Chapter Seventeen

January’s heat had thickened into something sticky and airless, as though the whole suburb had been wrapped in cling film.

By mid-afternoon the warehouse roof shimmered. The tin swelled. Clay smelled faintly of damp basements and overheated ambition. Fans rattled pointlessly in corners while the kilns radiated their own private weather systems.

Sally Edna wandered from room to room carrying a glass of water she barely drank from, mostly because she needed something to do with her hands.

It was around then that Tracey tightened her hold on the studio.

Not dramatically.

She didn’t march in announcing herself manager.

She did something much subtler:

she behaved as though she already was.

She corrected rosters.

Adjusted signage.

Quietly rewrote class descriptions on the website because she had “noticed a few typos.”

She told Marcus she now answered only to him because:

“You’re the only one here who really understands what we’re building.”

Marcus — who had a fatal weakness for feeling necessary — nodded along without fully realising he was being drafted into something.

At first Sally tried to laugh it off.

Hadn’t the place always been slightly absurd?

William making puns while carrying timber.

Finn delivering emotional monologues beside the wedging table.

Ebony hauling clay through the building like an industrial ghost.

Tina holding entire evenings together through the sheer force of disapproval.

It had never been a normal workplace.

Why should it suddenly become one now?

But Tracey had a talent for turning ordinary friction into evidence.

She framed every intervention as:

“a valuable improvement.”

And she narrated those improvements loudly enough for everyone to hear.

“I’ve restructured the glaze shelves. Much safer.”

“Honestly, I’m surprised this wasn’t addressed earlier.”

“People need proper hydration points.”

“We should really discuss snack access.”

Snack access.

Sally bit the inside of her cheek.

She had already learned the first law of staff politics:

if you laugh at an idea, it triples in size.

It might still have remained manageable if Tracey’s girlfriend had not begun appearing more regularly.

At first she hovered in the doorway.

Then she sat at wheels uninvited.

Then she began throwing tall obscene towers from giant lumps of clay while smirking at her own daring.

The others giggled nervously.

William nearly passed out from pun opportunities.

“Sally,” he cried one evening, “you really must let her throw her weight around!”

The room collapsed into laughter.

Sally smiled weakly while mentally calculating reclaim costs.

Tracey folded her arms.

“She’s an artist,” she announced. “She’s expressing herself. We’re in the business of expression, aren’t we?”

The girlfriend never paid for classes.

Never booked a wheel.

Never cleaned up properly.

She simply appeared, sculpted aggressively, muttered about capitalism, then vanished into the night.

Tracey transformed every inconvenience into ideology.

Heavy glaze buckets became labour concerns.

Hot kilns became workplace risk.

Long Saturdays became exploitation narratives.

Even the tea bags became symbolic.

“Do you realise,” Tracey asked one humid afternoon while fanning herself with bisque, “that we are entitled to a safe space for feelings?”

Sally blinked.

“You mean air-conditioning?”

“No,” Tracey replied firmly. “Emotional safety. Somewhere to decompress. Cushions maybe.”

William immediately announced:

“A Kiln of Feelings!”

“We can fire our emotions to Cone Six!”

The others laughed.

Sally did not.

Because she could feel the room changing beneath her feet.

Tracey was not staging a coup.

She was weaving herself into the structure slowly enough that everyone began forgetting where the original seams had been.

And Marcus — distracted, eager, perpetually hopeful — kept holding the ladder for her.

The Instagram posts became the final fracture.

One morning Sally woke to notifications from the studio account.

Three overnight uploads.

Pastel graphics.

Blurry photographs of mugs stacked precariously beside slogans:

“Don’t be flogged by your art.”

“Rest. Hydrate. Resist.”

“Studios should be safe, not sweatshops.”

Sally stared at the screen in disbelief.

She hadn’t posted them.

Hadn’t approved them.

When she asked who still had access to the account, Tracey raised her hand casually.

“I was just helping with brand alignment,” she said. “But if you want me to stop, I’ll stop.”

Then:

“My girlfriend says the posts are really resonating.”

Resonating with whom?

Sally already knew the answer.

With the exact people Tracey had been quietly gathering around herself.

The people who increasingly viewed Mayfield Street Studios not as a pottery studio trying to survive Abbotsford rent, but as a site of moral struggle.

To Sally’s horror, the staff looked proud.

As though they had finally become part of something larger than mugs and bowls.

Meanwhile Marcus began drifting.

Not cruelly.

Not intentionally.

He simply stopped arriving fully present.

He repeated Tracey’s language in meetings:

“boundaries”

“expectations”

“care structures”

He spoke like someone translating himself in real time.

Then Tracey announced she might need psychiatric leave.

The atmosphere changed instantly.

Marcus became her defender.

He spoke softly to the others about bravery, burnout and emotional labour.

He described how much she had “given to the room.”

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Sally felt the emotional narrative flip.

Tracey became the wounded one.

Sally became the pressure.

The fact that Tracey continued posting long emotional captions online during leave did not appear to trouble anybody.

Sally’s confidence began shrinking in tiny increments.

Maybe she was too hard.

Maybe she did expect too much.

Maybe she really had been flogging people all along.

Though the arithmetic on the back of her receipts suggested otherwise.

At home, the children noticed first.

For the first time in years they looked up from screens long enough to register her posture.

Her silences.

The way she stood motionless in kitchens.

Without discussion they began helping quietly.

The dishwasher stacked itself.

Protein bars appeared beside her keys.

One child left a note:

“Remember to eat before pottery revolution.”

At home, the KC continued his own silent interventions.

A bill mysteriously paid.

Paperwork resolved before reminders arrived.

The car fuelled.

His method of care was administrative invisibility.

Michael hovered occasionally on the edges of things offering furniture finds and awkward concern.

But Sally no longer had the energy to carry anyone else’s earnestness.

The studio itself simmered.

Tracey at home posting relentlessly.

Marcus split between loyalties.

William joking harder as tension rose.

Finn burying himself inside spreadsheets nobody asked for.

Tina working silently with shoulders squared against the atmosphere.

Ebony reclaiming clay with increasing violence.

The place felt like a kiln pushed slightly too hot.

Sally could feel the crisis gathering now.

Not sudden.

Slow.

Static-heavy.

Like weather approaching across water.

She only hoped she could remain standing long enough to survive it.