The Offer

The offer came on a Tuesday and was better than Ruth had expected. More money, a shorter journey, and a title that would look sensible on paper for the next ten years. She read the letter twice and then put it in the drawer under the desk.

For three days she did not tell anyone. If she took it, she would have to say so before the end of the month, and if she said so, the conversation with her manager would be short and polite and final. Nothing about that frightened her. Something else did.

On Thursday she went through her diary for the last year and counted the days she had enjoyed. There were more of them than she had thought. Most of them had nothing to do with the work itself. They had to do with the people in the room.

She talked to Devi on the way home. Devi had left a job like this one two years before and had never mentioned regretting it. "It was the right decision," she said. "But I did not know that for eighteen months, and nobody could have told me."

Ruth wrote her answer on the Sunday evening and did not send it until Monday morning. She took the offer. Unless something changed, she would start in September, and the drawer under the desk would belong to somebody else.

What surprised her afterwards was how little the money mattered once the decision was made. She thought about it perhaps twice in the first year. She thought about the people in the old room far more often than that.