Thank you once again for the reviews :) Emily getting married to some random? I know, it's all kinds of wrong isn't it? Someone should definitely put a stop to that nonsense.

So, on with the story then: Naomi's a bit peeved at the whole 'banned from her job' thing. Let's hope she doesn't do anything stupid ... Let me know how you're finding it?

Have a nice day

Chapter Three

The euphoric feeling of waking up in her own bed was almost immediately eclipsed by the memory of yesterday's conversation with her Mum. The warm cosiness of not being shaken awake by the metallic jangling of keys and then marched briskly to an unnaturally early shower was only just settling on her skin. Naomi had barely had time to yawn and stretch and take in the way the sunlight threaded through the weave of her curtains before her thoughts were clouded with frustration.

Her mood was not helped by the punctual tapping of footsteps ascending the stairs and making their way along the corridor to her door. Naomi checked the clock beside her bed.

8.15. Not a second later. It seemed routines were going to continue to chamber her day, prison or otherwise. This particularly annoying practice was one her mother had instated once Naomi had finished school. Everything had changed after Freddie died. She declined her university place in London and moved back home, prompting her Mum to begin waking her up unnecessarily early every morning in the probable hope of motivating her to do something with her day.

'The sun's shining Naomi,' would be the first thing she heard every morning from the other side of the door (even though this was very often a lie). But before Naomi had time to pull back the curtains from behind her head to point out that this was, in fact, untrue, the door would be open and her Mum would be placing a cup of tea beside her and ruffling her hair.

And dutifully, at 8.15, 'The sun's shining Naomi,' rang the alarm call.

Naomi sucked in a deep breath and pulled the covers over her head. She heard the door open and the hollow knock of a cup being set down upon her bedside table. Naomi remained beneath the hood of the duvet, hoping the morning would retreat back over the horizon and leave her alone. She heard the rustling of paper, and inquisitively poked her head out from her quilted cloak to see her mother brandishing the local newspaper, several helpful black rings scattered among the job section.

'What's this?' she asked, knowing exactly what it was.

'Just a little something to think about,' her Mum told her.

'I have a job mother,' Naomi said, scanning the page, 'A senior director's job in your organisation.'

'Naomi sweetheart,' her Mum sighed, seemingly not having the energy to get into another debate. 'Just have a look at them, hey?'

Naomi rolled her eyes and snatched the paper from her Mum's hands, zooming in on the areas her Mum had circled. 'Piano tuner?' she asked.

'A shift in focus might be nice,' was her Mum's explanation.

'Yeah ... Unless people hire piano tuners to play chopsticks ... badly, I don't think that's the career path for me Mum,' Naomi astutely observed. 'Car washer? Coupon dispenser? ... Blimp rigger? Mum, these are all fucking bollocks.'

'Yes well, the current job market isn't particularly vibrant right now but, chin up,' her Mum said as she made her way out of the room, 'I'm sure something will come up.'

Naomi sighed and petulantly flung herself back against the mattress. Something will come up, she thought scornfully. What a stupid expression. A meaningless collection of ambiguous words people recited to themselves to cover up their own incapability of actually achieving something. If something was going to 'come up' it would be due to intense planning and cultivation, or, alternatively, due to a brash, abrupt and potentially violent change of direction.

Naomi suddenly sat bolt upright, tucking her legs beneath her to kneel and bend over the side of the bed, her arms dangling in the gap between the mattress and the floor. Fumbling in the dark dustiness, her hands finally found what they were groping for. It was a soft flannel dressing gown, wrapped up in a bundle, covered in a layer of thick grey dust making it look like a scale model of mountains powdered with silver snow. She unravelled the material to reveal a laptop computer. She had hidden it under her bed before she went to prison. Ever since her mum had discovered e-bay, nothing in the house was safe.

The computer was old and slow and got unbearably hot almost immediately. Naomi felt her heart sink a little as the computer automatically synchronised her with the Women for Justice Network. Her work inbox popped up, full of emails that were, apparently, no longer her concern. The most recent one was from an address Naomi didn't recognise. It was simply titled 'What now?'

Obviously Naomi clicked on it.

'Hey Big N,' the email read,

'Hear you've got yourself into some terrible trouble. We could use someone like you around. If you still believe in fighting the fight, get in touch ... when you can.

Sincerely,

A like-minded admirer x'

Naomi sat back against her pillows.

Guess sometimes something comes up after all.

...

