Greetings and thanks :)

Right then, this is probably the longest chapter I have ever/ will ever write. It's actually two chapters sort of squished together. But I think I've dragged out the intro enough ;)

Hope you like it.

Have a nice day

Chapter Four: part 1

Every Sunday evening, when her mother called, she would ask Emily the same question. 'Are you still between jobs?' And as she had done for the past three months, Emily would shake her head (even though her Mum couldn't see) and she would say 'No. Nothing's come up yet.'

Her Mum would like to know if she'd even been looking.

Emily would like to know what the hell she thought she'd been doing.

'Katie said they needed an extra pair of hands at the studio,' her Mum informed her during that Sunday's phone call. 'Apparently there's a big push for a deadline and they're having to pay a whole team overtime to cover it.'

'I don't want to work with Katie Mum,' Emily whined.

'Beggars can't be choosers Emily,' her Mum replied, falling back on her favourite cliché. 'Katie's very graciously offered to help you out. I think you should take the offer.'

Emily rolled her eyes, 'I don't need her help.'

'Well you're not getting very far on your own are you? How is your writing going?'

Emily sighed. As accepting as Sam was, she could see the resentment forming behind her eyes when she would return home from a difficult day to find Emily doing nothing to earn money other than tap out a few average sounding sentences on a keyboard only to delete them afterwards. 'Okay. When is it?' Emily grudgingly accepted.

'Tomorrow afternoon,' her Mum told her.

'Tomorrow? I can't,' Emily said quickly, 'I'm meeting with the caterers for the wedding.'

The other end went still and silent for a prolonged moment. 'Well,' the voice spoke eventually, 'you'll just have to meet with them another time. You need to get your priorities straight Emily.'

Emily nervously chewed at a fingernail as Sam rounded the corner into the hall. 'How was the Kraken?' she asked.

'Got me a job, tomorrow afternoon,' Emily answered, looking up with wide eyes to gauge her girlfriend's reaction.

'But that's when you're meeting the caterers.'

'I'll have to reschedule.'

'That's just fucking typical,' Sam said, suddenly annoyed, 'I bet she-' Sam gestured at the limp inanimate phone dangling on its chord between Emily's fingers, 'planned this on purpose. She does absolutely everything she can to get in our way.'

Emily shook her head, 'No, she didn't even know,' she said all in a rush.

Sam's face was sceptical. Emily felt like she had just been read her rights and was about to be clipped into handcuffs. And not in a fun way. Sam didn't approve of that kind of behaviour. Saw it as undermining her work in some way. Said her uniform inspired quite enough wolf-whistles and cajoling from idiot men enquiring as to when she was going to 'take it off' and give them a dance. Though, the joke would be on them, Emily mused. Sam was a terrible dancer. All elbows and awkwardness.

'Emily? Are you listening to me?' the officer asked.

'Sorry ... just,' the world whooshed back to Emily. 'You know I hate arguing with her. It's easier to just agree.'

Sam sighed melodramatically, but Emily decided to stand firm. Her teenage relationship with her mother had been turbulent at best. She did not want to sabotage the eerily peaceful arrangement they had reached, where personal enquiries were kept to subjects such as employment prospects and opinions on the weather. It seemed they had both learned to keep their own frustrations with each other in check.

'Always the peace-keeper,' Sam said, a note of sadness in her voice.

'Well, don't want you whipping out the old handcuffs on me do I?' Emily attempted to scrape some humour together.

'Don't start Em,' Sam warned.

Emily didn't. She looked down at her wrists. Small and girlish. She could just slip out of them anyway.

'So how was Josie?' Emily asked, following Sam back into the kitchen to begin clearing the table of their dinner things.

'Oh you know Josie,' Sam answered.

Emily did, in fact, not know Josie at all.

'Always telling stories,' Sam continued. 'Could barely get a word in edgeways. She's excited about the wedding though.'

The plates clattered bad-temperedly as Emily stuffed them brusquely into the metal grid of the dishwasher.

'What about that girl?' Emily attempted to breach the question as casually as possible, '... Naomi, was it?

