Content note: This is fiction. It contains pregnancy loss, domestic abuse and immigration detention.
Just a quick reminder before we begin: this is part three in a series of four. Part one was all true, entirely based on sourceable facts. Parts two, three and four are fiction, however everything that happens to Hannah in the story has already happened to real women somewhere in the world. On each of these occasions I've put the country and the year that it happened in brackets, and everything is fully sourced at the bottom of the blog if you'd like to do further reading. I do urge you to go back and read parts one and two before starting part three.
July 2031
It's twenty past seven on a warm summer Tuesday morning in July. The sky is a brilliant blue and Hannah is standing in her usual spot on the platform at Hitchin station. The woman with the green fold-up bike is still there, along with too much perfume woman, but Hannah noticed a while back that the man who was always reading a horror novel has gone. She hasn't seen him in months.
They're in the middle of a heatwave, which is becoming more common than not these days. It's the kind of morning where you can almost smell the hot metal from the railway line before the train arrives. Commuters are wafting portable fans in their faces, and one has a sun umbrella up even though it's nowhere near the hottest part of the day.
Over near the ticket barrier are two men dressed in black from head to toe. Even in this oppressive heat they've got black trousers, thick black jackets and black face coverings pulled all the way down under their chins. Hannah wonders how they can bear it. They've been standing guard there with lanyards round their necks and serious expressions on their faces most mornings since April. People treat them the way they treat each other on the commute, never making eye contact, never acknowledging them.
On this particular morning one of the men walks slowly over to Hannah. He comes across as polite, but his expression tells her she shouldn't mess with him. He asks if she's travelling on her own this morning, and glances behind her as if he's looking for someone else. She smiles and says yes. He gives her a small smile and nods as he takes a small tablet out of his pocket and starts writing on it. He thanks her and moves on to the next woman.
The familiar metallic screeching of the rails signals that the train's arriving any moment. Hannah feels a stab of relief, gets straight on and doesn't look back at them. She's not really sure why she didn't look.
Twenty-one months earlier.
November 2029
Leanne was one of the women on Hannah's team. She was 31 and a real foodie. She loved eating out, and she was the one who'd recommended the sushi place the year before. She was due her first baby in January. Leanne was good at her job, although a bit of a worrier, and she'd planned her maternity leave meticulously, pretty much to the hour. Hannah hoped the baby understood the schedule.
On a normal Tuesday, when Leanne was seven months pregnant, she was called into an HR meeting and told that her role was being "restructured". Leanne couldn't believe what she was hearing. They told her the shake-up meant there'd be no role for her to come back to, so there'd be no maternity leave, because there'd be no job to take it from. They handed her a crisp white envelope, there and then, which gave her a month's notice, a month's pay, and the statutory redundancy for two years' service, which came to less than she'd spent on the pram.
Leanne left the HR office in shock and headed to the kitchen to try and figure out what had just happened. The tap was running, and she found Hannah washing up mugs with a look of disdain on her face, and told her everything in a disjointed, breathless voice. She swayed, cradling her bump with one hand and clutching the letter in the other. She tried her hardest not to cry, but the warm salty tears slowly leaked from her eyes. The tap kept running.
Hannah headed upstairs to HR to see if she could find out anything more for Leanne. The HR team were always kind, but that was probably part of the job description. They gently explained that there was nothing they could do. There was an untouched box of tissues sitting on the desk. They talked about the new Workplace Fairness Act, which covered pay and hours, and said this didn't fall under either. The HR manager said she was sorry, and Hannah thought she genuinely meant it. (Afghanistan, September 2021: professional women told to stay at home until further notice.) [1] Hannah walked back down the stairs to her desk, where Leanne was waiting. She gave just the slightest shake of her head, and Leanne's shoulders slumped.
Leanne left the firm at the end of the month. The team had all chipped in and got her a card and a bunch of flowers from the garage round the corner. Hannah signed the card.
Later that month they found out that Tom had been made permanent head of the floor. There was no process to it this time either, and no one else got the chance to apply. It was announced at five to five on a rainy Friday afternoon. Hannah was pleased for him.
March 2030
Tom was a kind man of thirty-three. He'd grown up in Stevenage, where his dad had managed the council's housing department and his mum had stayed at home, and he was the first person in his family to go to university, which his parents were exceptionally proud of. He didn't like conflict and avoided it wherever he could. He'd much rather fix a problem quietly than have an argument about it, and he had a real talent for making people feel looked after and loved.
