don’t know if I can do that. Why is this so difficult?” Tina passed the mirror and stopped to look at herself. She found herself thinking back to what Kate had said to her.

“Hit the bottom, get set free. Sounds easy when you say it quickly.” With that Tina turned around with a steely determination, grabbed her phone and dialled the number that she hoped would bring her some freedom. She listened to the phone connecting and then ringing, her heart beating out of her chest while she waited for Bette to pick up.

“Hello.” said a weary sounding voice.

“Bette, it’s Tina. Look, I don’t know why I’m doing this but I wanted to make sure that you were OK. I spoke to Shane and she said that you hadn’t been to work and that you were barely leaving the house and when you didn’t call me tonight I was worried that you might have done something……I don’t know, but I had to find out.”