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Chapter 1

Sash stands anxiously at the check-out, her heart thue queue snakes towards the center of the superrily

“Come on, please”, Sash quietly whispers to herself Every so often she cranes her neck to try and look at the till, before looking back to her left, horrified to see so line

The pluainst her teeth while she waits for the machine to tell her what to do next Her skin is so fake-tanned and dented by acne, she looks like a gigantic orange Next to her, Sash could be a completely different species She’s coorgeous eyes

The hue looks frohtly behind the other, like a treefrog waking up

“Denied”, she says lazily Clack goes the chewing guainst her teeth

“That can’t be”, Sash says “I put money in there on Wednesday”

“Today is Friday”, the assistant says flatly, as though Sash may have overlooked a crucial piece of information “Maybe it went somewhere else on the days in between”

“What’s the hold up?” conore the question, she just continues to look across to Sash as though exa, she’s just had the misfortune to step on

People tap their toes i since stopped conveyor belt A child folds his ar his scruffily dressed father

“Let ain”, Sash says “It must be a problem with the machine”

Moving at a snail’s pace, seeun to swell so much it’s now iers along the black stripe of the credit card and langorously re-swipes it Any slower and her heart would stop The till hums The eyelids blink, out of synchronization She pauses briefly, like a ga the winner of a year long event

“Denied”, she says again, e the first syllable of the word

Soo up in the air “Co to work”

“Do you have another card?” the assistant asks, handing back her broken one

Sash looks down at her shopping A bottle of wine, a pre-packaged salad, a beef steak, a punnet of strawberries, a health food bar to eat on the way ho the coins out in front of her to count them

“This is ridiculous”, the sareeer already”

“I have three dollars, eighty six cents”, Sash says, trying her best to follow the assistant’s lead and ignore them

The assistant looks at the shopping She looks at Sash and then she looks at the till “That’s not going to be enough”, she says

Outside, the sky has clouded over Sash looks up into the black stor to find a reasonable answer there Instead, all she gets is a spot of light rain da on her

“Looks like it’s rolling in again”, an old lady says, holding on to her hat while she passes, in case a sudden gust of wind ht blow it off