On a Saturday evening in March 2030 Tom proposed. He took her to the same chain Italian in Covent Garden where they'd had their first date, and there was a familiar comfort in the warm smell of garlic that met them at the door. By coincidence the waiting staff sat them at the exact same table as nearly a year before. On the way to it they passed a big family group all singing happy birthday to an awkward-looking preteen. And that's where he asked her. Nothing special, no ring in the pudding, no violinist, no grand gestures. He just asked her, directly, over coffee. She said yes immediately; she didn't need to think about it. Tom was kind and easy, and the way the world felt right now she needed more of that in her life. The big family on the next table gave a resounding cheer and offered to take a photo.
As soon as she got on the train she rang her mum, who cried tears of joy. She didn't tell her dad until the next day, and when she did he just said "about time" and gave her a very long hug. It was probably the most emotional she'd seen him since her parents separated.
April 2030
In April 2030 there was a free vote in Parliament on abortion, and the time limit was cut from 24 weeks to 20. The debate in the Commons went on into the early hours and got a lot of coverage. The next morning the headlines called it "bringing Britain into line". Most of the people Hannah worked with thought it sounded sensible. Hannah thought it sounded sensible at first too. (United States, 2010 to 2022: more than a dozen states banned abortion after 20 weeks, years before the courts went further.) [2]
The abortion rules changed again in July, although this time the change was smaller and got a lot less coverage. The ground that allowed an abortion where the baby had a serious abnormality was quietly removed. The column on page seven said it affected about three thousand women a year, roughly one in every hundred. Hannah read that number and thought that although it wasn't that many, it would be a horrifically difficult experience for even one woman to go through. She also wondered why it had been changed again now when things had already been changed a few months earlier. There seemed to be an extra focus on it from the government. (Poland, 2020: the court removed the same ground; eight months later, Izabela Sajbor died in hospital while doctors waited for her baby's heart to stop.) [3]
Hannah stared out of the train window at the rows of houses, billboards and office blocks and thought about Jess. She meant to ring her, and she didn't that week.
August 2030
In August Priya told Hannah she was leaving. They were moving to Dublin. Hannah was devastated. Sam had got a good job there, and after what had happened two years before she didn't need much persuading. She asked Hannah to be her referee, and of course Hannah obliged, writing her the best reference she'd ever written.
A few weeks later the pair had their last Friday lunch together at their favourite café on Artillery Lane. The café was unusually quiet and the coffee machine seemed to hiss louder than normal. Hannah, as always, had her skinny latte. Priya plumped for the summer special, not pumpkin this time. They talked about a lot of things, but they didn't talk about why she was going.
They nipped into the newsagent for one last bar of chocolate together, and as they came out Priya gave her a massive hug and said, "Come and visit, you're always welcome, both you and Tom. Come before they stop you." And then she laughed. Hannah laughed too, while holding back the tears. (Ireland, 1980 to 2018: more than 170,000 women and girls travelled from Ireland for abortions, mostly to Britain, nine a day by the end. The boats have turned round.) [4]
September 2030
Early in September Hannah and Tom tied the knot. The wedding was a small affair, in the rather tired register office in Hitchin on a Saturday morning. It was the first time Hannah had seen her mum and dad in the same room for years, and they managed to stay civil. Tom's parents were there, along with Dan and Kelly and Alfie, who looked all smart in his chocolate brown suit, and Jess had come down from Leeds, and a dozen or so friends from either side. Hannah looked stunning. Her hair was half up, with the rest in loose curls, and her dress was ivory with delicate lace detailing. Dan was in the same chocolate brown as Alfie.
Hannah's dad walked her in, to the background of an old tune, Ed Sheeran's "Perfect". He didn't say anything specific to her, no special words of wisdom, but he did hold her arm tighter than he needed to.
After the ceremony they all headed to the function room above the Stag's Head in town. There was a lingering smell of stale lager and cheap aftershave from the night before, and the speakers crackled as the disco man tested the equipment with snippets of Abba. It didn't bother Hannah. She was happy, and she was surrounded by her closest friends and family.
After they'd eaten came the speeches. Dan gave one. It was funny, and mostly about Tom, although there was a bit about Hannah being the bossy little sister. It ended with him saying Tom had his work cut out. Everyone laughed, including Hannah. Jess didn't.
