Bella Osborne - Meet Me at Pebble Beach

In desperation, she laid the best part of a roll of paper towel on top of the rug in an attempt to draw out all the moisture whatever its colour. That seemed to help a little bit. She put some fresh kitchen roll on top. There was nothing else she could do – she could almost hear Jarvis’s voice telling her sarcastically that she’d done more than enough.

She fired off a quick text to him: Sorry. Had a bit of an accident in hallway. Take care and be happy. Regan. This way it wouldn’t be a total surprise and hopefully he would realise it wasn’t her being vindictive. She quickly grabbed the bin bags Jarvis had left, as well as a few more essentials she needed like shampoo, coffee, biscuits, the Easter Egg she’d not scoffed yet and his spare razor – whatever happened, she liked to keep her underarm hair under control. She also took the pen he kept by the phone – not because she needed one, but because she knew when he went to use it and it wasn’t there it would drive him disproportionately crackers.

She hurried from the building trying not to think about the good times she’d had there. It would only upset her and she needed to stay positive and look to the future. She grinned to herself as she headed off – not towards her dad’s place as she’d originally planned, but instead towards her Plan B, which she was mightily proud of.

This time Regan was thinking ahead. The alarm code for Cleo’s studio was now Regan’s birthday, so she could at least remember it. Once she had managed to sneak all her stuff in to the studio without attracting any attention she shut the door and waited for her racing pulse to settle, feeling like an MI5 agent on a top-secret mission. She looked around Cleo’s studio. This was to be her home for the next two months, unless of course she got discovered and kicked out. That absolutely must not happen , she thought. Cleo would be terribly upset if she lost the studio – Regan knew how much she loved it, having been with her the day she’d found it. Back then it had been a dirty, dusty sanctuary for spiders and rodents, having been used previously as a store for a nearby garage. Now it was clean and critter free – thanks to a lot of TLC from Cleo.

She sat herself down in her friend’s comfy chair: an oversized, slouchy, modern affair. Perfect. She could definitely sleep here, she thought, pulling out the teddy bear throw she’d taken from the flat and drawing it over herself. Cosy … What more could she need?

She smiled to herself. The place was a bit paint-splattered but otherwise clean and dry. Her eyes landed on Cleo’s latest canvas of a large nipple and the smile became a pout. That was a little off-putting. It felt as though it was studying her … Judging her. She closed her eyes but it was no use – she knew it was there. She opened one eye. The nipple was still staring at her. Regan pulled off the throw and huffed. She’d have to move it. Carefully, she lifted the nipple picture and leaned it, nipple side down, against the opposite wall. Much better , she thought, and snuggled back under her cosy cover to try to get some sleep.

She woke up super early. Typical: on the one morning she could actually have a lie-in; although lie-in was stretching it, given her position was more hunched up than lying down, but that wasn’t the point. It was the first time in years she wasn’t meant to be up and out for work, and she’d woken up mega early. What sort of sick reality was that?

Her positive mood from the night before was apparently only temporary. She felt weighed down with a sense of impending doom that was no longer impending but fully in situ . She hadn’t got much sleep because her mind had been far too busy panicking about the situation she was in. One that – for once – was not entirely of her own doing. Bloody cockwombling Alex , she thought. A fresh wave of anger and injustice engulfed her and she paced the studio saying out loud all the things she wished she’d thought of yesterday. Why did the perfect insult always wait twenty-four hours before appearing in your head?

She threw insults around like pebbles but they didn’t make her feel any better. This was all so unfair. And on top of everything, there was no milk, so she’d had to have black coffee again.

She stomped about the studio for quite some time until she got tired and the adrenaline powering her subsided, at which point she flopped into the chair. The fury that had kept her going had turned to despondency as the reality of the mess she was in truly hit home. She no longer had somewhere to live. The studio was a very temporary setup until Cleo came home; even more temporary if anyone caught her living there.

She no longer had a boyfriend – although if the latest stream of texts from Jarvis were an indicator, she would be hearing from him again very soon via his lawyer regarding what he termed the criminal abuse of his rug.

She didn’t have a job, and that meant she had zero income. She also didn’t have any savings as such – just a few quid in her bank account that she had been holding onto so she could buy Jarvis a birthday present. At least that was something.

She was also surprised to discover that, on top of everything else, she’d lost her purpose – and this was most shocking of all. She hadn’t liked her job, but then who did? Moaning about bosses, colleagues and too much work was par for the course, but when it suddenly wasn’t there it left a great big nine-to-five-shaped hole.

Regan spent a while mulling over whether to call Nigel and ask for her job back. Eventually, she swallowed her pride and rang Nigel’s number, but as soon as she’d been put through to him he went into corporate mode, listing all her faults and making it very clear that returning was most definitely not an option. She thanked him kindly and hung up.

Regan sat there staring at one particular brick in the bare Victorian wall. This brick wasn’t like the other red bricks; it wasn’t a perfect little clone like the rest. The surface of this one was rougher; pock-marked, almost. It didn’t have defined angular corners and sharp edges. They were worn and rounded, partly due to it being slightly out of alignment. It didn’t quite fit, so someone had chipped bits off it in an attempt to wedge it in, but had simply managed to scar it instead.

That brick was her. She was damaged and scarred. She didn’t fit.

She closed her eyes. She was losing the plot. She needed to get out before she went totally Jack from The Shining .

She’d been pleased that her dad was at home when she’d telephoned, and frankly delighted to hear that he was alone and she was welcome to pop round.

After the usual niceties, she followed him into the kitchen and he put the kettle on.

‘What’s up, Regan? You never come round in the daytime.’

It was like the time she got found out for smashing next door’s greenhouse; he was giving her the same look of disappointment.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she said, remembering too late that her defence of the greenhouse situation had started with the exact same words. ‘I thought I’d won the lottery and it turns out I hadn’t, but because I thought I had …’ He was watching her intently. She swallowed hard. ‘I dumped Jarvis, quit my job and moved out of the flat.’ She bit her lip and waited for his response.