The case number arrived at six forty-two in the morning.
She was already awake. Not from anxiety, just from the habit of years, her body having decided somewhere along the way that six-something was the natural edge of sleep. She was in the kitchen with her first coffee when the notification came through, the formal header of the tribunal's intake office, the reference number that meant the matter was now officially in the next system and the thirty-day objection period had begun.
She read it twice. Then she set her phone face-down on the counter and finished her coffee.
The morning was grey and cold in the way the city was grey and cold for most of the year, not unpleasant, just the neutral ambient condition of living here. She stood at the kitchen window and watched the street come alive in its gradual way, the first few people moving through it, a delivery cart, a woman walking a dog with the purposeful pace of someone doing the first necessary thing of the day.