They let their hair down that night, dancing and singing their hearts out and staying up late. Even Alfie lasted until midnight. It was one of the best days of Hannah's life. She'd meant to change her name, but she'd been so busy at work, and when she realised how many different places she'd have to change it, the passport, the bank, the mortgage, work, it all seemed like a lot of hassle, so laziness won out and it was just easier to leave it as it was. Tom didn't mind. And nobody really asked her about it, and that was fine.
October 2030
By autumn, the Family and Nation Act had passed into law. It defined marriage as between a man and a woman, a mother as a woman and a father as a man. It also stated the importance of the family, and how it was the foundation of the country, and that every household had a "head". It didn't take any rights away from anyone. Well, that's what everyone kept saying whenever it was discussed. (Hungary, December 2020: the constitution amended to say the mother is a woman and the father is a man.) [5]
Families all over the country talked about it over dinner. So did Hannah and Tom, although that was the only time they did. Tom said it didn't change anything for them, and he was mostly right. Hannah felt it was over the top to have to pass an entire new law into being, and worried about what it might mean for others who weren't in the same situation as they were. She chewed more times than she needed to before she decided to let it go and agreed with him.
November 2030
Another new development came in November. The Border Command was created. It had the powers to stop, search and detain people, and a target of two million removals in its first three years. It was huge news, a headline across every news outlet, off and online, for weeks. People were very opinionated about it in both directions and there was a lot of unrest. Hannah thought it did seem pretty heavy-handed, but she didn't see what she could do to change it, and it wasn't about her. She signed an online petition and chatted with Jess about how mad it all seemed, and carried on her life as usual. (Restore Britain, October 2025: a published plan for up to 2 million removals in 3 years or less.) [6]
A few weeks after the Border Command came into being, another announcement came. This time it mandated that everyone with a right to live in Britain would need an official Status Document, applied for online. Employers were instructed to check every employee's status, and if they didn't they would receive a hefty fine. Hannah's firm sent round an email with the deadline for employees to submit their Status Documents, which was the end of March. Hannah did hers that evening in twenty minutes, using her passport and her birth certificate.
Kelly, Hannah's sister-in-law, found the process a lot more difficult, because her passport was in her married name and her birth certificate was in her maiden name. The online system wouldn't accept them, and she couldn't proceed any further without a countersignature from the head of the household. (Iran, real: married women need their husband's written permission to get a passport.) [20] Dan signed it, and made a joke about it at Sunday lunch, and Kelly laughed. It was beef that week, and Alfie managed to get more gravy over himself than he did eating it. It was only then that Hannah realised she didn't need Tom's signature because she'd kept her own name. It hadn't been a conscious decision, or a protest against anything. It was laziness about having to complete all the paperwork in all the different places that required it.
December 2030
The Christmas drinks at work were always a rowdy affair. The evening was renowned for providing something to talk about in the office over the next few weeks. The stories were normally about people drinking a little too much and getting on the wrong tube home, or finding out that Gary from logistics could breakdance. But this year Hannah couldn't stop thinking about the quiet conversation she'd had with a senior partner just before midnight. She'd always admired Helen, who was a real force of nature and had rightly earned her position on the board of the company. She'd worked there many years before Hannah had joined and had a huge wealth of business experience. They'd got talking while washing their hands in the bathroom. They were the only two in there. The music was thumping through the door and the automated air freshener pumped an artificial flowery mist over them. Helen spoke in hushed tones, and said that another senior partner had told her that a woman who'd been appointed to a senior court had had her appointment withdrawn after someone had started a smear campaign about her "temperament". Following that, the next three appointments had all been men. They dried their hands in silence. Helen picked up her drink, took a sip and walked out, leaving Hannah standing there. (Iran, 1979: women barred from serving as judges.) [7]
February 2031
Dóra's application was the hardest. In February she was still struggling, and she needed help to complete it before the deadline. She knew Hannah was good with numbers and records, and one lunchtime she asked if Hannah could assist with her application. She explained that her settled status had been granted years ago, but it was under a scheme the new Border Command said it didn't recognise. After trying and failing to get through to the government helpline more times than she cared to mention, she was desperate. She had to prove where she'd lived every single year since 2009. She'd gone through a ton of old paperwork at home and spent hours at night trawling through old computer records, and had managed to find nearly everything they'd asked for, except 2011. She was having real difficulty finding anything acceptable for that one year. Together they spent two full lunch hours and one evening, until almost midnight, going through all Dóra's old bank statements and records. They trawled through everything and found nothing that could help. On more than one occasion Dóra's tea went cold beside the keyboard and neither of them noticed.
