Chapter 9

by Alan         

 

 

‘It certainly does, Mr Heath.’

            He bowed his head in reflection. The café was quiet. She turned to see a tableau of two uniformed staff and two women, somber, staring at them from the counter. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘My dad and I had bad news. It’s fine.‘ She saw all four put on their sympathetic faces. An indifferent wheeze from the coffee machine broke their spell and another woman with a buggy struggled in. Becky turned back to the desolate Heath. She guessed he had not registered she had called him dad.

            ‘May I borrow your handkerchief?’

            She took it from unresisting fingers. ‘Yes, very strange things,’ the old man continued. ‘We talk to objects sometimes, and sometimes we don’t answer when we should, and when we wake in the night we think it will never get light. We can be very frustrating,’ she said, catching her eyes for the first time. ‘The world is full of ghosts when you think about it.’ The two women were making a fuss of whatever was in the buggy in peals of delight, or fake delight, and the waitress was clearing the next table with brisk purpose. ‘We get on, day by day,’ he said.

            ‘We?’ she asked.

            ‘You and I, my darling. We get on.’ He sat back, withdrawing, and gazed towards the window with unresponsive eyes.

            She had drawn a deep breath, shaken out her hair, turned back her sleeves, checked her collar, adjusted a shoe strap, dried her eyes. She was as ready as needs be. She held out the handkerchief.

            ‘Thanks, Mr Heath. Your handkerchief.’ He looked at her in wonder. ‘Your handkerchief, Mr Heath. Your wife’s, I should say. Thank you.’

            ‘Oh, no.’ His voice was wind among reeds. ‘I can’t take your handkerchief, pet.’

            ‘No, Mr Heath. You left it in the shop. It has the initials C.R.’

            ‘My dear,’ he said. ‘I want you to have it.’ He laid his two hands on hers.

            She rose. Her chair rocked back. The café was watching again.

            ‘No, Mr Heath.’ She flung a glance around as for help and caught only a child on its mother’s lap that gazed at a lady who was acting like no lady before. Becky dashed for the door.

            She had taken two rights and a left and gone through the front of M&S and out the back before she had composed herself for the second time in an hour. Dear God! She looked down the street that curled like a frown into the Old Town. Her mobile sounded.

            Pip had texted. ‘Cant beleeve u not cumming. Will be amazing. Pip.

            ‘And screw you too, my darling,’ she thought as she dexterously deleted her. ‘Now I am completely alone in the world,’ she thought. ‘Apart from our Nan,’ she corrected herself.

            She squared up against the street. She tried to frame what she had wanted to say to Mr Heath. ‘I will close my eyes,’ she said to herself. ‘I will walk twelve paces. If I do not bump into anyone or anything or trip on something everything will be fine.’ She closed her eyes. She walked. She opened her eyes. A youth in a hoodie, the sort who got an erection in his trousers if you descended towards him in a skirt on an escalator, was watching in sullen bemusement.

            ‘Awwight, mate?’ he asked as he passed.

            ‘Perfectly,’ she answered.

            She was standing next to a newsagents which was perfect, for after the stress of the morning only chocolate would do. Her eye caught a headline: PARAOLYMPIC GOLD, it said above a picture of a cripple pitilessly smacking another out if his wheelchair in pursuit of a ball. ‘That’s the spirit,’ she thought. ‘No self-pity in those bastards, is there?’ The shop bell sounded an old-fashioned tinkle as she went in and before it had ended had rung in her head, and she knew what she had wanted to say. She had wanted to say: ‘Don’t throw your longing upon me.’ She picked up chocolate. ‘You’re not the first bereaved,’ she had wanted to say. ‘Nor the only.’ The chocolate was beeped. She had a plan. And Mr Heath’s handkerchief was still in her palm.

 

            The pot was warmed. The lumps were in the bowl. The tongs were in the lumps. Water was poured.

            ‘Lovely,’ said Nan. She addressed the tray like a general approving the disposition of troops. ‘I will be mother.’

            ‘Nan,’ Becky said, once Nan had had the comfort of the cup. ‘Can I ask you something?’ Nan looked at her from milky eyes. ‘It’s important.’

            ‘Now?’ asked Nan.

            ‘Why not now?’

            ‘Are you in trouble?’

            ‘No more than usual.’

            ‘Oh, dear.’

            ‘It won’t take long. I’ve got to get back to work in a minute.’

