“Leaning back against the cold red brick, Jess watched yet another set of scarlet tail lights recede into the night. Checking her watch she saw that she had been stood in the chilled darkness now for… three… two… one… seventeen minutes. With a sigh she reflected that while this was twelve minutes more than she had told her friends she would be it had only been two since she had last checked.

As a fine and misty rain began to settle about her person, she reminded herself that this was just the way it went. Rule number one in any drug deal: everything you hear is a lie. The dealer says he’ll be there in five, but that was… eighteen minutes ago. Returning her hand to her coat pocket Jess continued to recall the events of the evening, in particular the drunken lecture she had delivered in the pub.

She had grown tired of repeatedly having to defend her decision made earlier in the day, to quit her regular job. Several times she had explained that she had read a lot about her new chosen direction and that she felt confident, but that was not all she had been reading. Eventually Jess had launched into a daytime talk show style confession of personal inspiration. She had briefly described the life’s work of George Hinckley before passionately embarking on the subject of his death.

Hinckley had been a writer who had travelled all over the world in the late sixties researching a new book. One year, almost to the day, after he started writing the book he was in a hotel in San Francisco when he received a telegram telling him that his wife and newborn child had been killed in a traffic accident. Pausing only to scrawl a two line suicide note on the hotel room wall Hinckley threw himself from the window of his room and fell to his death three floors below.

At this point she had paused for dramatic effect however Mick had interceded. “Well that’s all very interesting, but what’s some dead hippy got to do with you quitting your job?” ”

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