"Maxwell, I am moving back to New York," CC announced on Monday morning at their usual weekly meeting at his home office, before heading to the main office.

"What?"

"You heard me, Maxwell. The sitcom business is in a good shape now and you can continue without me, and I can go back and pick up the Broadway side of the business. We said we'd continue it if we could, didn't we? Well maybe it is time to do that now that the LA side is set up and running."

"But when… how… and what about Niles?"

"Ask him." CC said coldly, looking away and then back at Maxwell with a severity that ensured there would be no follow-up questions. "My flight is booked for tomorrow afternoon. Now, where is Fran? I need a favour from her."

Maxwell didn't know what part of the conversation confused him more. He looked at his wife, who had heard the conversation from next door anyway, as she entered the room to talk with CC. Fran looked at her husband with a look that said "I will explain later", while she listened to CC asking her to take Niles out for two hours the next morning.

"From 10 to 12, is that clear? I have a mover van booked for 11:45 and I only have that time to pack everything. He must not know. If you blab, I will kill you, this time for real."

Fran knew CC meant business, and she was frankly shocked at Niles' actions, that he had confessed to her the previous day through copious tears. She fully understood CC's decision to leave and she was very much up for supporting her. Fran's heart was breaking to see Niles' beautiful love story destroyed in a thousand pieces, but he had caused it to himself by overstepping some of the most sacred of boundaries. She still was fond of him as a dear friend, but she had to shush the part of her that wanted to beg CC to at least talk to him. He didn't deserve it. There was no explanation for what he did. Fran accepted that she could only be near him and try to ease his self-inflicted pain, while doing the little she could for his betrayed wife's pain, too.

The following day, Tuesday, CC went back to the house she had shared with Niles for what she thought was a very happy three months, to collect her stuff. Fran had been glad to help and take Niles shopping or something. As she turned the key, CC was prepared to feel an intense surge of emotions, but she felt nothing – as it often happens when we expect something to be momentous and all we meet is an anticlimax. But she didn't have time for philosophy as she only had less than two hours to pack. She went straight to the bedroom, where her clothes would be, and that's when a sharp feeling suddenly overwhelmed her, entering her marital bedroom for the first time since that fateful Friday. She tried not to look at the bed as she felt her heart pounding mercilessly in her chest. In the end she did. That's where they were, that's where… Her mind raced wondering about practical matters – had they used a condom? Had he changed the bedsheets since then? As she stared at said bedsheets, unable to move, she felt sick and had to rush to the bathroom where she threw up her morning coffee.

After that, she washed her face, which helped her calm down and will herself to gather back some of the Babcock pragmatism. She worked methodically, emptying first the large wardrobe in the bedroom, then her toiletries, then moving to other rooms to collect whatever was hers. She left everything they had bought together, like the damn bedsheets and kitchen appliances. She didn't really care. She fought the urge to take all his stuff and burn it in the back garden or to smash something on the floor, throw the TV out of the window, things like that. No. Everything had to be immaculate, spotless, when she left. She had decided to leave behind only emptiness, absence – not chaos.

The movers were punctual, and off her stuff went on a van to New York that she would receive in four days. She had kept with her a small suitcase with a few changes of clothes and travel basics for the flight.

It wasn't until she arrived in New York that same evening, that she broke down. She didn't know what it was, but from the moment the plane touched down, the knots in her stomach became even tighter, if that was ever possible, and her eyes prickly. Something about being home. Alone. Something about having left home with a man and a career plan, and returning alone to her old career and a new, totally different life to rebuild from the ruins of her old one. From misery.

She didn't even make it out of the airport, or at least to the lounge. Tears started to fall as she was making her way through the airport, and her vision became so blurred and the crying so violent, that she had to stop in the nearest toilet, hiding in the first cubicle she could find, horrified to even be standing in a public toilet. She cried and cried, not caring that her sobs had become louder and louder, that people were banging on the door wondering why she was taking so long in there.

"Honey, are you okay?" A loud woman screamed from outside the toilet.

CC just kept crying uncontrollably, vaguely aware that it was not the right place for that. It took several more minutes before she regained the slightest amount of composure, and realised she had to now fight the embarrassment of leaving that freaking cubicle of doom. She suddenly remembered the catastrophic turn her life had just taken, and realised that she had nothing really left to lose or to care about. She unlocked the cubicle and stepped out, head held high because she had to stay Babcock, even at her lowest point.

The woman with the loud voice from a few minutes earlier revealed herself to be a cleaner from the airport staff, a large African-American woman of roughly CC's age. She looked at CC's red puffed eyes and pulled her into a hug.

"Cheer up, dear, if someone died I am so sorry… if this is because of a man, rest assured he is not worth it, sister!"

That remark made CC want to turn on the tear taps again, but she managed to control herself this time. She thanked the kind woman and managed to drag herself to a taxi and to the safety of her penthouse, which she didn't leave for several days afterwards.