MORNINGSERIAL.(Features)

Iwant you to be the first to know, Megan, he says. I've put the shop up for sale. Going to concentrate on the antiquarian side now. On the internet. I'm getting too long in the tooth for this lark.

I gulp.Well that's my job gone. He reads my mind. I can't envisage a quick sale, so your job's safe for a while yet. No need for you to worry. And by the end of June it'll be fresh fields and pastures new, for S you, anyway, won't it? There's a sadness in his voice that's touching. I'd never thought of Mr de Silva as old. Really old. But all of a sudden he looks it. I was going to tell him about Haggard and Daughters but just can't somehow. As I'm leaving, my mobile rings. It's Vincent.

Apparently Narcotic Crocus are stuck in the snow somewhere.

What? Their van broke down. Narcotic Crocus? Oh, of course, Zoe's art-school wonder band. I'd forgotten all about them. This means it'll be busy in the Union bar after all. When there's a gig everyone drinks in the Syndrome and that's why he'd allowed me the night off.

Now he wants me back. I tell him I'm supposed to be going to Zoe's party, knowing even as I'm saying it that I'm not being assertive enough. Still, I've got to keep well in, haven't I? I want to keep my job and there'd always be plenty of takers for it.

Yeah. She told me about that. If you just work till ten, that'll do, he says.

Bloody Zoe, I think. And guess who must've given Vincent my mobile number in the first place.

Now this is the bit that gets difficult. Writing about it, I mean. This is when the figures go off the graph and I don't want to write it down at all. It's like making it real. And for me it'll never be real.

Cursing Zoe and wondering whether I could be bothered to go to her pesky party at all, I went down the cellar steps to get a crate of mixers. She was there.

Bloody hell, just for a moment. Zoe in the flesh, sat on the floor by the big defunct dishwasher, crying, mascara running down her face, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth.

The short story collection The Great Master of Ecstasy by Glenda Beagan is published by Seren, price pounds 7.99, available from www.serenbooks.com > CONTINUES TOMORROW