A Small Extract From My First Book

Lydia had got through the rest of her shift blocking out her husband and thinking of the three M’s, thinking of ways she could spend more time with them. She thought about hosting a party at her home, asking them to bring their husbands. The idea lasted a brief moment and then was discarded. She thought about hosting a party where it was girls only. She scrapped the idea faster than the first. She needed an entrance to her home for the three M’s, a reason to get them in, a reason for them to be in her home that she wouldn’t classify as ‘creepy’. She thought of a business venture she could hold at home, a reason to get people in on the pretext that it would be good for all involved. That it would furnish them with something that was beyond friendship, a legitimate twenty-first century reason to enter someone’s home. She took a post-it note and wrote down some suggestions, crossing them out at the instant they had been written; ‘sex toys’, ‘Tupperware’, ‘pyramid schemes’. The only suggestion she left intact was ‘candles’. She looked at the word. She stared at it, put the post-it note on her screen and continued with her work. The word seemed to be imbedded on the screen like a famous blue plaque on a house. After half-an-hour of trying to work past it, she took the post-it note from the screen, screwed it up into a ball, threw it across the room, hitting a pane of glass, the window into her office, at the exact moment that Michele was passing by. Michele looked at Lydia for a brief moment, before she started laughing.
“Work shouldn’t get you so stressed.”
“Not work, just wondering what shoes to buy.”
“Now, that I can understand.”
Michele walked off to Lydia’s laughter. Lydia stopped laughing, looked at her watch and was relieved that she only had a quarter of an hour to go.

Copyright of Christopher Alexander Simpson