In February the rules around abortion changed again. A court ruled that the clause passed in 2026, the one that meant a woman could no longer be prosecuted for ending her own pregnancy, only protected her if she was within the legal time limit. No new law was put forward for discussion, debate or vote, and no new legislation was passed, it just happened. For any woman past twenty weeks, the old law from 1861 simply applied in full again, the way it had for a hundred and seventy years. The news reported it as a technicality rather than a significant change to the law in England and Wales. (England and Wales, real: the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 has never been repealed. The 2026 change was one clause in a policing act.) [8]
That same month, restrictions were put on the availability of the morning-after pill. One lunchtime Hannah nipped into Boots to pick up some medicine. She worked her way through a mix of people in the store, passing office workers grabbing a quick meal deal, an older man stocking up on lotions and vitamins, and a few other tired and pale faces like hers, who looked as if they were fighting the same germs. Someone's prescription was being called out over the tannoy, and the whole shop had that overpowering smell of the perfume counter. She grabbed some painkillers for her headache and headed to the pharmacy counter for the decongestant. While waiting in line she overheard a young woman at the counter being told that she would need to go and see a GP for the morning-after pill. The woman's face drained of colour, and there was an awkward silence, after which the pharmacist apologised and encouraged her to see her doctor. (Poland, 2017: the morning-after pill made prescription-only.) [9]
March 2031
One morning on the tube, Hannah read that a man born in Leeds had been deported by mistake. They'd taken him from his place of work, not allowed him contact with anyone, processed him and put him on a flight to a country he'd never been to, all within forty-eight hours. Thankfully three weeks later he was brought back, although only with a quiet apology on page nine. She read it twice, barely believing that a mistake of that magnitude could slip through, then put her phone away, went across the crowded station, through the ticket barriers and outside into the fresh air. (Windrush, 2018: people who had lived legally in Britain for decades detained and deported because they had never been given papers to prove it.) [10]
April 2031
Around Easter time Hannah's firm introduced a "professional presentation policy" for client-facing staff. It said people should show no bare arms, nothing above the knee, and have hair tied back, "in line with public sector guidance". It applied to everyone, but in practice it only applied to the women, because the men were already wearing suits and mostly had short hair. On the Monday Hannah begrudgingly wore the only dress she owned with sleeves.
Hannah queried the decision with Tom, who was head of the floor. He said he'd signed it off because it had come down from management above, and it was tied to the firm's government contracts, so he didn't really have a choice. He also told Hannah that if he hadn't signed it someone worse would have, and that it was only clothes. She believed what he said about it coming down from above, but she wasn't sure it was just clothes. It gave her a sickly feeling in the pit of her stomach, but she realised Tom had no choice if he wanted to keep his job.
Unable to let it lie, that lunchtime she went to one of the HR partners she was friendly with and chatted it through, saying how utterly ridiculous it was. They totally agreed, but nothing changed. (Afghanistan, May 2022: women told to cover from head to toe, with their male relatives made responsible.) (Iran, 2023: hundreds of hotels, restaurants, pharmacies and shops were closed by the authorities for not enforcing what women wear.) [11]
June 2031
June of that year was swelteringly hot, the hottest ever on record. Everyone was wearing long sleeves in the office now, and it was a relief to get into the coolness of the air conditioning. One day Hannah was down in the accounts department, checking some accounts for a client. As Philippa reached up to get the file, her long sleeves slid back slightly, revealing a large dark mark on the inside of her wrist. She quickly pulled her sleeves down.
Earlier that week, Hannah had read that three women's refuges in Hertfordshire had closed down. The report said their funding hadn't been renewed and the charity couldn't continue without it. She didn't put two and two together until she was sitting on the train home. (Afghanistan, 2021 onwards: women's shelters closed, and survivors sent back to homes they’d fled.) [12]
She sat there gazing out of the window in the relative silence of the quiet carriage, a bag strap hanging down from the overhead shelf, swaying hypnotically with the movement of the train. She remembered how it had all started: the men at the train station back in April, handing out leaflets about "safe travel for women", wearing high-vis jackets with official lanyards draped around their necks. They said they were volunteers from something called the Community Safety Partnership, "supporting the police", and actually, at the time, people had said it was quite nice. (Britain, September 2026: hundreds of masked men in black blocked the roads into the Port of Dover and the road from the lifeboat station in Portsmouth.) [13]
By the middle of July the high-vis jackets had all gone and they were dressed in black from top to toe, face coverings included. Nobody could remember when that had changed, but it had happened quickly. Then that Tuesday morning one of the men approached her while she was waiting for her train and asked if she was travelling alone.