The thing the struck Naomi most about her mystery email sender, was that she wasn't a mystery at all. The 'secret' identity of the sender was Marie, a large-framed, stocky girl a few years older than Naomi. She had been an unpaid intern at Women for Justice a year and a half ago, but her contributions to the think-tank had been seen as a little too radical, and she had spent the remainder of her internship updating contact information for members on the database and distributing free t-shirts.

'Naomi!' the girl said, holding out a stubby hand.

Naomi pulled the collar of her coat up a little tighter around her neck, and allowed her arm to be vigorously shaken.

'You remember me, right?' Marie asked.

Naomi nodded. 'I remember you. You had some ... erm ... interesting ideas.'

Both girls knew that this was a gratuitous understatement. For someone as cheerful and relaxed as Marie, an untapped anger seethed dangerously just below the surface. She reminded Naomi of some kind of shark: perfectly happy to coexist with others until provoked, or hungry. The second your body language could be interpreted as a threat, she became a perfectly streamlined machine of destruction.

'Can I just say,' Marie added at this point, 'I think it was totally unjust that you went down for what happened at the demonstration.'

Naomi tried to smile, 'Thanks, but it's not like I was innocent or anything.' Unjust wasn't a word she liked to throw around regarding herself.

Marie seemed initially surprised at Naomi's reaction, but this quickly slipped into a sly smile. 'So it's true, you are a badass now?' she asked.

Naomi rolled her eyes. People always judged her for the wrong reasons, 'I just believe in trying to make a difference.'

Marie suddenly slapped Naomi roughly on the back. Naomi jolted forwards with the force. 'Exactly. That's what we're trying to do. Come on, I'll show you.'

Marie opened the door of what Naomi had assumed was a derelict, or at least closed, pub. The building was the end of a terrace, moulded awkwardly to the shape of the street corner. It looked like someone had carved up the terrace with a giant knife, and an amorphous chunk was left over.

Inside the pub the carpet had been pulled up, leaving the rough chip board of the floor exposed. The carpet pins pointed sharply into the air like the pub's last bastion of defence. Naomi wanted to go home.

'This was my Granddad's pub,' Marie explained as she led Naomi round the left hand side of the deserted bar and up the narrow Victorian staircase. 'He left it to me when he died.'

Naomi followed dumbly, the smell of damp leeching through the old walls.

Marie's destination was, apparently, a room on the first floor. Judging by the satisfactory size of it, it had probably once been the landlord's bedroom. Naomi flicked her gaze across a desk and two dark green, old-looking sofas. Two girls sat together on one sofa, a third sat at the desk facing the wall. None of them especially acknowledged Naomi's presence.

'Guys, this is Naomi,' Marie announced. 'She's going to help us with our little project.'

At this point, Naomi decided it was time to find out what was going on. 'Hey, I never agreed to help you with anything,' she reminded Marie, folding her arms.

Marie's smile resurfaced. That toothy, untrustworthy shark smile that made Naomi wish she had never opened the email. 'When your Mum was ... erm ... unreceptive to my ideas,' Marie began explaining, 'I decided that if I wanted change, I was going to have to do it myself.' She gestured to the handful of girls in the room, 'And I wasn't the only one.'

Naomi let out an audible sigh. 'Right,' she said in her best unimpressed tone. She was already bored. She could see what was happening here: Marie, border-line psychotic left-wing man-hater had not found appropriate comradeship within her Mum's ranks (which was verging on ridiculous, given the fact that her Mum was virtually unable to resist clutching the weirdest and wackiest to her proverbial bosom), and had gone out onto the streets, scraping up the city's loons and banded them into yet another, angry, radical feminist group. And an ill-conceived one at that: three girls that all looked almost as bored as Naomi and thin enough to snap. Not to mention the fact that Women for Justice actively tried to disassociate themselves with the unapproachable image these kinds of groups portrayed to the public. They had clearly singled Naomi out thinking she was a kindred spirit after hearing the news of her arrest.

'Interested in helping us out?' Marie asked, noticing Naomi trailing her gaze along her comrades.

Naomi sighed, 'I really don't want to spend my evenings graffiti-ing bill-boards and writing threatening letters to my local MP.' She wasn't about to replace a position of considerable power and influence with a place on the riot team.

Marie shook her head, 'It's not like that Naoms,' she told her. Naomi narrowed her eyes. She didn't like being called that.

'Don't judge on appearances Naoms,' came the comment from the girl at the desk. The words were hollow, and they felt like winter. The girl twisted round on the swivelling office chair to face Naomi's scepticism head on.

