Same Girl, New Snow
The suitcase had a broken wheel. It dragged behind her through arrivals like a dog that didn't want to go for a walk, leaving a long black scar across the polished floor.
Kate stopped at the automatic doors. Vancouver was grey and wet. Ten degrees colder than she'd packed for. She stood outside in a denim jacket meant for a different hemisphere and watched her breath leave her mouth in a white cloud, which was new.
Her phone had seventeen notifications. The group chat — her new one, not the Sydney one she'd muted in July — was going off. She opened it, took a selfie with the taxi rank behind her, typed 'CANADA BABY 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇨🇦' and sent it before she could think about the angle.
Three heart reacts in under a minute. One from a girl named Jess she'd met exactly once, at a friend-of-a-friend's leaving drinks in Bondi, who had moved to Vancouver two years ago and kept saying Kate was going to love it.
Below the group chat, a message from Mel. Sent four hours ago, while Kate was somewhere over the Pacific. She could see the preview without opening it: 'Hey, can we talk before you —' and then it cut off.
Kate typed 'Landed safe!' and stared at it. Deleted it. Typed it again with an emoji. Deleted the emoji. Put her phone in her jacket pocket.
A cab pulled up. The driver got out and looked at her suitcase.
You know that wheel's shot, right?
Kate smiled the smile that worked on everyone.
He shrugged and loaded it in the trunk. She climbed into the back seat and gave him the address of the Airbnb — a basement suite in Kitsilano that looked bright and airy in the photos, which she was now starting to suspect meant something different in a city where the sun set at four-thirty in winter.
The highway was wet. Everything was green in a way that felt aggressive after Sydney's pale eucalyptus. She pressed her forehead against the cold window and watched a city she didn't know yet pass by in the rain.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She didn't check it.
The Airbnb was underground. Not metaphorically — there were actual steps down from the side of the house, concrete with moss in the cracks, and a door that stuck when she pushed it.
She dragged the suitcase inside and left it standing in the middle of the room like it lived there.
Small kitchen, electric kettle, two mugs that didn't match. On the bed someone had folded a towel into a swan. It listed slightly to the left, one wing already coming undone.
She sat on the edge of the bed without taking off her jacket. The mattress was firm in the way that meant cheap. Above her, footsteps — the upstairs tenant, or the owner, or whoever lived in the part of the house that got natural light.
The dehumidifier in the corner clicked on by itself and began to hum.
She unzipped the suitcase on the floor. Summer dresses. Tank tops. One sweater she'd panic-bought at the airport. She hung three things in the closet and left the rest in the bag.
She opened the fridge. Empty except for a bottle of water and a card that said WELCOME TO VANCOUVER! in handwriting that curved upward at the end like it was trying to be cheerful enough for both of them.
She drank the water standing at the counter. The tap dripped. Outside, through the half-window near the ceiling, she could see feet passing on the sidewalk. Just feet. Boots and sneakers, moving through rain.
Her phone was in her jacket pocket. She took it out and set it face-down on the kitchen counter.
She ran a shower. The bathroom door didn't close all the way. The water took a long time to get warm and then got too hot and she stood under it anyway, eyes closed, letting the flight and the cab and the last six weeks run off her in the steam.
Afterward she put on the panic sweater and a pair of shorts that made no sense together and sat cross-legged on the bed with her wet hair dripping onto the white duvet.
The footsteps upstairs had stopped. The dehumidifier hummed. The tap dripped.
Space to think. A reset. Time to figure out what she actually wanted.
She picked up the phone. Opened the group chat. Scrolled past her own selfie — already fourteen reacts now — and typed 'the airbnb has a towel swan lol this city is already iconic' and watched the little delivered tick appear.
Mel's message sat below it. Unread. She locked the screen and put the phone back down.
The rain against the half-window. The drip. The hum.
She'd been sitting on the bed for twenty minutes. The panic sweater was itching at the collar and she kept pulling at it with two fingers.
She picked up the phone. Opened Mel's thread. The preview she'd been reading through half-closed eyes for fourteen hours finally expanded into the full message.
'Hey, can we talk before you land? I know you've got the whole fresh start thing going and I'm happy for you, I am, but I need you to know that Liam told Sophie. About what actually happened. Not your version. I was literally in the next room Kate. I can't keep doing the cleanup on this. Call me when you get in.'
