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and inhaled. Seconds later I was coughing like an eighty year-old at Bingo.
    ‘Jesus,’ I gasped when I finally managed to clear my airway, ‘I can’t even smoke properly any more. What a loser.’
    ‘You could never smoke properly. But maybe now’s a good time to start.’ She looped her arm through mine and led me along the pavement. ‘It’ll add to your dark air of desperation, which is a canny lot cooler than denial, believe me. If you ask me, pet, you’re better off out of it. At least now you can do whatever the fuck you want to do with your life.’
    ‘But I liked doing
that
. I loved my job and my suits.’
    She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow.
    ‘Aye well, each to their own.’
    We stopped outside our grimy local pub, The Stuffed Dog, which did not disappoint in that it did actually contain a threadbare, real stuffed dog in a glass cabinet. The building looked like a chipped ornament of a building from the outside and like a 1950’s pub time capsule on the inside. Roxy stubbed her cigarette under her shiny sole and pushed open the door.
    ‘We can’t, Roxy.’
    ‘Why the fuck not?’
    ‘Why not? Because it’s early afternoon. It’s early afternoon on a Tuesday. I can’t go to the pub in the early afternoon on a Tuesday.’
    Roxy flicked her hair behind her shoulder and looked at the door as if checking for a sign.
    ‘Sorry, Chloe, but I must have missed the going to the pub in the early afternoon on a Tuesday moratorium.’
    A man who had just walked up behind us squeezed past Roxy and winked.
    ‘That’s a long word for a fit lass like you, pet.’
    ‘I like long things,’ Roxy smiled, then glancing at his crotch added, ‘so it looks like your luck’s out.’
    The man scurried inside. I stubbed out my largely untouched cigarette.
    ‘Come on, Chloe man, a drink will give that stifled imagination of yours a kick up the arse.’
    I stepped over the grimy doormat.
    ‘Why do I need my imagination? My head hurts as it is.’
    Roxy waggled her finger in the air as if tapping a lightbulb above her head.
    ‘Because you and I are gonna make a list.’
    ‘A list of what?’
    ‘A list of what you want to be.’
    ‘Shall we start with “not unemployed”?’
    Once inside, we crossed the sticky wooden floor and Roxy rested her elbows on the bar. Vik, the barman’s, eyes danced across her cleavage before eventually finding her face.
    ‘Give us a bottle of that pink sparkly shite there will you, Vik? It’s not real Champagne but it will have to do.’
    ‘The Prosecco?’ he beamed.
    ‘Aye whatever, aye. We’re celebrating.’
    ‘Celebrating what?’ asked Vik and I in unison.
    ‘We are celebrating my mate Chloe here getting out of the rat race and leaving the stuffed suits behind.’
    ‘Not through choice,’ I mumbled.
    ‘Now she can be whatever she wants. Imagine that freedom hey, Vik?’
    Vik nodded blankly and poured two drinks.
    ‘Aye, there’s a big, wide fucking world out there,’ Roxy carried on, ‘and Chloe here is coming to get it.’
    I weakly lifted my glass and sighed, ‘Maybe I’ll just stay in here for a while.’

CHAPTER FOUR
    140g caster sugar
    ‘Write it down, write it down!’ Roxy whooped, thrusting her glass in the air along with her legs.
    ‘Put your legs down, Roxy, that man over there thinks he just walked into Ann Summers.’
    I shoved the end of her pen into my mouth, forgetting it was decorated with pink plumage.
    ‘Eugh. Can’t you have a normal pen and not one that looks like a flamingo’s bum?’
    ‘Normal pens are boring. See that’s another thing. Now you can have any fucking pen you want. How mint is that?’
    ‘Er, not quite as good as having a job that pays me seventy grand a year?’
    She made a dismissive deflating sound with her lips and grabbed my hand.
    ‘Whatever. Don’t eat it, put it on the paper and write it down for fucks sake.’
    I frowned, scribbled, frowned again and held up the list, squinting in the orange glow of the