August 2031
On one of their regular post-work phone calls Jess rang Hannah to have a serious moan. She was furious that the new rules meant midwives couldn't attend births, or losses, without a doctor being present. She explained that they'd said it was "for safety", but it meant Leeds could no longer staff a community midwife-led unit. And just like that it was gone, and Jess was back on the ward, miserable and doing twelve-hour shifts. She was not happy about it at all, and spent a good forty minutes raging to Hannah about how this would compromise women's safety, and how it was a backward step. Hannah listened. She really listened. (Afghanistan, December 2024: midwifery training closed to women, the last door into medicine.) [14]
Two weeks later, on a Sunday evening, Hannah was cleaning the bathroom when Jess rang again. The pelican crossing beeped in the background, and Hannah noted that Jess didn't say hello, she started straight into it.
Jess told her, in pieces, exactly what had happened. It was a little disjointed, because Jess was so angry, and Hannah could hear her words being spat with force down the phone. A woman on her ward had lost her pregnancy at eighteen weeks. It was incredibly sad, of course, but it wasn't an unusual loss in all of Jess's experience. What happened next was. The form, the one where the father's section couldn't be left blank any more, meant that the father was contacted. On this occasion the father went to the police, and then the police appeared on the ward that afternoon and demanded the patient's full notes and history.
Jess didn't have any choice. They weren't asking her nicely, they were telling her that that's what was happening, and they strongly advised her not to stand in their way. She kept saying, "I had to, Hannah. I had to." (Nicaragua, 2006: the law makes no distinction between a miscarriage and an abortion.) (El Salvador: women reported to the police by the hospital staff treating them, and jailed for losing pregnancies.) [15]
Hannah listened until Jess finally slowed down. There was nothing then for a moment, nothing but traffic noise and the sound of Jess's fast breathing.
The call ended without either of them saying a proper goodbye. Hannah sat on the edge of the bath with a cleaning cloth in one hand and her phone in the other for a long time afterwards.
September 2031
Hannah couldn't get it out of her mind for days. In the end she wrote it all down, everything that had been niggling her, that wasn't quite right, that she'd been frustrated about, from Priya's cancelled consultation back in October 2028 to the woman on Jess's ward. She wrote it sitting at the kitchen table with the dishwasher humming, after Tom had already gone to bed. She made a point of not naming any specific people; she didn't want to get anyone in trouble. And this time she didn't delete it, although her finger hovered over the button for a moment. "Fuck it," she thought, "what can they do anyway?" and posted it on her socials just before ten o'clock at night, under her own name.
Her phone buzzed against the bedside table all night, and in the end she turned it over to silence it. The following morning Hannah woke a little later than usual, picked up her phone and was shocked to see that the post had blown up. It had been shared four thousand times. While she was still looking at it the numbers were climbing in front of her eyes. There were too many comments to read them all. She scrolled down and could see strangers saying thank you, and other strangers saying things far worse. Tom didn't mention it at breakfast, and Hannah wasn't sure whether that was because he hadn't seen it or because he'd decided not to say anything. It didn't stop growing, and the views, comments and shares continued to climb all day. By that night it had passed four hundred thousand views.
Two men from the Partnership turned up outside her house on the third day after the post had gone viral. She'd just walked back from the station, and she saw them standing on the pavement, not at her door. They were polite. They asked her name, and then asked if Tom was home. Midway through the conversation one of the neighbours' kids whizzed past them on a bike, missing Hannah by millimetres, followed shortly by another kid who was laughing and calling out to his friend ahead. He looked over, shouted back a cheeky "sorry!" and sped off. Tom wasn't home, and the Partnership men casually walked off down the street, one of them pulling a small tablet from his pocket and making some notes on it. They didn't look over their shoulders. Hannah stood there, watching them disappear. The hazard lights on a delivery van that had double parked nearby were ticking away, and a moment later the driver reappeared at the vehicle and asked, "You alright, love?" which snapped her out of her trance.