Emily's mind had been behind prison bars ever since Sam had uttered the five syllables that fired forgotten synapses in her brain and engaged old mechanisms within her body. She had googled the name the second Sam had left for work. After trawling through over thirty pages of links concerned with the model that couldn't seem to stay out of the papers, Emily came across the employment listings for a small organisation called Women for Justice. It identified Naomi Campbell as the Head of Fundraising and Development, and further up the list, a certain Gina Campbell as the Chief Executive. The website gave her very little other information, other than prompting her several times to 'donate now!'

'Yeah just your classic protest gone bad really,' Sam answered Emily's question. 'Was meant to be this gender equality demonstration but it got rowdy.'

Sam paused.

'Why are you so interested anyway?' she asked, a ladle pointed accusatorily in Emily's direction. 'That's the second time you've asked about her and at least the third time you've pulled that face.'

Emily panicked. She sometimes forgot her girlfriend was a police officer. Her deductive skills always managed to determine if there was something wrong with Emily just by looking at her, not to mention identifying within a millisecond of Emily entering the room whether she was under the influence of any illegal substances.

'I ...' Emily instinctively held her hands up at the brandished ladle, 'I think I went to school with her,' she admitted. 'I recognise the name.'

'Oh,' was all Sam said.

'I just wondered if it was her. It's ... sad,' Emily continued, 'that she ended up in prison.'

'Well, it was only for a few months,' Sam revealed, moving over to Emily and placing some pans in the sink. She flicked the tap on, the empty pans clanging like gongs as the water hit them. 'Breach of the peace, criminal damage, violent disorder,' Sam listed, 'the kind of stuff you only go to prison for if you can't pay the fines or you refuse the bind-over.'

Emily watched the pans filling up.

'But she got a few weeks tacked on to her sentence for being such a nightmare in prison.'

'What did she do?'

'Fought with officers, upset some of the girls in there,' Sam began to scrub one of the pans. 'Josie said she was dealing in there too. But they couldn't prove it. Searched her cell about five times while she was there but the sneaky cow always managed to palm the gear off in time to some other poor girl.'

Emily watched the dirty water slip greasily down through the plug hole.

'What was she like in school?' Sam asked. 'Was she a user then? ... or a dealer?'

Emily swallowed. 'I don't really remember,' she answered. 'I didn't really know her.'

A white light flashed across Emily's vision and she was blind.

'Jesus – fuck, Ow!' she cried out, clasping her hands to her eyes and doubling over.

'Hey! Get out of the lighting test Katie you'll bugger it!' a voice demanded.

Emily stood up straight, tentatively opening one eye, seeing nothing but blurry whiteness. 'I'm not Katie!' she shouted back. 'I'm fucking blind though!' she added angrily, rubbing at her eyes in an effort to coax her vision back.

'Emily what are you doing? Get off the set.' Katie's familiar voice spoke with an equally displeased tone.

Emily felt a firm grip secured around the top of her arm as she was tugged to the right. She blinked rapidly several times and Katie's fuzzy-edged form steadily regained clarity. 'Look I only got you this job to shut Mum up, so can you please stop acting like a complete moron? Yeah?'

Emily shrugged away from her sister's grasp. 'I'm not,' she snapped back. 'You're lighting guy doesn't seem all that on the ball though.' Emily waved her own hand in front of face, checking she was still able to trace movement.

'Who, Ed?' Katie asked, looking at the heavy set boy who was busily adjusting a slide dial on the industrial lighting equipment that had attacked Emily. 'He's ... new.' She gave him a brazen smile and a wave.

He winked back at her.

Emily rolled her eyes. 'For fuck's sake Katie. Ever heard of separating business and pleasure?'

'Er ... no.'

Emily crossed her arms. The photo-shoot set was lit from all angles, bright and white like the rest of the building. Nowhere to hide. In front of the white screen there was a white box on which Katie was to pose. No materiality. Nothing you could reach out and touch. Just staged and draped flat, endless, white. To Emily, it felt like emptiness.

'What are you doing up here anyway?' Katie asked. 'You're meant to be helping with the computers. Go over there and help Gemma.' Katie shoved Emily away in the direction of a woman crouched on the floor in front of three laptops. Arteries of thick black cables trailed around her, duct-taped to the floor. The room was buzzing with the electrical energy of countless machines, but Emily couldn't feel anything in the air. It was as cold and still as the earth. She crouched down next to Gemma.

