January arrived without asking anyone's permission.Elena had been told about January in London. Multiple people, at multiple points before she left home, had mentioned January in London with the specific emphasis of people trying to prepare someone for something that couldn't really be prepared for. It's dark, they said. It's cold in a way that gets inside things. One woman at a party the week before Elena left had said, with great seriousness, January in London will test your commitment to everything you thought you believed.Elena had nodded and thought, how bad can it be.Quite bad, it turned out.Not dramatically. Just persistently. The grey was different in January not the layered interesting grey of autumn, the kind she'd drawn in November with some enjoyment. January grey was flat. It sat on the city like a lid and didn't lift and by the third week Elena had started drawing it just to have something to do with the feeling it produced, which wasn't quite depression and wasn't
Read more