I posted this story a little while ago - so I'm sorry if you're being subjected to it a second time!  Since then I've taken some of the advice I was given last time round, polished it up a bit and sent it off to a few competitions where it placed...precisely nowhere.  Oh well.  I suppose I just wanted to know if you think it has any potential at all, or should I just shelve it!  Thanks in advance for reading,

Nina

Ethel shivered against the cold gust of wind that blew in and circled her feet as she opened the front door to retrieve her daily pint of milk.  Monday morning again…it comes around so quickly…

The mahogany grandfather clock tick-tocking softly in the hallway reminded her that she had twenty minutes before she had to leave the house.  Closing the door, she padded softly in her slippers through the hallway into the kitchen, where she lit the hob on the cooker and started to fill the kettle.  She glanced at the fridge door for a moment, smiling warmly at the childish pictures Bobbie and Jake had drawn for her when they’d visited on Saturday.  Next to them was a dog-eared certificate held up by a heart shaped fridge magnet, proudly proclaiming Ethel Templeman as the ‘Best Nan in the World’.  Ethel’s heart always swelled with pride whenever she looked at it.  Bless their little hearts.  It hadn’t been easy for them since their father left, and they could get a bit out of hand sometimes…well, all kids do every now and again.  But she was happy to look after them at the weekends and do the odd bit of cooking and cleaning during the week; it was the least she could do. 

The kettle began to whistle loudly, and Ethel took it off the hob and poured the boiling water through the tea strainer into her dainty china cup.  She didn’t see the point in these “tea-bags” everyone was buying these days; you may as well just pour hot water in your cup, add milk and two sugars and have done with it.   Nobody but she could make a good cup of tea these days…it was a dying art.

She took her cup and saucer through to the lounge and sank down with a contented sigh onto the plush, red quilted Edwardian chaise longue, a particularly special find from her antique dealer.  Her mind wandered to the possible events of the day ahead.  Caroline had been telling her to give up the job for years, with renewed fervour now she was approaching her seventieth birthday, but Ethel had always refused.  Working gave her a purpose in life, made her feel as though she wasn’t undergoing preparation for death as she sometimes felt her body was, gradually reducing its functions, one by one.  In a funny sort of way, it was nice to think she was helping people as well.  She liked that feeling of being useful, especially at an age when society expected her to fade quietly into the background.

Of course, it went without saying that the money came in handy.  Ethel found that the older she got, the less she was willing to compromise when it came to her lifestyle.  Unfortunately this realisation happened to coincide with Caroline and Paul’s divorce, which was slowly eating away at Ethel’s life savings and widow’s pension.  Not that she begrudged her daughter and grandchildren a penny of it, but on the other hand when she wanted to indulge her love of antique furniture or to buy a new dress, she wanted to be in a position to afford the things she considered she deserved after a lifetime of scraping by.

Ethel finished her tea, changed from her slippers into her sensible shoes and put on her hat and coat, considering a scarf as well but dismissing this as being a bit over-the-top for the beginning of October.  Closing the door to her little bungalow she made her way down the path, trying to protect her painstakingly styled silver platinum hair from becoming loose and unkempt in the autumn wind.  At least it isn’t raining… she thought with a smile.

Rounding the corner, Ethel could see her bus approaching.  She quickened her pace to a fast walk; running was out of the question, not since her hip replacement.  Luckily the driver was a nice one, and he waited patiently for Ethel to approach the bus.

“Just up to the Post Office please…and thanks for waiting, love…” Ethel said with a wink and a friendly smile for the driver as she paid for her ticket.  She took a seat at the front of the bus, next to a sullen-faced lady of around her own age wearing a dull beige raincoat.  Ethel looked down at her own stylish cerise coat and wondered silently how old you had to be before anything beige became a serious clothing choice.  She felt uneasy with herself for this thought, but couldn’t help it…she’d never really felt old, and she was still waiting for it at nearly seventy years of age.  Perhaps it was because she had always taken pride in her appearance, wholeheartedly embracing every wrinkle and grey hair – even her new hip.   She just couldn’t understand why so many women her age dressed in dowdy beige clothes, as if all they wanted to do was to disappear completely from view.

The bus trundled along the familiar streets and Ethel studied the different people getting on and off the bus as it drew in at each stop.  Young mothers with pushchairs and screaming toddlers, teenagers defensively dressed in hoodies and listening to loud music, smartly dressed men and women on their way to the industrial estate…  Ethel observed them all and silently wished them well on their way as they left the bus.

The bus finally pulled in at the stop next to the Post Office, and Ethel, along with her companion in the beige coat, stood up to get off.  Ethel smiled inwardly at the thought of the other passengers assuming that she would be shuffling off to the Post Office to collect her pension.  No…she had a job to go to, thanks very much.

With a cheery “Thank-you…” to the driver, Ethel got off the bus and walked up the road towards her office.  It was a dreary eyesore of a building, hidden away at the end of a road full of tatty local shops that were united in their peeling paint and unkempt fascias.  The road itself was strewn with litter and it took a pretty optimistic person to want to continue onto the end towards Ethel’s office, which looked even more dull and depressing than usual, merged with the greyness of the morning sky.  It was a respectably anonymous building, with only the lights in the windows giving away that it was occupied at all.  No signs alluded to the goings-on inside...if any passers-by deigned to give it any thought, they’d probably guess at something characterless and nondescript, such as accountancy or insurance.   Appearances can be so deceiving… thought Ethel as she approached the front door and punched in the entry code.

She took the lift as usual to the fourth floor and as she walked into the magnolia-walled office Jane, the team’s self-proclaimed social secretary, came rushing towards her.  She was dressed as usual in bright, ill-fitting clothes that belonged to another era altogether…perhaps one in which they may have fitted her properly.  These days they did little to conceal the onset of middle age spread, but Ethel had a hunch that if anything were ever to be said on the subject, Jane would laugh along with her usual jovial demeanour, and carry on dressing exactly how she liked. It was all part of her friendly charm, and the reason everybody loved her.

“Ethel, we’re all going out for dinner on Friday, fancy coming?  It’s booked at that new Italian up the road…”

“Sounds great, love – count me in.” Ethel responded brightly as she walked over to her desk and put down her handbag.  There’s such a sense of solidarity among this team…she thought…no bitchiness, everyone’s so friendly.  Perhaps it helped that it was such a small team, or perhaps it was the type of work they did that bound them all together.  Ethel knew most of them hadn’t told their friends or families, and she herself had only told people the barest minimum.  In any case, they weren’t usually interested in any more detail once the magic words “I work in a call centre…” had been uttered.  But it was great fun to retell the details of some of the funny or stranger calls among their little team during their regular after-work drinks or dinners such as this one on Friday, which Ethel was already looking forward to.

Lizzie was on the phone, her unkempt and frizzy brown mane of hair shaking wildly as she laughed.  Sensing Ethel’s arrival, she span round in her chair to greet her with a wave and a smile.  “Good weekend?” she mouthed.  Ethel smiled and nodded in response as she picked up her headset and pressed the ‘Answer’ key on her phone, chuckling inwardly as she thought how easy it was to put on a husky, breathy voice in this weather.

“Hi there…my name is Kitty….now what can I do for you?”