Chapter Fifteen

Tracey arrived on a Thursday with the weather sitting heavy on the tin roof and the studio smelling of vinegar and hot clay.

Marcus said she was “serious” — which in Marcus meant a person who wore black and had strong views about bisque temperatures.

He floated her name after Christmas as if doing me a favour: someone “experienced, values-driven, definitely the right energy.”

I had already learned that Marcus’s right energy usually meant someone who agreed with Marcus.

But I needed hands, so I said yes to a trial.

She walked in carrying a hard case like a violinist, set it on the counter, and clicked it open to reveal photographs of tall, precise cylinders, thin-walled vases and slab-built lamps with cut-out patterns.

The work was good.

Too good for our chaos, perhaps.

She placed a notebook beside the portfolio.

“I’ve made some observations already,” she said.

She had been inside the building for less than two minutes.

“Lovely to meet you,” I said. “I’m Sally.”

“Tracey.”

No smile. No handshake.

She looked past me as though searching for the person in charge.

Marcus drifted over, happy to be mistaken for it.

“We’ve got a Soirée tonight,” I explained. “Shadow Finn on the wheels. Then hand-building when people hit the wall.”

“I don’t hop,” she said. “I set standards.”

It took me a second to realise she wasn’t joking.

The class filled quickly.

Twenty-two bookings. Three extra guests who had “just happened to be nearby.” Two birthday cakes competing for bench space. Ruth constructing a cheese platter with the concentration of a war surgeon.

Finn arrived glowing with tram indignation and launched into centring demonstrations with theatrical despair.

Marcus hovered near the wheels radiating mentorship.

I circulated with sponges and encouragement and the brittle cheerfulness of a woman who had slept inside her to-do list for six weeks.

Tracey watched.

Arms folded.

When a guest collapsed their cylinder, she didn’t react.

When another declared their bowl “traumatised,” she didn’t react.

Then someone asked:

“Is this clay vegan?”

Tracey replied:

“It’s not made of animals.”

And walked away.

I couldn’t fault the accuracy.

Halfway through the night she sat at a spare wheel and demonstrated throwing with calm precision.

No cooing. No mysticism. No language about listening to clay.

“Less water,” she told a guest. “More brace.”

The guest obeyed.

The cylinder stood up.

The room approved instantly.

At pack-down Tracey opened her notebook.

“Cupboards mislabelled,” she read. “Slop signage inconsistent. Roster doesn’t reflect capability distribution. Wedge table too high.”

The wedge table was too high.

The rest felt less like feedback and more like findings from a coronial inquest.

“We adjust by night,” I said carefully. “The room changes. People change.”

“I prefer when they don’t,” Tracey replied.

Then she wrote something else down.

Later that night I opened the roster intending to move two names and froze completely.

I used to make decisions in one breath.

Now every adjustment felt political.

Would Finn see hand-building as demotion?

Would Marcus interpret fewer wheel hours as punishment?

Would Tracey classify my hesitation as weak leadership in the notebook?

I moved one shift.

Then moved it back.

Then closed the laptop and pretended tomorrow’s Sally would be braver.

By week two, Tracey was on two Soirées and a beginner throwing class.

Technically, she was excellent.

Guests loved her certainty.

“So calm.”

“She fixed my wrists instantly.”

“No nonsense in the best possible way.”

I could live with no nonsense if it built bowls and didn’t fracture the room.

The first staff meeting she attended began with Finn insisting on a “values check-in,” which meant everyone had to say something vulnerable before discussing payroll.

We shared first jobs.

Ebony said Woolies night fill because the decimal points obeyed.

Ruth described a café manager who threw spoons when stressed.

Finn cleaned mirrors at dance school just to watch himself clean them.

Then Tracey said:

“Year Ten work experience in a morgue. Best fortnight of my life.”

Silence.

Even Ebony looked up.

“No customers,” Tracey added. “Clear outcomes.”

After that, Marcus and Tracey became a unit.

Lunch together on the roller-door step.

Shared water bottle.

Low murmured conversations that stopped when other people approached.

Then the studio began shifting in tiny unsettling ways.

The mop relocated.

Glaze shelves moved.

A basket appeared labelled:

Tools in Exile

Ruth’s handwritten sign asking people to wash their hands disappeared, replaced by:

HAND HYGIENE PROTOCOL

complete with numbered procedures.

A guest read it carefully, then washed their hands in the reclaim bucket.

I pulled Tracey aside.

“I appreciate the care,” I said. “But we don’t make changes without checking in.”

“I’ve implemented several valuable improvements,” she replied. “People need leadership.”

“Ask anyway.”

She looked directly past me.

“I answer to Marcus.”

The sentence landed physically.

I opened my mouth to correct her.

Nothing came out.

Later I wrote myself a note:

Say it anyway next time.

I underlined it twice.

Underlining is not leadership, unfortunately.

The undermining arrived gradually.

Marcus began forwarding emails he had already answered.

Tracey suggested centralising the socials under “clearer leadership.”

She asked for passwords like she was offering rescue.

I laughed and said no.

She did not laugh.