Tom arrived home about an hour later. He said he'd had a phone call at work. He didn't even take off his wet coat, or dump his keys in the drawer, in fact he didn't stop moving. He also didn't shout, Tom never shouted, but she knew he was seething. He walked brusquely straight past her, muttered, "You've put us both in it," and she didn't see him for the rest of the evening. (Iran, 2022: the two journalists who reported Mahsa Amini's death were arrested within a fortnight.) (Iran, 2024: drones watching women in public places, and a police app for vetted members of the public to report women without a headscarf.) [16]
She took the post down that night.
November 2031
Hannah had learnt by now that the news that mattered to her was normally buried beyond page seven. This time it wasn't. It was the front page, and the government was pleased with itself. They'd announced "specialist pathways" for girls. From 2033, girls' secondary education would move to online "learning hubs", with flexible hours "to reflect family priorities". The secondary schools would all become boys' schools. Hannah read it on the tube and thought about all the girls she often saw at the end of her road in their maroon blazers. (Afghanistan, September 2021: secondary school closed to girls.) [17]
December 2031
The pit in Hannah's stomach only got deeper in December. A letter arrived from the bank about her mortgage. It was a standard white envelope with a window, dated the first of December, and it was delivered alongside a take-away pizza menu and a 10% discount off Paradise Gardens landscaping services. It said that following a change in affordability rules, a single applicant on a variable rate now needed a co-applicant or a guarantor. Hannah couldn't understand it, because she'd owned the house for six years and never missed a single payment. Why on earth would this be necessary? The thought of trying to figure it out and contact the bank was overwhelming. She wondered what Tom would think.
Tom said they should just put it in both their names, it would be simpler and far less stressful for Hannah. And so reluctantly, that's what happened later that week. Hannah knew it didn't make any difference to them, but she felt like a little piece of her had been made smaller. (Afghanistan, 2025: fewer than seven women in 100 have a bank account or use mobile money.) (Britain, before 1975: a woman could be refused a mortgage without a man to guarantee it.) [18]
She signed the papers after she got home from work on Thursday. For a moment she thought again about ringing the bank to see if there was anything she could do to prove she was perfectly capable and trustworthy of making the payments. It was the principle, after all, but she was exhausted, and she realised Tom was right, it was easier all round, and less stressful, to sign it. The boiler took the full three attempts to fire up that night, same as usual, and she stood in the hallway listening to it roar while the ink dried on the document.
It was Christmas, and Hannah was back at her dad's house. Tom, Mike, Dan, Kelly and Alfie, who was now four, were all there. Her mum was spending the Christmas holidays in Lanzarote, and after the year Hannah had had, she regretted not doing the same. Alfie was at the perfect age for Christmas, and ran round like an excited puppy all morning, ripping open gifts and eating far too many sweets.
Traditional turkey this year, with all the classic trimmings, including the sprouts nobody wanted but they cooked anyway. The smell of crispy bacon travelled through the whole house, and the kitchen windows steamed up as usual. While they were serving up, Dan talked about being a councillor for Rebuild. He told his election story, again, about how he'd been elected in May and was proud of it. Hannah knew the turnout had only been nineteen per cent, and that prices had gone up again that autumn while the firm froze pay for a second year, but she didn't want a row on Christmas Day, so she put sprouts on the plates and listened to Dan talk about how his community thought his party were doing a great job. Alfie was begging to pull the crackers before they'd even sat down.
Nobody wanted a traditional Christmas pudding this year, so they opted for a lemon meringue pie. It was one of Hannah's favourites, and as she sat trying to work out how many portions she could manage, Dan warned her that Jess really ought to keep her head down, what with the way things are. The comment came out of nowhere, and she almost forgot about dessert. Hannah hadn't told Dan anything about the ward or what Jess had gone through. She looked over at Kelly, but Kelly was quietly looking down at her plate.
On the drive home Hannah figured it out. Jess must have told Kelly, and Kelly had told Dan, and Dan had told someone. Tom was driving that night and singing along to the radio. He didn't ask her why she was so quiet.
