Monday morning.  In November.  Dark.  Cold.  And wet.  Of course it’s wet.  If ever the weather was going to really sock it to you like Big Time, it was going to be on a Monday, in November, just to emphasise the sheer misery of your existence.

Savanna De Piers-Morganstein opened one eye.  She would have opened the other one, but it was crushed in the delicious comfortableness that was her pillow.  With that one eye she surveyed the room, trying to remember who she was and what she should be doing with this sudden consciousness.

The room was dark.  That meant it was either too early to get up, or it was winter.  Damn, she thought, its winter. 

She forced the eyeball to peer at the bedside clock.  It hadn’t yet gone off.  Time maybe to drift off back to glorious sleep for an hour or two?  She focused the eye on the red digit display.  The display read 7:15am.  In the smallest recesses of her mind Savanna was aware that those numbers should mean something.  Something important.

Damn, she’d forgotten to set the berluddy alarm clock again.  7.15am meant that she was already late.

“Fark!” she mumbled into her deliciously warm pillow.  But she didn’t move; warm, comfy lethargy was a hard thing to let go of.

As she lay there, in her bed, another thought occurred to her which made her open her other eye, even though she couldn’t see anything out of it.

Was it Monday?  Was today Monday?

Surely it couldn’t be Monday.

Could it?

She thought there was a good chance that it was, indeed, Monday.  And there were, she heard, more horrors to come.

Outside, the deluge of rain threw itself against her window, aided quite spectacularly by the gale force winds.  The urge to snuggle back under the warm duvet was strong, but she fought it.  She lost.  She fought it again.  And lost again.

Eventually, when the loathed bedside clock changed its arrangement and now read 7.23am, Savanna screamed out loud in frustration and threw back the covers.

Damn, it was cold.  And dark.  She fell over a pile of discarded clothes as she stumbled towards the light switch and nearly concussed herself on the door her departing husband had thoughtfully left open.  The brightness of the eco-friendly bulb made her squint into the shadows for her dressing gown.

“Another day, another dollar,” she croaked, pulling on her dressing gown as she yawned her way down the stairs.

Half way down the stairs she lost her footing and collapsed like a loose bag of potatoes down the final five, landing heavily at the bottom in a crumpled heap.  Looking up at the cracks in the hallway ceiling, she mumbled, “Its not going to be a good day.”

Savanna De Piers-Morganstein was 37 years old.  Well actually, she wasn’t, because she would never admit to her age in public, and those that she did admit it to had to be hastily killed in suspicious circumstances, so she’ll say 37 and ignore the uproarious laughter this elicits.  As she looked at her bed-crumpled face in the bathroom mirror on this Monday morning in November, she breathed, “God, woman, have you not heard of botox?”

It was a day like any other.  Any other work day that is.  As well as being incredibly good looking for her age (though not brilliant for 37 it has to be said), Savanna was a secretary in the city centre – the city being Birmingham, the one in the middle of England.  Her workplace was four miles away and involved an hour’s travel on public transport through rush hour traffic known as ‘gridlocks’.  She should be at her desk at 9am.  This meant, as she pushed a toothbrush into her mouth and tried not to choke herself, she had approximately 24.5 minutes to get her arse in gear and leave the building.

Enough time for, say, a 19 year old with youthful skin and impeccable taste, but it takes time and effort to ‘get ready’ as you get older, mostly as you wait for the bed creases to disappear from your elastic-deprived face (and sometimes they don’t disappear at all and just remain as wrinkles).  There’s clothes to choose that don’t make you look like a bag lady, makeup to apply that doesn’t make you look like a drag queen, and coffee to consume to stun the decrepit brain into reality.  But once that’s done, it’s a doddle.

Savanna catapulted herself out of the house at 8.01.  The bus was due at 8.05.  She missed it because the swine was early, and had to wait in the howling wind and rain, fighting with her umbrella, for the next one, which was, of course, berluddy late.

“I hate my life,” she muttered, mantra like, as water trickled into her mis-matched shoes and down the back of her Primark covered neck.

***

“Morning, Savvy,” chirruped the super-chirpy receptionist that everyone wanted to kill for being so damn chirpy.

“Oh shut your face.”

Savanna shuffled miserably through the foyer of her office building leaving a trail of wet footprints in her wake.  Her umbrella was currently residing at the bus stop, where she’d tossed it after it first blew itself inside out, clearly preferring to be a buttercup than a mushroom, and then committed suicide altogether by falling to pieces. 