'Jesus, fuck ... Effy?' was Naomi's intelligent response.

'Naomi,' Effy replied, smiling the strange half-smile of someone who found an unsettling, black humour in everything. She was still beautiful, of course. Her eyes were still intense and vague at the same time, her hair long, her body spindly and frail like a bird's skeleton. He skin was even paler than Naomi remembered, almost clear. The more Naomi stared, the more ethereal Effy looked. Like a beautiful corpse.

'What the fuck are you doing here?' Naomi managed to ask.

'Asking you to help us break into the 'Fit Magazine' Head Office,' came Effy's unwavering reply.

'... huh?'

Marie spoke up at this point, but Naomi shifted uneasily under Effy's unrelenting stare, 'Look, we're not just a bunch of man-hating, fresh-out-of-uni idealists. We want to see actual change. But that's never going to happen as long as women have a misogynist induced cultural identity and opinion of themselves.'

'Jesus Marie, save something for the pamphlet,' Naomi muttered.

'So we target the women,' Marie continued, ignoring Naomi's comment and subsequent eye-roll.

Naomi raised an eyebrow. 'What women?'

'The women that don't do themselves any favours,' Marie said.

Naomi still didn't quite get it.

'The women that actively enforce the stereotypes by bending over and letting men think they want to be spanked,' Effy decided to help. Her unwavering gaze made Naomi feel like she was completely naked.

One of the girls from the sofa spoke up for the first time, having watched the entire three-way exchange, 'There's a photo-shoot tomorrow afternoon at the Fit Magazine studio on Charles Street. Effy says you've been there before. You're going to help us get in.'

'What?' Naomi whipped round to face Effy, 'How? And ... why should I? ... whoever you are, ' Naomi asked glancing at the anonymous girl.

'Because this is the only way you can make a difference now. You've lost your job. You're gonna have a tag on your head for at least two years. You're completely neutered,' Marie answered.

Naomi looked towards Effy for guidance. She just stared back, her mouth twisted slightly as if she was remembering a joke she'd heard earlier that day.

Naomi huffed, 'And how do you know I can even get you in?' she asked. 'Not that I would anyway,' she added.

'Come on Naoms,' Effy said, that strange smile twisting further at the corners, 'Give us a little credit. You've had the editor by the balls before.'

It wasn't a lie. During the past few years she had made 'Fit magazine' her own personal nemesis. Everything about the trashy lads' mag infuriated her, from the half-naked woman on the front to the shameless gender biased advertising on the back. It was harmful, degenerative, outdated and misogynistic propaganda, and Naomi had almost pinned the editor down with a sexual assault charge before he greased himself up and wriggled out of it at the last minute. How Effy knew this, however, remained a mystery.

'Look, even if I did want to help you, which I don't, by the way,' Naomi began, 'I've just got out of prison. Breaking and entering isn't exactly high on my list of priorities right now. And don't get me started on how much you are weirding me out right now,' she added, jabbing a finger in Effy's direction.

'I'll make you a deal,' Marie said, clearly having prepared for Naomi's flat-out refusal. 'All we need is the alarm system disarmed, which, by the way, you could do by fucking daylight for god's sake. By the time we get in there you can have left the country, for all we care. If we're caught your name won't be mentioned.'

Naomi felt the scales tipping in her mind. Her resolute, crime-free stance was steadily being out-weighed by the now feasible prospect of finally nailing the slimy perpetrator of that horrendous magazine.

'On one condition,' came the clause.

The sinking feeling of dread balanced out the scales again.

'You help us one more time in the future. No questions asked,' Marie finished.

Naomi clenched her fists. She tried to tell herself it was a huge mistake, and it would only land her back in prison; but she couldn't seem to quiet her own excitement. She felt the adrenalin coursing through her at the mere thought of risking her own freedom for the greater good. She felt strangely noble. And, the glue that held Marie's whole pitch together, was that Naomi would never have the chance to go through the legal channels to enforce change after what had happened.

She heard a clink as the metal tray of the scales dipped to the floor.

'Okay,' she said finally.

Marie's shark smile grew menacingly across her face. Effy nodded her approval, her expression unflinching.

Naomi sat heavily down on the unoccupied sofa, trying to calm the sudden rapid pumping of her heart. 'So what do you guys call yourself then? You got a name?'

Marie shrugged, 'Not yet. You got any suggestions?'

Naomi furrowed her brow as if deep in thought. 'How about the Nut-twister Sisters?' she pitched.

The girls looked at one another. 'Bit aggressive, that.'

...