            ‘Oh, dear.’

            ‘Why, ’Oh dear?’ again?’

            ‘All this dashing about.’

            Becky put down her own cup with purpose. ‘It is my work.’ she said. ‘It’s a poor job, but it’s mine. Don’t fret.’

            No. Well, at least we can have another cup of tea.’

            There were five centuries of Britain in the way Nan poured the milk: it was Drake playing bowls, it was Emma the Box Hill while Wellington pounded Napoleon, it was Business As Usual on the bombed out shop in the Blitz. Nan should be Prime Minister. Questions in the house: ‘Since she took office unemployment has hit the high nineties, The Falklands have become the Malvinas, shares are minus fifty, England are twenty two for eight, a depression pandemic has hit the first born of every household and still the Prime Minister refuses to outline her strategy, if strategy she has.’ And Our Nan rises wearily to the despatch box, surveys the Right Honourables on all sides. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘we can always have another cup of tea.’ Pandemonium. Cheers.

            ‘What I wanted to say,’ Becky started, ‘was this.’ She summoned all the force of her personality, which amounted to little, but enough to deal with Nan. ‘I have a plan.’

            ‘Lovely.’

            ‘It’s not a big plan, it won’t shake the world, but it is a plan. My plan. And what I want to know is, how much is in Grandad’s Trust Fund?’

            Nan put down her cup.

            ‘I still have the Life Insurance from mum, and if Grandad left me what he said he would leave me, which was not much, I know, but still … All I need is a start.’

            ‘It’s not much, Becky, darling,’ Nan said at last. They regarded each other over the little drop leaf table. Becky took a lump with the tongs, raised it over the cup, waited. ‘But it is yours, ’ Nan concluded. Becky dropped a lump into the cup from a height. ‘You’ve splashed,’ Nan said. Becky shrugged.

 

            The street lamps went off as she put the key in the lock. A cold dawn crept as though afraid over the National Westminster and fingered the roofs.

            The stock was a mass of looming shadows in the gloom, like ghosts from the lives they had come from. She listened to her footsteps as she took in the familiar piles. She put her weight against the cupboard that for two years had been inches out of line with the wall, heaved, pushed. It straightened with a faint groan. She drew her hands over the line of clothes and pulled one at random from a rack, a simple sleeveless dress with a thin black belt. It was small. The madonna blue was black in the unlit space. Three pounds fifty: but some child had worn it, had pulled it over her head in a bedroom, let it drop over her vunerable virgin body and twisted herself in front of the mirror to gage how it looked from behind. A life left behind. She returned it and straightened the row which settled with a protesting sigh. She took a book from the shelves and in the light from the crack in the blind surveyed its title.

            Victorians Dreaming: Hope and Despair in The Novels of the Industrial Age.

            She opened it. Read: ‘A common weakness in the fiction of the period is the device of the unexpected inheritance for the purpose of plot resolution.’

            Fuck that, she thought, and dropped it in the wastebasket.

            She had to open the blinds. She took a handkerchief from her pocket instead and spread it carefully on the counter. It drew spare light into it, threw it back onto her face as she peered at it, then smoothed it, aware of the cold on her fingers. A car engine intruded with the note of the ordinary as she wrote in black biro on a card: ‘Lace handkerchief. Initialed. 50p.’ She lay it prominent on the counter top.

            We have to move on, Mr Heath. You gave it me.

            Some things said cannot be unsaid.

            Steps of a couple, one hard-heeled, the other dead, both regular, marked out time to two female voices. ‘I was, like, ‘Hello’,’ the one said, ‘and he was, like, ‘Hi’.’ The other laughed.

            Mother, she thought. Mother.

            The shop was quiet again like a held breath. Unexpected sunlight paled the blind and cut a clean line on the floor. She had a plan. She stepped to the blind as though about to throw off a cloth from a box in a magic show and jerked it down, then released it. It rattled upwards with the sound of a surprised beast and stopped with a clack, and the light came in.

Chapter 8

by Patrick

Becca sighed.  It was a sigh that began deep inside her and went many months back in time.  She looked straight into Pip’s eyes and spoke calmly.  “I can’t go to Paris.  It’s a ridiculous idea.  I barely leave the house these days.  I can’t go to another country.  You're confusing my life with the 'Make a Wish Foundation'".  She lowered her head and readied herself for the onslaught of disappointment.