Standing wetly in the lift, a tall man in a smart suit stepped in and looked her up and down.  “Swim here, did we?” he laughed, clearly thinking he was the next big thing in the stand-up comedian market.

Savanna would have swore at him, some really rude and gasp-inducing expletive, or possibly resorted to violence of the fist-in-face kind, but the man was her boss.  Of course it was her boss.  It was Monday, the traffic had been appalling and she was soaked to the very core of her soul, the chances of her sneaking late to her desk without anyone noticing were minimal to begin with.

“Morning Mr Wright,” she sighed.

“Oh,” said the comedian, “Is it still morning?”

Yeah, yeah, funny bar steward.  Ha ha ha.

“Will you be able to get that report done by 10 o’clock?” he added more seriously.

“Which report?”

“The report I put on your desk.”

“Put on my desk when?”

“This morning.”

“Oh.  What time is it now?”

“9.50.”

“Yeah, sure, no problem.”

Fark!

The lift stopped on the 3^rd floor, the doors opened, and Mr Wright bounced cheerfully to his office at the far end of the open-plan area without a care in the world (because he had a company car and a space in the company car park underneath the building).  Savanna squelched over to her desk, dripped all over the report that had been strategically placed there in Full View, and collapsed into her chair.

“You’re late,” cried the Office Bitch called Janet (they were all called Janet for some unknown reason).

“Death on the bus,” Savanna shouted back.

“Who died?” yelled Janet.

A moment of hesitation, and then, “The driver.”

“Are you kidding?” screeched Janet, bitch-like.

“Yes of course I’m farking kidding, you daft old bat,” Savanna breathed, taking off her drenched coat.

She picked up the report.  She’d typed it up from audio on Friday afternoon.  The Boss wanted alterations made to it, so many red strike-throughs and indecipherable scribblings it wasn’t so much a report any more as blood stained papers.

She glanced at her desk clock – an imperative piece of equipment for overworked secretaries the world over.  9.59am.

“Is that report done yet?” Mr Wright called out of his office.

Savanna stared at her black screen and sighed, “I hate my life.”

* * *

“No, really, I hate my life.”

“In what specific way do you hate it?”

“Specifically?”  Savanna thought about it for a moment.  “Well all of it really.”

“All of it?” Mandy laughed, “Surely not all of it.”

“You’re a positive little bugger aren’t you.  But no, I really do mean all of it.  Husband who I think has probably left me he’s around so little, children who have supposedly left but keep coming back to mug me.  Even the dog hates me.”

Mandy sipped her coffee inside Starbucks at the table near the rain-lashed window.  Outside, the black uniform of office workers slapped by beneath a dark sky.  Mandy was Savanna’s best friend, mostly because she didn’t do all the back-stabbing, bad-mouthing, psychotic stuff that every other city-slicker indulged in, and because she was funny.  Annoyingly positive and upbeat, but funny.

“This is the bit where you jump in and say how much I’ve got going for me,” Savanna prodded.

“Oh sorry,” Mandy beamed, “I thought you just wanted to get it all off your chest.  I didn’t realise I was supposed to interact.”

“Yes, interact, before I drown myself in this cardboard cup of expensive foam.”

“Right,” said Mandy, positively, “You’ve got to count your blessings.”

“Uh huh.  Okay, done.”

“What were they?”

“They?  No, it was singular, not plural.”

“Okay, what was it?”

“It was your turn to pay for the expensive foam in the cardboard cups today.”

“Is that it?”  Mandy’s face fell dramatically, like Jane Austen might look when told that Mr Darcy was gay.  “That’s your only blessing?  Surely not.”

“There you go with the positive thing again.  I wish you’d stop that, its annoying.  Just admit my life is appallingly dismal and crappy, and we’ll both be happy, in a dismally crappy way.”

“Savvy,” Mandy sighed, and Savanna braced herself for the inevitable pep-talk, “Your husband is... well he's okay isn't he."

“Is he?  I can’t remember, it’s been that long since I’ve seen him.”

“ – and your children are a credit – “

“In credit you mean, but only because I’ve bailed them out of bankruptcy and overdraft so many times.”

“ – and you have a lovely house.”

“Mortgaged to the hilt.”

“I’m assuming you’re feeling a little down today,” Mandy tutted.

