Twenty minutes. That's how long you'd been staring at the same three dots, willing them to appear. Nothing. Just the cold blue glow of your screen and the sinking feeling that you'd be covering the Sunday shift after all.

You typed again, fingers moving faster than your pride.

Your thumbs hovered. The sensible thing would be to apologise, thank them, move on with your life.

You looked at the message again. wrong number — no punctuation, no emotion, just two words and a full stop.

Strangely, you didn't hit delete.