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reminiscent of the school
girl I once was that had the detention-gaining habit of doing just that on my
blazer. If this was school though – if Penelope was a bullying peer – I could
have reported her. In this situation I was defenceless; it would have looked
like sour grapes for getting rejected. She’d won.
    With that thought, I looked up and tried to collect myself.
Given that I’d hurried out of their offices, I’d left with no care for where I
was heading. Only now as I took in my unfamiliar surroundings did I realise
that I had headed in the opposite direction to the Tube – an understandable
error seeing as my main concern had been to put as much distance between me and
the demon MD’s HQ as I could.
    Right, where was I? Ah, yes. Squinting ahead I blearily
clocked one of the signs announcing that I was about to enter the one square
mile that hosted the City of London. Catching sight of some hot City boys would
certainly cheer me up once I had
retouched my make-up. I was probably looking far from fresh since the tears had
rolled fierce and fast, the first time I had cried in six years, and I knew I
wouldn’t even get the smallest glance from the City boys if I didn’t look
pristine.
    Given I desperately needed a flirty smile or two to get me
back on track, followed maybe by a quick look around the shops before it was
time for the train home – purely for medicinal purposes, of course – I needed
to pop into the nearest ladies’ loo to touch up or, more likely, redo the
extensive damage to my face.
    I never found it. Suddenly I was flat on my back with the
overwhelming smell of chlorine hitting my nostrils...

 
    A voice was muttering somewhere in the distance but, truth
be told, even though I was lying in the middle of the City I didn’t care to get
up. It was likely I was flashing my knickers to the world – wait, was I even
wearing any to avoid VPL? – but I still didn’t want to move. I was even
ignoring the worry that my bag was no longer dangling from my arm. It had gone
flying with the hefty impact and was probably halfway to Hackney by now when
I’d hit something, or someone, very solid. My day was going from bad to worse
and it hadn’t finished either.
    ‘Excuse me. Excuse me miss,’ a voice was saying urgently as
a figure crouched down to shake my arm slightly. ‘Are you OK? I’m so sorry...
Miss?’
    I groaned. I guessed it was a someone then. A very solid male someone judging by that voice. At least I hadn’t walked into a lamppost. That would have been embarrassing.
    ‘Oh my goodness. Can someone call an ambulance, please?’ I
heard, as I felt the man move from his position near my face, to lower down my
body. Pervert.
    Despite my suspicions of perversion though, his voice
sounded clear-cut in that certain way that makes girls melt, or maybe just me.
However, this was not an appropriate time to melt; those tones were not worth me opening my tightly shut
eyes to sneak a peek because a hum suggested a crowd was now forming to watch
my nightmarish train wreck taking place. Great. Still, I reasoned that if I
kept my eyes closed and couldn’t see them, then they couldn’t see me. Obviously . At that moment I really
wondered why I’d even bothered getting out of bed with the day I was having.
    And had I heard him say ambulance ?
That seemed extreme. I felt fine. Well I felt numb, but surely numbness was too
trivial for an ambulance? Granted the impact had been hefty and I’d fallen
strangely sideways before collapsing, but there wasn’t anything wrong with me.
I mean, I hadn’t opened my mouth to say I felt unwell, although little groans
were involuntarily escaping me. Why were they phoning for an ambulance ? This all seemed a little
extreme.
    It got worse.
    ‘Is she breathing?’ I heard a woman call out.
    I didn’t know how to shut my ears without putting headphones
in; if I did that the game would be up. Not that I could do that with my
missing bag so I just needed to ignore