“A little down?”  Savanna leaned forward and tapped her finger on the table between them for emphasis.  “Okay, Mand, tell me the last time, the actual date, when I didn’t feel down and repressed and bored and taken for granted?  Hmm?”

Silence.

“You’re saying I’m a miserable cow then, Mand.”

“No, no,” Mandy flustered, clearly struggling to find something to say that wouldn’t make her friend leave Starbucks and walk under a bus, “You’re a wonderful woman, a marvellous human being – “

“Yeah, cut the crap, get to the chase.”

“Maybe you just need to sort out your life a bit, perhaps.”

“Sort it, or dump it?  I’d go for the latter if I were you, nothing to salvage from the former.”

Mandy sighed heavily.  Mandy hardly ever sighed, and Savanna hastily changed the subject before her doom and gloomed overwhelmed them both.  “So,” she said brightly, “How are your budgies?”

* * *

The afternoon at Lagersheds Lawyers LLP was no better than the morning.  Janet, the Office Bitch, bitched, Mr Wright, the boss, made impossible demands.  To add to the general joy of working for a soulless legal company, the computer system crashed, again.

“Is that 60 minute dictation I gave you half an hour ago done yet?” The Boss asked Savanna, coming out of his office to stand next to her in a Really Important and Intimidating way.

“No, Mr Wright.”

“Why not?”

“Well, two reasons.  One, the company IT system has had yet another personality crisis and thinks it’s a toaster, so they’re currently trying to bring it round by using a cyber-therapist.”  Mr Wright didn’t laugh, he never laughed at other people’s attempts at humour, only his own.  “And secondly, a 60 minute dictation takes a bit longer than 30 minutes to type up.”

“How much longer?”

Savanna had a distinct sensation of dejavu.  Every day this conversation took place.  Every single day.  True, Mr Wright’s tie might sometimes differ, but her One Good Suit never did.  Sometimes he’d ring from his office to have this conversation, but mostly he liked to stand next to her and say it in a Really Loud Voice that made everyone else stop what they were doing to look at the poor pleb that was getting the ear-bashing this time.  All the bosses at Lagersheds liked to indulge in the age-old pastime of Shout at the Secretary (sometimes they liked to vary it by bawling out trainees, but not often).  Savanna often had the urge to hold up score cards for volume, content and level of apparent anger.  She’d give Mr Wright a 10 today, he’d clearly had a restful weekend.

“An hour?” she said, shrugging, “Maybe longer, depends when the computer system decides to show up.”

“An hour?” Mr Wright cried (eliciting an impressive score of 10.5 for head-turning volume), “But I need it for a meeting in half an hour.”

“I can’t do 60 minutes in half an hour, Mr Wright.”

 “Why not?”

The world paused for a moment as Common Sense and Logic sneaked hand in hand out of the back door and made a run for it.  Someone on the far side of the office dropped a paperclip and everyone gasped at the sudden noise.

“Because I’m not a robot, Mr Wright, I am but a mere secretary.”

“Can’t you use the electronic typewriter?” her boss asked with a straight face.

Savanna looked up at him, open mouthed.  The electronic typewriter, circa 1982, languished in the corner of the office, devoid of ink ribbon and covered in dust.  The ‘A’ and ‘U’ keys were missing.  Somebody had also nicked the plug.

When she didn’t respond, her boss said, “You’ll have to do it on the typewriter, I need it as soon as possible.”  Then he turned on his heels and marched back into his office, closing the glass door behind him as a full stop on their discussion.

Savanna typed I hate my life onto her keyboard, but of course nothing came up on her blank, dead screen.

* * *

5.30pm.  Escape time.  Or not, depending on whether you’d got all your work finished and if your boss a reasonable type who didn’t expect you to work over to get all your work finished.  There weren’t any of those types at Lagershed Lawyers, so 5.30pm meant a trickle of lucky escapees leaving the office, hurriedly, before their bosses noticed they’d escaped.

Savanna sat at her desk, inspecting her nails.  The company IT system still hadn’t been coaxed back to life, and she hadn’t got Mr Wright’s work done on time (obviously), so he was in a foul mood, shooting daggers out of his office at her sitting outside inspecting her nails.  She hadn’t done a single thing in four hours, but couldn’t leave her desk in case her boss or other bosses caught her fraternising with Other People, which was seriously frowned upon at Lagersheds Lawyers LLP. 

