Regina was marking time off on a piece of paper she kept on the desk in her bedroom. Another week had passed. The Sheriff was still working through the list she had made of odd jobs to be completed across the town. Regina had given her a lecture on health and safety after finding her balancing at the top of an old ladder trying to change a light bulb.

"Three points of contact Emma!" She had shouted, startling the other woman.

When she had calmed down she had marched Emma back to her office and made her sit down and read through the health and safety manual she had prepared with information taken from books in the library and the internet. Emma refused to read the whole thing.

"Just give me the basics."

So Regina sat down with her and marked out the relevant pages, giving her a brief introduction on each. Manual handling ("lift heavy objects with your knees not your back"), working at height ("get someone to stand at the bottom of the ladder in case you fall, always keep three points of contact on the ladder – that can mean two feet and one hand or two hands and one foot if you're climbing") and basic first aid ("I don't want to have to take you to the hospital because a cut becomes serious when you could have dealt with it straight away using the first aid kit").

"Perhaps we could take the time to do something nice for other people." Emma had suggested. "I know you think making sure every single light is working in the town hallway which already has like, thirty other lights working is important but maybe we could think outside the box."

"For example painting the antique shop to apologise for blowing a hole in the road outside?"

"Ah, you saw that? I can explain."

Regina nodded. "I'm sure that whatever you were doing was very important. Perhaps you saw an animal trapped inside and wanted to remove it before Rumplestiltskin woke up and found it?"

Emma put her hands on her hips and simply glared back at her. "I was going to suggest individual things for different people. I know Ruby wishes Granny would pay someone to fix their dishwasher but it needs too much work so they have to wash everything by hand. We could go online and look up the instructions and fix it for them."

"Or perhaps a nice bunch of flowers?" Regina asked sarcastically. "Machines like that are complicated. You would need to understand plumbing and be qualified before thinking about touching it. If you make the damage worse it won't be repairable if she changes her mind."

"Are you saying that you don't think I could do it?"

"It would be easier to just buy them a new dishwasher."

"Queen's may not have to worry about being self-sufficient because they have servants to run around doing all the work, but I learnt the hard way. I'm going to read the manuals and see how hard it really is."

"Try not to flood the kitchen when you forget to switch the water off first. You have no idea how hard it is to clean something like that up."

"What would you know about it?"

"I've had twenty-eight years to read a book or two on plumbing." Regina hinted.

"If I ask you to help what would you want in return?"

Regina just smiled.

Sorry, lots of dialogue and not many descriptions in this chapter, hopefully I'll get more time to spend on the next one.