Pip raised her eyebrows for the briefest second and made an exasperated expression.  “Typical.  My God, you’ve become a self-indulgent fucker since your mum died.  You were such fun, so full of life and so full of talent.  So full of style. Look at you.  You look like you covered yourself in glue and ran naked through ‘Millets’.  Don’t go to Paris if you don’t want to but just try engaging with the world again”.  

“Thanks for the feedback”.  Becca smoothed her hair at the back of her head and stared at the pavement.  She liked Pip but she was always so fucking chirpy and couldn’t understand why everyone else wasn’t grinning like John Barrowman on a Gay Pride March all the fucking time.  The thoughts that came from Pip's mouth were like a series of Facebook status updates about cute kids, the funny things cats do and wanting to high-five war heroes.  They made Becca want to scream. 

She wasn’t quite sure what this emotion was but it was overwhelming her.  The last thing she wanted was for someone to offer her the thing she’d dreamed of and realise that she didn’t want it anymore, didn’t respect it, now thought it petty.  What did that leave her with?  Although not conscious that she was crying two rivers of saltwater descended her cheeks.  She no longer had the energy to fully engage with crying.  She lifted her head.

“I’m selfish?  You want to leave your partner and kid and live out some adolescent fantasy hundreds of miles away from them.  Good for you that your life is still a constant party.  Mine isn’t.  Mine is a like a poolparty at Michael Barrymore’s house.  One day things are going fine.  Then my mum is dying.  Then she’s dead and I’m living with my Gran and I don’t know what the point of anything is anymore.  I’ve been frozen in time since the minute I was told mum was ill”. 

Becca had thought that she was imparting previously unknown facts and thoughts to Pippa but as she spoke realised that this wasn’t the case.  This was old news. 

Pip was crying.  An undignified snot snorting cry.  She looked at the handkerchief in Becca’s hand and thought of snatching it but rubbed at her eyes with her sleeve and flicked her sunglasses from her hair to her nose.  She tried to speak calmly.   

“I know she died.  I know it’s sad but for Christ’s sake move on.  On the rare occasions I’ve seen you since the funeral you’re like the antidote to euphoria.  You may not say much but it’s quite obvious you’ve no time for me anymore.  Christ, you’ve no time for anyone.  You seem to think that being constantly sardonic makes you better than everyone else.  It doesn’t.  I’m not sorry that I’m happy.  I’m sorry that you think you’re special.  I’m sorry that you don’t realise that happy people survive in spite of difficulties not in the absence of them.  Clearly you haven’t twigged that your Gran wanted you working in the hospice shop to snap you out of this not to make you more resentful of the world.  The people who love you are tired of waiting". 

Becca kept anxiously smoothing down her hair.  Every aspect of this meeting was making her want to vomit.  She stared at the ground and felt the sting of Pip’s words biting at her skin.  All of this was true.  Negativity had become her default setting.  She tried to think of something to say; an insult, a witticism, an apology but she had nothing. 

She’d clearly been  thinking for some time.  When she looked up Pippa was over a hundred metres away from her.  She’d abandoned her usual sashay for an angry stomp and was trying to get the attention of a taxi driver.

                                                                              ***

She could have sat opposite him but Becca chose to sit in the chair next to Mr Heath.  His rheumy eyes were filled with tears but he smiled as she sat down. 

Her own tears now flowed more freely than they had since she was a child, certainly more freely than since her mother’s illness, death, funeral and long, painful absence.

The handkerchief was in her hand.  She placed both on top of his hand. 

“Where’s your friend?”

“We had an argument”   

 “Loneliness is a dreadful thing.  It makes you do foolish things”.

Chapter 7

by Caity

Paris?

Go to Paris….?

Becca was speechless. She sat looking at her friend,  so many questions racing through her mind.

‘Becca? Bec are you ok?’

Everything she’s dreamed of.  Just an interview away. No more musty binbags full of cast offs  and ugly china. The chance to do this, to really do this.

‘I think I need something stronger than coffee. I can’t believe this.’

‘well you better start believing it, your interview must be soon…when is it?’

Becca looked at her – ‘interview? I… I’ve not heard anything. Pip what you’re  saying – I had no idea’

The pause was a single beat, but they both felt it before Pip crashed on

‘Well,  you know how rubbish you are in the mornings, you probably didn’t see the letter when you were falling out the door. I expect it’s there somewhere.  But you better go and check.’

