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