She read it twice. The second time was slower and didn't change anything.
Above her, the upstairs tenant's TV came on. Muffled laughter from a show she couldn't identify, leaking through the ceiling.
She typed 'Hey! Just saw this. Landed safe, so knackered from the flight. Can we talk tomorrow? Miss you xx' and sent it before she could read it back to herself.
Then she opened Jess's thread. Jess had sent a string of messages — a restaurant recommendation, a screenshot of the weather forecast with a skull emoji, a voice note she hadn't listened to yet. Kate heart-reacted the weather screenshot and closed the app.
Her phone buzzed almost immediately. Mel. Full sentences, no emojis: 'Kate, tomorrow is fine but we actually need to talk. Sophie is really hurt. This isn't something you can just wait out.'
Kate set the phone on the nightstand and pulled her knees up to her chest. The sweater rode up and the basement air hit her bare legs and she didn't fix it.
She could hear the conversation Mel wanted to have. She'd had versions of it before — with her mum, with Liam, once with a counsellor she saw three times and then stopped booking. The part where someone sits across from you and waits for you to say what you've been saying differently to everyone else.
She picked the phone back up and typed 'I know. I'll call you. Promise.' and watched the blue ticks appear under both messages.
Jess's voice note was still sitting there, unplayed, a little blue bar waiting. She pressed it and held the phone to her ear. Jess's voice came through tinny and bright — 'Okay so you HAVE to come to this thing on Friday, it's at this bar in Gastown, super chill, my friend Tom is coming and he's like, you'll love him, everyone loves him, also I'm bringing wine because their wine list is criminal — ' and it kept going, a full minute of plans that hadn't happened yet, and Kate lay back on the bed and let it wash over her.
The voice note ended. The ceiling was close and white with a water stain near the light fixture.
She replayed it.
She woke up Wednesday to light she couldn't place. Thin and pale, coming from somewhere above her head. It took a few seconds to remember the room, the city, the hemisphere.
The suitcase was still open on the floor where she'd left it, clothes spilling out one side.
She made instant coffee with the electric kettle and drank it standing at the counter. It was terrible. She drank it all.
A dog appeared at the half-window, nose pressed to the glass, sniffing at something on the other side. It stayed for a few seconds, breath fogging the pane, then got pulled away by a leash she couldn't see.
She crouched over the suitcase and started pulling things out properly this time. Not the three-items-and-quit from yesterday. All of it. She stacked the summer dresses on the bed — bright florals, a yellow wrap one, two that were basically the same dress in different colours. They looked creased and wrong against the white duvet.
She hung them anyway. The closet had six wire hangers and she used five. The dresses hung there next to the airport hoodie she'd already shoved in — looking like the wardrobe of two different people who'd been assigned the same room.
Underwear in the top drawer. It stuck when she pulled it, same as last night, and she had to yank it with both hands. Jeans in the bottom one. A single running shoe she couldn't find the match for.
She folded the empty suitcase flat and shoved it into the back of the closet. Closed the door. It bounced open an inch. She closed it again, harder, and held it until it caught.
Her banking app showed $2,340 CAD. She'd done the conversion from AUD wrong somewhere, or the fees had been more than she thought, or both. She closed it. She opened her browser and typed 'jobs Vancouver no experience' and scrolled for a while and bookmarked a café listing in Kits and a retail place on Fourth Ave and didn't apply to either.
Mel's thread was sitting there. The two blue ticks under her promise from last night. No new reply.
Kate opened the group chat instead. Jess had sent a photo of a wine bottle with the caption 'FRIDAY PREP' and three fire emojis. Below it, someone named Hannah had replied 'omg yes' and someone else had sent a GIF of a woman chugging from a bottle.
Kate typed 'What do I wear, I packed like I was going to Bali' and watched the responses start immediately — jacket suggestions, a link to a thrift store, Jess voice-noting 'OKAY so there's this place on Main Street' — and she smiled at the screen and pulled the hoodie tighter around her shoulders.
Friday was two days away.