That week the marriage age went back down to sixteen, with a parent's consent. Hannah didn't even realise, because it barely appeared anywhere in the media. (England and Wales, real: the minimum age was raised to eighteen in 2023, with no exceptions. Scotland's is still sixteen.) (Iran, 1979: the marriage age for girls lowered from eighteen to thirteen.) [19]
Hannah walks into the office on the last Friday before Christmas. Dóra's desk is empty. Not just tidied a bit, but totally cleared. No cards, no mug, no plant. There's been no email and no leaving do. There's still a bit of red tinsel twinkling under the office lights that someone taped to her monitor at the start of the month. Other than that, it's as if she was never there. There's a large, opened box of Celebrations precariously balanced on the printer, and someone a couple of desks down is wearing a Christmas jumper with flashing lights.
Confused, Hannah goes off in search of her. She's nowhere on her floor, so she walks with purpose down to the canteen to see if she's there. She isn't. It's particularly quiet, and there are two men from marketing sipping coffee in the corner. As she turns to leave she sees the telly, on mute, with the ticker running along the bottom of the screen, and she suddenly remembers with exacting clarity what Dóra said when they were sitting underneath it eating lunch two and a half years ago.
She goes back to her floor and finds Tom. She wants to find out if he knows anything about what's happened to Dóra, but he tells her, kindly, that he doesn't know anything and that it's above his pay grade. She can tell from his eyes that he's telling the truth. He asks if she wants to get lunch somewhere nice, as it's nearly Christmas.
It's the first time Hannah has noticed him changing the subject.
She starts to tell herself that it's just the economy.
That's the end of part three. Just a reminder that parts two, three and four are all fiction, but every bracket in the text is a real place and a real year where it happened, and all the sources are below. Next week is part four, the last, and the conclusion of Hannah's story. Please do follow to find out what happens.
The Receipts // (Sources)
[1] United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, reports on Taliban decrees, September 2021. Human Rights Watch, "Afghanistan: Taliban Severely Restrict Women's Rights," September 2021.
[2] Guttmacher Institute, "State Bans on Abortion Throughout Pregnancy," 2022.
[3] Constitutional Tribunal of Poland, judgment K 1/20, 22 October 2020. Center for Reproductive Rights, statement on Izabela Sajbor, November 2021. Department of Health and Social Care, "Abortion Statistics, England and Wales: 2023," January 2026.
[4] TheJournal.ie, Q&A: Here's how many women and girls travel to the UK for abortions, 7 May 2018.
[5] Fundamental Law of Hungary, Ninth Amendment, 15 December 2020.
[6] Restore Britain, "Mass Deportations: Legitimacy, Legality, and Logistics," October 2025.
[7] Nobel Prize, Shirin Ebadi biography, 2003.
[8] Offences Against the Person Act 1861. Crime and Policing Act 2026. House of Commons Library, "Changes to the law on abortion in England and Wales," CBP-10970, 3 August 2026.
[9] Poland, Act of 25 May 2017 amending the Pharmaceutical Law.
[10] Wendy Williams, "Windrush Lessons Learned Review," Home Office, March 2020.
[11] United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and Human Rights Watch, Taliban decree on women's dress, May 2022. Amnesty International, Iran: International community must stand with women and girls suffering intensifying oppression, 26 July 2023.
[12] Afghan Witness, Centre for Information Resilience, "Women 'more vulnerable than ever': the closure of Afghanistan's safehouses," 9 March 2022.
[13] Associated Press, Masked men block roads into Dover port in England in apparent anti-immigrant protest, 5 September 2026. PA Media, Vehicles damaged and police officers injured in anti-migration stand-off, 7 September 2026.
[14] United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and Human Rights Watch, closure of midwifery and nursing courses to women, December 2024.
[15] Nicaragua, Law 603, 26 October 2006. Amnesty International, "The Total Abortion Ban in Nicaragua," 2009. Center for Reproductive Rights, "Marginalized, Persecuted, and Imprisoned: The Effects of El Salvador's Total Criminalization of Abortion," 2014.
[16] Committee to Protect Journalists and Gulf Centre for Human Rights, Niloofar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, September 2022. UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran, report to the Human Rights Council, March 2025.
[17] United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and Human Rights Watch, September 2021 and March 2022.
[18] UN Women, Afghanistan Gender Index 2024, June 2025. Sex Discrimination Act 1975.
[19] Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022. United States Institute of Peace, The Iran Primer, "Iranian Laws on Women."
[20] European Union Agency for Asylum, Country Guidance: Iran, January 2025.