They fell to Silence, much longer this time. Becca picked up her bag and moved to pull on her jacket

‘Pip what if-‘

‘Hello dear’

They both looked up.

‘Having a coffee? I thought I’d do the same. Before I get the bus home.  It’s cold out isn’t it. I’ve not been in here before, I’m not sure where to sit… Is this your friend then? Hello dear.’

Becca shook herself and introduced Pip to Mr Heath.

‘Ever so cold, and wet. For the time of year. ‘

‘Um, I’m sorry I have to go now, but look, sit here ‘

‘oh yes, you young women, always in a rush. Well, bye then dears. I’ll see you soon I expect.’

*

Mr Heath sat down at the table with the two undrunk coffees. A girl with long dark hair in a high pony tail and chocolate drop eyes came to the table and cleared it for him. He smiled at her. He decided not to say hello. He thought she looked busy. Too busy to stop.  Like they all are Celie, aren’t they.

He sipped his tea and looked out of the window.  

She looks like you. Not as kind in her face, but , her hair. Same colour. And her eyes. You were so beautiful. The most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. 

Villanelle remembering Celie

A Reckless joy inflames my hollowed cheek

Caresses every memory of you

And leaves a longing only jesters seek

 

Until satiate, replenished and complete

I smile, remember and then when I do -

A Reckless joy inflames my hollowed cheek.

 

There’s no more to be spoken now it seems

Before  a bitterness divides this fool

And leaves a longing only jesters seek.

 

Sepia tones of memory look bleak

When shaded with a grain of palest blue.

A Reckless joy inflames my hollowed cheek

 

Whenever I remember now that leap

I took. I know now the loss is cruel

And leaves a longing only jesters seek

 

And all others do refuse;  but I, meek -  

here alone with memorials of you,

A Reckless joy inflames my hollowed cheek

And leaves a longing only jesters seek

 

 

***

 

‘Oh fuck’ 

The bus pulled away from the stop

 

‘he saw us he fucking saw us’

 

‘Calm down there’ll be another one in five minutes, I’m sure it will be fine Becca’

 

The sense of panic was rising. It couldn’t be that she’s missed it…or they don’t want her …but they want Pip. FUCK FUCK FUCK.

 

‘Becca, breathe girl breathe, I’m sure it will be fine’ Pip was becoming tired of the drama. Although this time she hoped that’s all it was. Becca was crying. ‘And for god’s sake blow your nose’

 

They laughed. Becca reached into her pocket.

‘oh bollocks’ she said, pulling out a handkerchief.

Chapter 6

By Claire

"Guess!! No, wait don’t guess! We can do better than that!!

Si, I’m going out” – Becca heard her friend shriek to her husband and then the slam of a door.

“Meet me at Café Boho in 10” and with that, Pip was gone.

For a moment, Becca simply stood still in the void of the abrupt ending to the phonecall. She wasn’t quite sure what she was feeling. Excited? Frustrated? Puzzled? Or frankly, just tired and still slightly grumpy after her bizarre and fitful sleep.

Café Boho. That brought back memories. Becca hadn’t been there since … well, since she moved to her nana’s.

She, Josie and Pip used to have their design books and scraps of material sprawled over at least two tables, nursing a drink for hours after college (or more accurately when they were meant to be in college). The staff never seemed to mind them ordering one cappuccino between them at intervals over the course of a whole afternoon.

In her automaton daze Becca realised she’d already arrived and was pushing open the familiar russet red wooden door of Café Boho. She could still just make out the faded stencils of honeysuckle, that Julia, one of the art students had ‘kindly’ painted around the glass panelling …. without asking permission first.

Smiling to herself at the decadence, Becca ordered two cappuccini and took a seat in their favourite corner, a great spot for people and café watching.

As she glanced around, it appeared nothing much had changed, the mismatched tables and chairs complimented the mismatch of quirky student and yummy mummy customers, much as it had done before. Becca felt safe and comfortable here, as if time had stood still, before her world had been turned upside down.

Just as she was wondering why she hadn’t been back here sooner, Pip bounded into the café. Sunglasses perched on her head, whatever the weather, an overstuffed handbag slung on her shoulder.

“C’est magnifique! I’ve done it!”, Pip blurted out as she threw herself into the empty seat. “Oh, but what about the boys – how can I leave them! Do you think Simon will be ok while I’m gone? I feel like I’m finally following my dream and at the same time it feels like such a huge step!!  You’ve got to come with me!!”