Gemma seemed to be having some difficulty with adjusting the computer so that it adequately interpreted the light colour from the set. Emily sat redundantly next to her, her knowledge of computers extending no further than how to add footnotes in Microsoft word, and her trouble-shooting techniques exhausted once she'd suggested turning it off and on. Bored and useless, she scanned the room for Katie, who she eventually located, perched like a lifeless tailor's dummy in front of a mirror against the right hand wall. Two people fussed around her with brushes and tongs. Katie remained still.

'Cocking thing!' Gemma suddenly shouted, making Emily jump. 'Ed! What are your Kelvin values now?'

Ed shouted something incomprehensible back.

Gemma sighed in frustration, tapping the mouse pad irritably as if pushing harder would solve her problem.

'Is there anyone I could call for you who would know?' Emily asked.

Gemma appeared to be thinking for a moment. 'Yeah you could try Rob. Use the office phone. I think he's in today.'

Emily nodded, standing up, grateful to actually have something to do.

'Dial hash nine-oh-nine. Tell him Gemma needs him to come to the first floor studio. Cheers doll.' Gemma turned her attention back to hammering her mouse pad.

Emily found an unoccupied phone on a deserted desk not far from where Katie was having makeup plastered across her face like she was a crack in the wall. She lifted the receiver. There was no dial tone. She stabbed at a few buttons. Still nothing. Emptiness.

'Katie!' Emily hissed in a loud whisper. 'Katie!' slightly louder.

'What?' Katie's eyes were closed as a violent shade of purple was brushed across her eyelids.

'The phone's are down. What should I do?' Emily tapped the receiver. It sounded hollow and plastic.

'How should I know?' Katie answered, her speech hampered by trying to move her face as little as possible. It was how Emily imagined mannequins talked when they came alive at night in department stores. 'Check the connection in the plant room.'

Emily lay the receiver down gently on the desk. The buzz of activity in the studio made her feel strangely distant. There was something oddly comforting about closing the studio door behind her and walking along the quiet, empty corridor. Just for second, it felt like she was walking a path between two worlds.

...

Chapter Four: part 2

'Naomi love,' the voice floated through the kitchen and out to where Naomi stood by the door. 'Where are you going?' Gina emerged in the hall to face her. She was cupping a mug of steaming tea in her hands, blowing across the surface. The steam puffed away from the liquid like fog drifting above a swamp.

Naomi fidgeted on the spot, resisting the urge to check her watch. 'I've got ... a meeting.'

Gina raised her eyebrows, 'Oh that's wonderful love,' she said. 'For a job?'

Naomi nodded, 'Yeah. Erm ... you remember Marie? That intern we had?'

Gina's eyes widened, 'You mean Mad-dog Marie? That pit-bull we put on t-shirt duty? Please don't tell me that's who you're meeting.'

Naomi looked at her shoes. 'Well, she's just got some ideas about how I can move on.'

'I bet she does,' Gina said, 'And I bet all of them involve making DIY petrol bombs.'

Naomi rolled her eyes, 'For god's sake mum, I'm not a fucking idiot. I've only just got out of prison I'm not going to go and do something stupid.'

Gina looked dubiously into her tea, not meeting Naomi's gaze.

'Do you really trust me that little Mum?' Naomi asked, a surge of teenage inadequacies rushing to the surface.

Gina sighed, 'Of course not dear.' She looked up at her daughter. 'I'm sure you know what you're doing. Just be careful.'

Naomi gave a small head-bob to her Mum before stepping out and slamming the door behind her. So Marie was a little unconventional, well so was Emmeline Pankhurst. Let's face it, the British suffragette movement wouldn't have got very far if she had said 'these iron railings are uncomfortable, think I'll go home and start dinner'.

Resolute, Naomi zipped up her coat to her chin and made her way to Charles Street, where her future crackled across the solder of an alarm system's circuit board.

...

