Chapter Title: The Quiet Years

Between 2016 and 2020—right up to the COVID-19 lockdowns—those years are just a blur of absence and silence. I don’t have good memories from that time. I missed countless phone calls, texts, and emails—not because I didn’t care, but because I was slowly disconnecting from everything and everyone. That was when Josephine stopped arriving at my door. No doubt, the club had a hand in that.

Life became reduced to its bare essentials: I got up, did my weekly shopping, and came back to the quiet. No visits, no laughter in the hallway, no cups of tea shared at the kitchen table. I didn’t even flinch anymore at the silence. It just settled in.

And to be honest, I stopped caring what others thought or whispered behind my back. They weren’t here. They didn’t see how far we’d come—or how far we’d fallen.

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