So Savanna sat there, doing nothing, waiting for the IT system to come back online or for her to die of sheer boredom, whichever came first.

Probably death.

“I’m off now, Mr Wright,” her mouth suddenly shouted out of its own accord.  Inexplicably, she found herself standing up and pulling on her still-damp coat.

“Off where?” her boss cried.

“Off home.”

“Now?”

“Yarp.”

“But I’m waiting for you to finish that work I gave you.”

Savanna didn’t reply, she simply walked out of the office, into the lift, through the building foyer and out into the lashing rain.  Where she stood, and frowned, and wondered why she’d just done that. 

Stroke?

Remembering a group email she’d once read about stroke symptoms,  Savanna smiled broadly.  Check.  She lifted her arms above her head, still smiling.  Check.  She said out loud, still with her arms above her head and still smiling, “I can talk properly.”  Check. 

There were several people now staring at her from beneath their umbrellas as they hurried past who would have offered a different prognosis, but at least it wasn’t a stroke.

Savanna sighed and went to catch her bus in the rain, waiting for over an hour for the city centre traffic to unclog itself.  In the rain.  On a cold winters night.

* * *

“Hi, honey, I’m home.”

Silence.  Nothing new there.  But at least the dog was pleased to see her, furiously wagging its tail in anticipation of being fed soon.

“Fuzzy face,” she cooed, “You pooed!  For me?  How sweet. And on the living room rug too, how thoughtful.”

She stepped over the unrepentant canine and pressed the button on the flickering answering machine.  A voice that sounded vaguely familiar said he wouldn’t be home tonight, some big job that entailed staying over at some hotel with some business types.  Nothing new there then.

Feeling a bit out-of-body again, Savanna found herself picking up the phone and dialling a number.  She didn’t expect her call to be answered, and it wasn’t.  “Husband,” she said to his answering machine, “It’s the wife.  I was just thinking, when was the last time you came home?  I was just trying to work it out and I couldn’t, silly old me.  I thought it might be helpful if you wore some large flower in your lapel next time you tried it, just so I can recognise you.  Wouldn’t want to be letting some complete stranger into the house now would I.”

Savanna hung up and stared at her hand on the receiver.  What the hell was that?  She never left messages on her Husband’s phone, he didn’t like it, said it distracted him, so she didn’t do it.  Ever.

“I can talk properly,” she said, smiling wide and lifting her hands above her head.

The dog slinked out of the room nervously.

“Strange,” Savanna said to herself, “Very strange.”

But stranger was yet to come.

* * *

Later, the phone rang.  It was Colin, her second son.  Just like his father, he was abrupt and to the point.

“Mom,” he said, “Just lost a fortune in the casino and they’re threatening to repossess my car, could you put some money in my bank account?”

“How much?” Savanna asked absently, flicking through a magazine in front of the muted television set.

“About a grand should do it.”

“Oh, a thousand pounds?”  Savanna lifted her head from the magazine to the television set, watching a rather handsome man silently reading the news.  “That’s a lot of money, Colin.”

“Yes, like I said, I lost a lot at the casino, Poker never really was my game.”

“Then why play it?”

“The crap table was full.”  Pause.  “So can you transfer the money straight away, only it needs to be in my account by tomorrow morning?”

“Or the poker men will come round to take off your kneecaps?”

“What?”

Savanna’s eyes widened in astonishment.  Her mouth was running of its own accord again, she hadn’t meant to say that at all, hadn’t even thought it.  “I’m talking properly,” she said, smiling and raising her hands above her head.   Then she started hearing voices, crying out ‘Mom!  Mom!  Are you still there, mom?’

She brought the phone back down to her ear.  “Colin,” she said, “You’re crap with money, just like your father.  The NHS can do wonderful things with prosthetic kneecaps these days.”  And she hung up.

She stared at the phone for a long time afterwards, confused and a bit scared.  The Husband didn’t like her refusing the boys anything, said they were chips off the old blocks and couldn’t help themselves.  Not that The Husband put his hand in his own pocket at all, oh no.  The block the chips came from liked to keep his money separate and private.

As she stared at it, the phone rang again, making her jump.  Colin, indignant.  Or the Husband, talking angrily about chips and blocks and helping hands.  She turned the phone off and tossed it across to the other side of the sofa. 

It was then, in the silence, that she heard it.  Quite clearly and distinctly.

A voice.

And it most definitely wasn’t coming from the phone.