‘No, you won’t,’ said Regan, passing her the case handle. ‘You’ll be far too busy with work cocktails and work parties and other wonderful worky type things.’ Cleo looked skywards. ‘FaceTime me tomorrow.’
‘Of course. And please remember the boiler man. Saturday. Ten o’clock,’ called Cleo over her slender shoulder and she sashayed into departures.
Regan watched her go. She wished she were going too. She needed a break, and some sunshine would be lovely. There was nothing she’d miss for two months – with the possible exception of her dad – but he was all loved-up these days, so she rarely saw him anyway.
Beep, beep, BEEP!
The blast of a horn brought her back from her daydream. She gave a sickly-sweet smile to the large shuttle bus trying to get in behind her, whilst in her mind she was sticking her tongue out at him.
She had time to stop for petrol on her way into work, which was unheard of, so she treated herself to a Mars bar. The person in front of her in the queue asked for a lottery ticket. Regan couldn’t remember the last time she’d bought a lottery ticket. Jarvis had decreed that she needed to cut out all extraneous spending in order to repay her credit cards; her lottery and online bingo habits were the first to go. Jarvis called the Lotto a ‘fool’s tax’ because only stupid people played something with odds of forty-five million to one.
‘Which pump?’ asked the man behind the counter.
Regan had to check. ‘Two, please, and this,’ she said, passing him the Mars bar. Jarvis wouldn’t be impressed with her having chocolate for breakfast either. He was cutting down their sugar intake. ‘And a Lotto lucky dip for Saturday night, please,’ she said, feeling a tiny bit rebellious.
‘Good luck, love,’ said the man on the till.
‘Thanks,’ said Regan, putting the ticket in her purse.
It was a short drive into town. Regan waved as she entered her usual coffee shop, the Hug In A Mug, and Penny behind the counter did a double take. Regan braced herself for the sarcastic comments about her being earlier than usual. ‘You been evicted?’ asked Penny, chuckling whilst she made Regan’s usual order. ‘Wet the bed then?’
‘Had to take a friend to the airport,’ Regan said, with a giant yawn. ‘Actually can I have an extra shot in mine today, please?’
‘Sure thing,’ said Penny. She put it through the till and Regan paid with the joint account card. She liked contactless payments on the joint account because it wasn’t like real money. The only price she had to pay was Jarvis tutting over the statements.
There was a bang on the window of the coffee shop, followed by the cringe-making sound of nails on glass moving slowly down the pane. Penny and Regan winced and turned quickly to look. A large dog was standing on its back legs with its giant front paws on the window. It was the height of an average human.
‘Christ, what is that?’ asked Penny. They both watched, mesmerised by its large fangs and open slathering jaw.
‘Ah, that is Kevin’s new friend. I met him yesterday. Some bloke tied him up and left him, according to Kevin.’
‘Poor thing,’ said Penny, and they watched it lick the glass with its huge pink tongue. ‘What sort of dog is it?’
‘I think it’s a werewolf,’ said Regan. It certainly looked the right size. She grabbed some sugar sachets, slung them on the cardboard tray and headed for the door, calling ‘Bye!’ as she left.
Outside, the giant mutt was waiting for Regan, but thankfully, so was Kevin. Kevin was homeless. Regan had walked past him every day since she’d started her job at BHB Healthcare and he always told her carpe diem, which was Latin for ‘seize the day’ – she’d looked it up. He never asked for money, which had been what had triggered her to start getting him a coffee each morning, and the smile she got from Kevin when she handed it over kept her going for hours.
‘Hey Kevin. You might want to keep your dog off the glass. Don’t want him getting into any trouble.’ She gave Kevin his coffee and he beamed at her. The dog sniffed her groin and retreated. She couldn’t blame him – she hoped her lack of a shower didn’t have the same effect on her work colleagues. She made a mental note to spray herself liberally with perfume when she got there.
‘Thank you. Carpe diem,’ said Kevin, cupping his coffee reverently. Regan tried not to stare at the scars lacing their way across Kevin’s hands.
‘I will.’ She turned to walk away and then spun around. ‘Oh, has your dog got a name yet?’
‘I’ve called him Elvis,’ said Kevin proudly.
‘Because he’s in the ghetto?’ asked Regan.
Kevin looked baffled. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘because he’s a hound dog.’
‘Genius!’ said Regan, and it kept her laughing most of the way to work.
Regan waltzed into the office with a whole twenty minutes to spare. She worked in a small team, which dealt with late invoices. The only break from the unrelenting tedium of doing the same thing every day was her mate Alex. He had a sense of humour, which made him infinitely more likeable than anyone else in the office.
‘Blimey, did they put the clocks back?’ asked Alex, pulling his coffee from the cardboard tray Regan offered him, then picking up the sugar sachets and a stirrer.
‘Your stand-up routine needs work,’ said Regan, taking her seat and switching on her computer. ‘I need to leave early tonight.’
‘What, because of the extra eighteen minutes you’ve put in this morning?’
‘No, because I left in a hurry and basically trashed the place.’ She needed to make it back to the flat, or ‘apartment’, as Jarvis liked to call it, to have a quick tidy-up before Jarvis got in.
‘Jarvis won’t like that.’ Alex tutted in an uncannily Jarvis-like manner.
‘Precisely why I need to get home before him.’
‘Why so early if you were in a rush?’ Alex was screwing up his face.
‘I dropped my friend Cleo at the airport.’
‘Artist. Posh sort?’
‘Yep, that’s the one. She’s jetting off for two months to Dubai, Japan and some other awesome places.’ Regan flopped back in her seat. ‘I wish I was going with her. She has the best life.’ She turned her head towards Alex. ‘Would you like to travel?’
‘I do travel.’ He looked affronted. ‘I go to Skegness every year.’
‘Hmm. Not quite the same.’
Alex gave a twitch. ‘Japan may have the edge on Skeggy.’ They both sighed together.
‘Ooh,’ said Regan, pulling her purse from her bag. ‘Look what I got.’ She held up the lottery ticket and gave it a wave. ‘It’s a rollover on Saturday. Ten million quid. Think what you could do with that.’
They both paused for a moment, lost in thought, until their boss, Nigel, tapped on his glass office door and they both quickly got back to work.
Regan liked Alex. There was no romantic pull on her part, but she knew he was quite fond of her thanks to some slurred words after too much tequila at the Christmas party. In any case, he made the day go quicker: they kept the tedium at bay by winding each other up on a regular basis. Nothing major; just the usual office pranks like hiding each other’s mouse, changing chair adjustments and unplugging equipment. It was quite childish, but it made work marginally more entertaining.
Most of the day was uneventful. In the afternoon, Regan found