by Abigail Phillips

Created on: June 01, 2008

Mel's street was straight and grey, much like the people in it. Her house was a thin pebbledash terrace, not without charm, and had a small front yard of overgrown grass and broken concrete.

It was almost 11am and the gate swung silently behind her. As she stepped up to the door and fumbled in her handbag for her keys she saw a familiar brown shape behind the mottled glass accompanied by a scraping and a whining.

Biddy. The most inappropriately named dog in the world.

"Okay, I'm home. Okay" she yawned and took in an armful of impatient pet before going into the kitchen and switching on the kettle. The house was stubbornly cream - coloured and smelled slightly sour. It was small and badly decorated. That was not her fault. She had only owned it for six months and lived in it for four. After raising the funds for the house she had no money left for decoration.

As she swung into the living room and threw herself down on the golden brown sofa she felt the weight bearing down on her again. The stinging tears that began somewhere deep inside her were already swelling her eyes. The truth was quite simple to grasp but in itself overwhelming. She had no money. All she had was a mortgage worth three times her annual salary and a personal loan almost four times larger than her savings. She closed her eyes, determined not to cry. "I'm just tired" she told herself.

The kettle clicked but she felt she didn't have the strength to get up. "Sleep or coffee?" she asked herself. It was the usual mid morning dilemma. Despite having worked the night shifts at the sorting office every other month for almost two years she still found it hard to get the sleeping patterns right. Everyone was full of advice, "I stay awake until about two pm and then get a few hours' sleep, you'll find it's enough". "No way, you have to sleep all day. Treat the day as though it's night". "Me, I just don't sleep at all. Life's too short". Everyone had their own system but Mel hadn't found hers.

She closed her eyes and began drifting into the only kind of sleep she knew; light and unsatisfying. She was walking down the street, past all the deserted terraces, the white sky pressing down, and as she kept walking, faster and faster, the street kept going. She wanted the corner, the turning that took her away, down a dirty, crowded street, to a roundabout and a little footpath. She needed that musty passageway, the dry mud beneath her feet, the overgrown bushes either side.

She woke up needing something green. Biddy

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