“Take a breath Pip. For fuck’s sake! What are you going on about!!” cried Becca. “I don’t hear from you in ages and then all this drama!”

The stunned looks from the other customers set the two friends into a momentary fit of giggles before Pip said, “you don’t hear from me? Becca – we contacted you in every possible way and we never heard back – what else did you want us to do?”

“Anyway look, we’re both here now aren’t we! Josie was meant to be coming too, she was the one that suggested this whole thing in the first place, wasn’t she? I know you were never that interested before but I can just see us there now! It’ll be AMAZING.

And I couldn’t help it – when I never heard back from you – I filled your application form in and sent off a few of your designs, your nana thought you’d be ok about it. You’ll have to do an interview of course, that’s normal. Oh I’m so excited …. I had my interview today and I’m in. When’s yours?”

By now, Becca was completely lost.

Pip hadn’t always been this dramatic and impulsive, had she? Sure, at college they had both been in awe of Josie and her amazing creations – but Pip? What has got into her!

“You did read some of my emails didn’t you Becca?” asked Pip finally.

“erm, I guess I kind of shut off from things for a while, what exactly are you trying to sign me up to Pip?”

Becca’s curiosity was morphing into trepidation, at Pip’s mention of application forms and interviews…

Pip swept her hands up in a dramatic guesture and with a gallic shrug said, “Picture it - you & me – sitting on Île Saint-Louis sketching our designer collections … Si thinks I’m crazy Becca, I mean, I’ve got him and Leo to think of – but Paris Fashion School!! L’Institute De Couture. Who’d have thought it!!  Alors, on y va?”

Chapter 5

by Sally

Becca was about to call Pip when a scruffily dressed woman with a mop of frizzy hair and an indeterminate age entered the shop and meandered her way towards the clothes rack. Clearly she was in no hurry as she extracted each item from the rail and carefully examined it. Then she tutted or sighed or both (but not necessarily in that order) and replaced the item before extracting the next. “Oh hurry up” thought Becca. She knew this sort; she wouldn’t buy anything anyway so why bother with the charade? Presumably she had nothing better to do to fill her time. Well Becca had, she wanted to ring Pip and have a good natter about the ‘exciting news’ whatever that was… news, any news, even news about needing root canal work would be more exciting than this.

 

Twenty minutes later ‘fizzy hair’ drifted back out of the shop having not bought anything. Becca reached for her mobile and was about to hit the ‘Call’ button when the shop doorbell clanged and in scuttled Miss Hyme, a regular customer and cheap second-hand book lover. She informed Becca that she’d heard about the Scouts bring-and-buy sale and that Miss Harrington had told her that all the unsold books had been brought here, so she’d come to see if there were any Mills and Boone as there usually were. 

“I like Mills and Boone” she said. She said this every time she came into the shop. She also always said ‘you can’t beat a good love story’. Becca braced herself. 

“You can’t beat a good love story” said Miss Hyme.

The minutes dragged by as Miss Hyme picked up each book and holding it at arm’s length, read the back, the first page and the last page before declaring

“I’ve already read that one” and placed it back neatly where she’d taken it from. Then she outlined the flimsy plot, the two-dimensional characters and the ending before asking

“Have you read it? No, then you really should, it’s very good”. 

Like they’d be any point now even if it was the type of book Becca would read, which it wasn’t. Becca wondered why Miss Hyme hadn’t put her incredible memory for fiction to more use. Then again, every plot she outlined appeared to be the same as all the others so maybe she didn’t need to have a good memory to recall it. Maybe she didn't really remember any of them but instead used the same plot over and over again as a peculiar form of conversation maker, "a bit like a parrot really, a bit like a parrot really", thought Becca, to relieve the tediousness. 

Miss Hyme also clearly had nothing better to do as the routine dragged on… 

“Have you read it?” 

…and on… 

“you really should” 

… and on… 

“it’s very good”. 

Becca wanted to scream “Oh just take the whole lot and go, you silly old bag!” but instead she felt herself sigh and then realised it had been audible.  Oops! 

It was almost half an hour later when Miss Hyme left the shop clutching two Mills and Boone’s, clearly satisfied with her purchase. Becca snatched up her phone just as two more customers arrived at the same time, arguing by gesture and nod about who should cross the threshold first. “Oh for heaven’s sake!” ranted Becca to herself, “anyone would think there was something worth coming in here for!”