She called before she could talk herself out of it. Standing at the kitchen counter in the hoodie and yesterday's shorts, bare feet on cold tile, thumb on Mel's name before the coffee was done.
It rang four times. Long enough for Kate to think she might get voicemail, which would be perfect — she could leave something warm and vague and call it trying.
Mel picked up.
Hey.
Hey. I said I'd call, so.
Silence. The kind where someone is leaving a door open and watching to see if you'll walk through it.
How's — yeah. How are you?
Kate.
I know. I know, okay? I saw what you said about Liam telling Sophie. And I — look, it's not — what happened with Liam was complicated. You know that. You were there.
Yeah. I was there.
Kate pulled at the drawstring of the hoodie, wrapping it tight around one finger until the tip went white.
So you know it wasn't this clean story where I just — I didn't wake up one morning and decide to be a shit person. It happened. And then it kept happening and I didn't know how to stop it and I didn't know how to tell anyone so I just —
You told people he did it.
From somewhere on Mel's end, a bird — bright and sharp, a sound that belonged to a different morning in a different city. Kate pressed the phone harder against her ear.
I didn't — I didn't say those exact words.
You let them think it. You know the difference doesn't matter.
I was going to fix it.
When?
Kate didn't answer. The drawstring had left a red groove across her finger. She unwound it and pressed her palm flat on the counter, feeling the cheap laminate, a crumb under her ring finger.
You moved to another country, Kate. You started a new group chat. You've got new people who think you're this girl who got burned by some arsehole boyfriend and came to Canada to start fresh. That's the version they got, isn't it.
I didn't tell them anything about Liam.
You didn't have to. You just showed up sad at the right angle and let them fill it in.
Kate wanted to hang up. She wanted to have never called. She wanted Mel to be wrong about even one part of it.
That's not fair.
Sophie cried. Did you know that? Not because Liam cheated — because you lied to her face and she defended you to people for months. She went in on him at Dan's birthday. In front of everyone. And now she knows she was wrong and you let her do it.
Kate sat down on the floor. Not a decision — her legs just did it, back against the cupboard, knees up, the cold tile seeping through her shorts.
I'll talk to Sophie.
And say what?
I don't know. The truth.
Which one?
The bird again on Mel's end. And then nothing — just the open line, the ten thousand kilometres of cable or satellite or whatever it was that connected this basement to a kitchen in Marrickville where Mel was probably standing at her own counter, probably in the blue dressing gown, probably already regretting that she'd picked up.
I love you. You know I do. But I can't be the person who holds your version together while you go build a new one somewhere else. I've been doing it since we were nineteen and I'm tired.
I'm not asking you to.
You don't ask. You just need it and I just do it and then you move on and I'm still standing in the mess.
Kate closed her eyes. Her throat had that tight, high feeling.
I'm sorry.
She meant it. She could feel that she meant it, sitting on the floor of a basement in a city where no one knew her yet, and she also knew that meaning it and doing something about it were different things and she had a long history of confusing the two.
I know you are.
Mel didn't say the rest of it. She didn't have to.
Call Sophie. Not tomorrow. Not when you're ready. Just do it.
Okay.
I have to go to work.
Mel —
The line went dead. Kate kept the phone against her ear for a few seconds, listening to nothing.
She sat on the kitchen floor for a long time. The group chat would be going. Jess would be sending Friday updates. The world where Kate was fun and new and starting over was right there, one tap away.
She opened her contacts and found Sophie's name. Stared at it.
She locked the phone and put it face-up on the tile beside her. The screen went black and showed her own reflection — smudged, small, sitting on a floor in a country that was supposed to fix this.
She unlocked the phone and pressed Sophie's name.
It rang. The tile was cold under her legs. She could hear the upstairs tenant's footsteps crossing a room, a door closing, then nothing.
Three rings. Four. Kate stared at the water stain on the ceiling and thought about hanging up and texting instead — something she could draft, reshape, get the angles right on.
Sophie picked up on the fifth ring and didn't say anything.
Soph. It's me.
Nothing. A held line.
I know you talked to Liam.
Sophie's voice was flat and close, like she was in a small room.
Yeah. I know.
Kate pressed her thumbnail into the grout line between two tiles.
Dan's birthday, Kate. I called him a piece of shit in front of twelve people.