One afternoon she installed a beanbag near the street library and announced:

“This is the reflection zone.”

Someone sat on it and cried for three minutes.

Immediately everyone decided Tracey was emotionally gifted.

Then came the alignment meeting.

The room was hot.

Water bottles sweated onto the table.

Tracey distributed handouts covering:

• prep time
• cleaning time
• emotional hydration pauses
• non-extractive timing

Dawn hummed approvingly.

Finn nodded like a sympathetic metronome.

Then Tracey announced:

“Marcus and I will triage decision-making.”

Ebony finally looked up.

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Leadership.”

Ebony blinked slowly.

“You’re new.”

Then:

“Maybe learn where we keep the cones before you lead.”

Tracey didn’t flinch.

“Cones are simple,” she replied. “Systems are hard.”

“We don’t need a flowchart to wipe a table,” I said.

Tracey looked at me for a long moment.

“That’s the problem.”

Then she wrote something in the notebook again.

That night I waited on the tram platform after pack-down holding a roster printout damp with sweat.

Three trams passed full.

A woman beside me asked if the 109 was always useless.

“It’s character-building,” I said.

At home, a new Myki card sat on the bench.

Auto top-up enabled.

No note.

Subtle assistance from a man who reads leases recreationally.

I put it in my wallet and pretended the universe had become organised.

The next morning a clay supplier extended our payment terms after “discussion.”

There had been no discussion.

Only another quiet intervention from the KC’s accountant.

Old fury flared briefly.

Then relief swallowed it whole.

Over the following fortnight Marcus and Tracey formalised themselves into a structure.

Shared Google Docs.

A group-chat channel called:

Care

Collaborative letters about “lived experience.”

The slow withdrawal of ordinary courtesies.

Marcus stopped checking music choices with me.

Tracey gave guests corrective feedback as though the room belonged to her.

Sponges appeared labelled:

Premium

I no longer knew what premium meant.

I tried asserting authority in small domestic ways.

I relabelled buckets:

SLOP

and:

NOT SLOP

Someone added:

“according to whom?”

underneath.

I wrote:

ME :)

The next day the smiley face had Xs for eyes.

At home, though, something softer happened.

The children began noticing me properly again.

The eldest started offering lifts without commentary.

The boy stacked bowls silently in the kitchen and left protein bars near my keys.

One child updated the tram map with “safe stops.”

Another printed a sticker for my wallet:

TAP ON

The KC left the hallway light on and made tea that went cold waiting for me.

Which is one version of love.

The next staff meeting was worse.

Tracey presented “What’s Next.”

Marcus unveiled a values statement that sounded like a wellness podcast unionising itself.

Finn suggested opening with a three-minute landing.

Ebony left halfway through to check the kiln.

When my turn came to speak, my throat closed.

I knew the numbers.

The sponge costs.

The wheel-to-staff ratio.

The exact number of minutes required to clean a Soirée properly.

But inside that circle, under all those expectant faces, my certainty waited too long.

And Tracey stepped neatly into the gap.

Later Ruth said gently:

“You’ll say it next time.”

I asked:

“Will I?”

She nodded with painful optimism.

That weekend we ran three Soirées in two days.

The first was manageable.

The second involved a live hen for reasons nobody explained.

The third earned five stars and the kind of exhaustion that makes your bones feel rented.

Marcus and Tracey ran the room together with unsettling efficiency.

Guests adored it.

I watched the studio tilt under my feet.

After pack-down, Tracey approached William’s restored mid-century sideboard.

“It needs hardware,” she announced. “Hooks. Maybe a rail.”

“It’s perfect already,” I said too quickly.

“My girlfriend has a drill.”

I physically moved the sideboard ten centimetres away from the wall as though distance could defend it.

Later, alone, I ran my hand along the polished wood grain and silently promised protection.

The following weeks became a blur of tiny territorial disputes.

Tracey installed herself deeper into systems.

She “checked in” with staff after shifts.

She converted emotions into bullet points.

Marcus translated those bullet points into demands.

I could feel the room appraising me when I entered.

Not hostile.

Measured.

I started practising a sentence quietly to myself:

“I run this place.”

At first it sounded foreign.

Then merely uncomfortable.

The first time I said it aloud to Tracey, softly, in the glaze room while she relabelled shelves that did not need relabelling, she held my gaze for a long moment.

Then she put the label down.

Unreadable.

I counted it as half a victory.

That night after another double Soirée I stood at the tram stop and thought, for the first time:

Maybe I cannot carry this entirely alone.

The eldest texted before I could ask.

“Do you need a lift?”

I replied:

“If you’re passing.”

Her answer came immediately:

“Always am.”

When I climbed into the car she turned the music down without comment and drove quietly through the dark.

I looked out at the river and let my shoulders drop one inch.

Tomorrow I would relabel buckets.

Move a mop.

Erase a laminated notice.

Write another roster.

Say welcome fifty-seven times.

Somewhere, the KC would make another invisible phone call.

Somewhere, the children would leave another small map of care.

And somewhere beneath all of it, the old certainty still waited.

Thin.

Tired.

But alive.