The Last Week: A Veteran's Countdown to Retirement

Monday. Nineteen years. I started when I was twenty-six and nervous and broke, and I'm finishing at forty-five with a paid-off unit in Scarborough, a small investment portfolio my accountant is smug about, and knees that complain in the rain. I told my regulars three months ago so nobody would be ambushed. This week is the goodbyes.

Tuesday. David, who has seen me every second Tuesday for eleven years, brought a card signed "with gratitude." Inside he'd written that I got him through his divorce, his redundancy and his father's death. I got him through nothing. He did it himself. But I was there on the Tuesdays, and I think maybe that counts. We had our usual time together, warm and familiar, and at the door he hugged me for a long moment.

Wednesday

Lunch with Priya and Meg, the two women who taught me more about this business than anyone. We sat at a cafe on the beachfront and laughed about the old days, the terrible advertising, the brick phones, the time Meg locked herself out of a hotel room in a bathrobe. Priya asked if I'm scared. I said a bit. She said, "Good. It means it mattered."

Thursday

A quiet booking with a man I've seen only four times. He didn't know it was my last week until I told him, and he was genuinely sad. We spent most of the hour talking about what I'll do next. I told him I'm going to do a ceramics course, walk the Cape to Cape track, and learn to sleep past seven. He said, "You deserve all of that." Strangers can be very kind at the right moment.

Friday

Final booking. I won't write about it except to say it was a good one, and that I took my time getting ready beforehand the way I did in my first year, when every booking felt like opening night.

Saturday

I deleted my work phone numbers, archived my ads, and shredded my old appointment books. I kept one page, the first one, from 2007, with a single booking written in shaky blue biro.

What I'm carrying forward:

• I know how to listen.
• I know how to hold a boundary without raising my voice.
• I know how to run a small business and keep good records.
• I know that tenderness is a skill, and that it can be learned.

Sunday. Slept until nine. Went for a swim. Sat on the sand for a very long time.