Kate closed her eyes. Her thumbnail went white against the grout.
I know.
You were standing right there.
I know. I didn't — I should have stopped you. I should have said something then and I didn't and I'm not going to make excuses about why because there isn't a good one.
Sophie exhaled. A long breath, controlled.
So what happened.
What do you mean?
I mean what actually happened. With Liam. I want to hear you say it.
The first version that came was the soft one — the version with context, the version where it was complicated, where things had been bad for months, where Liam had pulled away first and she'd been lonely and it just happened. She could feel the whole speech sitting there, ready, shaped by months of practice.
She let it go.
I cheated on him. I slept with someone else and then I told people he did it to me. That's what happened.
The words hung there on the open line.
Why.
I don't — because I was scared. And then it was easier to keep going than to stop.
That's not an apology.
I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I did it and I'm sorry I let you go after him and I don't know what else to say right now.
Sophie didn't respond. Kate listened to the open line — no bird, no background noise, just the connection itself.
I have to go.
Soph —
I heard you. I just — I need to not be on the phone right now.
Okay.
The call ended. Kate sat with the phone in her lap.
She cried. Nose running, hoodie sleeve across her face, the hiccupping kind that came from her chest. She cried until she was done and then she sat there a while longer with the sleeve damp against her mouth.
She texted Mel. Two words: 'I called her.'
Three dots appeared. Then: 'Okay. Good.'
Kate got up off the floor. Her legs had gone numb and she stood at the counter gripping the edge until the pins and needles passed. The kitchen was very small and very quiet. One mug in the sink from this morning. She washed it. Dried it with the tea towel that had been hanging on the oven handle since she'd arrived. Put it back in the cupboard with the other one.
There was nothing left to clean. No one left to call.
She stood at the counter with the tea towel still in her hands. The thin sun through the half-window had moved past where she'd been sitting and was halfway across the kitchen floor now, catching the edge of the cupboard. Friday was still two days away. Sophie might never call back. Mel had said good and meant it as a full sentence.
Kate folded the tea towel and hung it back on the oven handle and stood there in the quiet, which she did not fill.
Thursday morning came in without announcement. Kate woke to the sound of the stuck door upstairs opening and closing, and lay there for a while listening to the other tenant's routine — kettle, cupboard, something heavy set down on a table.
She boiled water and made instant coffee and carried it to the bed, sitting cross-legged on the duvet with both hands around the mug. The coffee was as bad as yesterday. She drank it slowly.
Her phone was on the nightstand where she'd left it. She picked it up. Mel's thread was still open from last night — 'Okay. Good.' sitting there at the bottom. She looked at it while she finished her coffee.
The group chat had forty-seven new messages. Jess had sent a photo of two outfits laid out on a bed with the caption 'LEFT OR RIGHT, this is urgent.' Hannah had replied with an entire paragraph about earrings. Someone Kate hadn't met yet had sent a meme about Fridays.
Kate typed 'What time again?' and sent it.
Jess voice-noted back almost instantly, her voice still half-asleep.
Kate set the phone down and got dressed. Jeans, the hoodie, the single running shoe and its match which had turned up wedged behind the closet door. She opened the closet to grab a jacket and the summer dresses were hanging there in a row — bright, creased, wrong season. She touched the yellow wrap one. Held it out on the hanger for a second, then hung it back.
She sat on the edge of the bed and tied both laces.
Her browser was still open to the café listing in Kits. She read the whole ad this time — not the skimming she'd done on Wednesday, but actually reading it. The manager's name was Priya. The pay was $17.40 an hour. The number was a real number that would connect to a real person who would ask her real questions about her experience.
She typed the number into her phone. Didn't call. Saved the contact as 'Priya - café job' and closed the browser.
Outside, a woman in gumboots stopped on the sidewalk above the half-window. A kid's voice — high and impatient — said something Kate couldn't make out, and the gumboots waited, then a smaller pair of rain boots appeared beside them, and they walked on together.
Kate pulled on the jacket. Checked her pockets — phone, bank card, keys the host had left in an envelope on the counter. The bed was unmade. The mug was on the nightstand. The dresses hung in the closet behind a door that wouldn't stay shut.
She went up the concrete steps and out into the rain.