That night, when Tina entered the small apartment, she just had to sit down and let the tears flow. It would break her heart to sell the home she had shared with Peter, but every time she walked around there, guilt and anger and grief overwhelmed her, attacked her, took her down into their negative coil. She saw him at every spot, every corner. He never sat at the left side of the table, and still she saw him there, staring at her. Blaming her for not saving him. At the same time, she saw the people. She saw the people that had attended his funeral, the people that didn’t care and the ones that dead. Their faces were blurred, they were figures in a wicked game of her mind that had no crucial role. They just gave form to it. And when she went upstairs, she saw Bette and herself sitting there against the wall. Downstairs, she saw them standing at the window, so close and than so far. She felt the disappointment, the confusion, the desperation in her own voice when she asked why. For no reason at all, no particular question. A general why.
Helena had been the one that had saved the day. She had offered one of her empty aparments that she kept for emergencies. It was watched at by the man that lived across of it, who was living on his pension and could really use the royal recompense Helena offered him.
Tina had gladly taken the offer – normally she would have refused at first and it would have taken some time to convince her, but she was really desperate now. She was desperate for a place where she could breathe and be by herself, entirely. A place that didn’t hold any memories of Peter or Bette or the past. A place that didn’t bring her the grief her own home did. She was not sure if she was ready to sell it, somehow it felt dishonourable to do it so recently after his dead, but when she asked herself the question if she could do it, say, five years from now, she had to admit she wouldn’t be able to. It had been their home, their place of refuge, it had been where they had laughed and cried and had held each other and had had amazing sex.