The afternoon dawdled by. It must have been the longest (and busiest) Wednesday afternoon on record, the shop was never empty. “Is there nothing on day-time TV for these people to watch?”, growled Becca as a poshly-spoken-save-the-planet-hippy muscled her way into the shop to make a big deal out of her 'virtuous reuse' in order to hide her tightfistedness. Becca felt frustrated, she wanted to know what the ‘exciting news’ was and she couldn’t have a good gossip with Pip while there were customers in the shop.

Eventually, it was closing time. “I’ve got to get out of here” she thought and grabbing her bag and jacket she made her way towards the door. She was about to turn the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed’ when, what she thought was a screwed up piece of paper on the floor beneath the clothes rail, caught her eye. As much as she hated this job she also liked to make sure the shop was as tidy as a shop full of junk could be for the following morning. As she bent down to pick the paper up she realised it wasn’t paper but material. ‘C.R.’ was neatly embroidered in the corner. Becca frowned, there was something vaguely familiar about this, and then, she felt a sinking guilty feeling as she remembered the distress she had caused Mr Heath the previous day. Of course, ‘Celie Rose’, it was Mr Health’s handkerchief, he must have dropped it. Becca suddenly felt a pang of remorse and deciding to make sure his beloved ‘Celie Rose’ was returned to him next time Mr Heath came in to buy stamps, she shoved the handkerchief into her jacket pocket.

Turning the sign on the door, Becca lifted the latch and pulled the door shut behind her. At last! She reached into her bag, fished out her phone and was about to hit ‘Call’ when it rang. ‘Pip’ flashed on the display and Becca pressed ‘Answer’.

“Hi…” said Becca but before she could say anymore Pip interrupted her “You’ll never guess what!”

“What? WHAT?” said Becca.

Chapter 4

by John

The insistent bleep of the alarm clock wakes Becca from her slumber. It's the same alarm clock she's had since school.  The sound transports her back to her teenage years momentarily, and then she's back in the present.  An adult in a teenage bedroom just as she left it before heading to university.  She instantly knows that it's Wednesday, which means stock take and staring at endless inventories of useless objects that nobody really needs.  Wednesday used to mean sports afternoon when she was at college, going out with the girls and trying to pull a rugby player at Sports Night at the Varsity Bar.  The only thing she could pull at the hospice shop is a sickie.  Rolling over into the delicious warmth of her duvet feels very tempting.

"Rebecca!  Shouldn't you be getting ready now!" Nana shouts from downstairs.  She's probably been up since five o'clock, with her usual routine of reading the Daily Express from cover to cover before the rest of the world has even thought about getting up.  Becca mumbles somthing inauible that she hopes will appease her, then rolls over, grabbing the duvet so that it blocks out the light that streams through the curtains.

After the snooze function wakes her, Becca sits up at the end of the bed and surveys the room.  A poster of Alexander McQueen stares back at her from the opposite wall, in exactly the same place where her thirteen year old self blu-tacked it after watching a documentary about him on BBC 2.  A collage of cuttings from Vogue, Cosmo and later Wallpaper magazine adorns another wall, clippings from sunday supplements look down at her from the ceiling almost mockingly.  A world away from beige cardigans and garish blouses that fill the racks of her present employer. 

Becca didn't believe in all that positive thinking bullshit, but at this moment she really wanted to see some kind of motivational statement stuck to the wall with all those clippings.  Something like 'Today is the first day of the rest of your life' or one of the other trite phrases from the yellowing self help books she had read, pricing up paperbacks at the back of the shop.  She pushed her teenage thoughts and ambitions to one side and started to get ready for work.

Later that morning she learnt that the stock take had been postponed.  Beryl, the shop manager, muttered something about computer problems and that it would have to wait until they were resolved.  Uplifted, Becca began counting out the till float with a temporary feeling of bliss, the impending monotony of cataloguing tattered board games and faded LPs had vanished thanks to the miscalculations of an ancient Amstrad with it's dot matrix printer and missing space bar.

After a morning spent unpacking boxes of donations from a local scout group's bring and buy sale, she heard the familiar tones of her mobile chime from her handbag that sat under the counter.  She dropped the pile of cassette compilations she was holding and routed out the phone from the clutter that filled the bag.  It was a message from Pip Clarke, her best friend from college.

Call me!  Exciting news! xx