We buy on the basis of images. It's not our fault. It's the world we've been indoctrinated into. Naomi pushed through the revolving door, which reminded her all too much of a meat-grinder, and wandered into the reception, her grubby trainers squeaking on the stark white polished floor. It was a bright, double height space, with the expanse of white walls interrupted by sparse, angular furniture. The wall behind the reception desk was entirely glazed, affording glimpses of the wooden office partitions of the ground floor, which in turn disguised the hermetic caissons of the depths.

A receptionist smiled vacantly at her from behind the desk. 'Here for the alarm testing?' she asked.

Marie had thought ahead. She had phoned the office earlier that day claiming to be from the security company that installed the alarm system. She had informed the receptionist that there was to be a standard maintenance check on all their systems following reported malfunctions from a few of their clients. A technician would be sent round later that day.

'Yeah,' Naomi said. She didn't really have time to wonder why the receptionist automatically assumed she was neither a model nor an office-worker. Something about her must scream maintenance. 'High maintenance,' she thought scathingly, before speaking to the receptionist. 'We've had some ... er ... reports about-'

'Right this way,' the receptionist interrupted Naomi's non-consequential mutterings. 'Straight down the hall,' the receptionist said, pointing Naomi past the ground floor offices, 'when you get to those double fire-doors, take a left and follow the fire exit signs. Go through the green doors and that's where the control panel is, okay?'

Naomi nodded, trying to remember.

'Will you need the main power switched off?' the receptionist asked before Naomi embarked upon her quest.

'Er ... no,' Naomi guessed.

'Good, because it's photo-shoot day and the photographer will just go berserk if we interrupt him,' the receptionist laughed like she had just told a joke.

'Right,' Naomi answered. 'Don't want to disturb a master at work.'

'Exactly. They're so touchy these arty types,' the receptionist continued. Naomi wondered if she was lonely in that white room all day.

'Well I'd better ... go ... do ... the thing that I do,' Naomi said.

'Of course of course,' the receptionist said brightly. 'Remember: fire-doors, left, fire-exit sign, green doors. 'Kay?'

'Gotcha.'

Of course it was never going to be that simple. The security system that Naomi had made herself familiar with the last time she was in the vicinity had been replaced by something sleeker and distinctly more digital. She wiggled her fingers nervously before removing the plastic outer casing. It lifted up and off the wall. Naomi placed it on the ground. She was used to dealing with simple switch set-up alarms that involved no more technical expertise than cutting the correct wire (which was always so clearly marked it was almost as if it wanted to be disarmed). At most she was expecting one of those embedded magnet alarms that trigger the system when they notice that the window's wide open.

But no.

Typically, Naomi found herself rather out of luck.

'Marie?' Naomi hissed down the phone she whipped out of her pocket.

'Have you done it?' Marie answered.

'No I haven't bloody done it,' Naomi snapped. 'It's a fucking wireless alarm.'

'And?'

'And? Well, and I want out of this sodding deal!'

'Naomi, mate, it's too late to back out.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well,' Marie paused, 'Look, I don't wanna have to dob you in or anything but-'

'Oh fuck you Marie,' Naomi bit back, 'Fuck you right in the arse.'

'You sure there's nothing you can do?'

Naomi chewed her bottom lip. 'I can go back and ask the receptionist if she's got the code for the alarm.' She was scrabbling, the sound of her cell door slamming shut at lights-out banging repeatedly in her mind.

Naomi heard Marie suck a breath in through her teeth, 'Too risky. Makes it look like a fake operation. Plus it gives her more time to get to know your face.'

Naomi ran a hand through her hair. She could feel the sweat beading on her forehead. She felt sticky and nervous and her neck and arms prickled with the tension.

'Look, these wireless alarms, they work by automatically connecting to the phone line and calling a response centre,' Naomi explained, a faintest scratching of an idea clicking dimly in her mind.

'So?'

'So ... if the phone line's down then the response centre won't be called. So no one will be told the alarm's going off.'

'Really?' Naomi sensed Marie's tone growing friendlier, 'So that's it then? Do that!'

'The internal alarm will still go off though. I don't know how to stop that. If you can get in and out in time before someone hears it and decides to call the police then you'll be fine.'

Marie seemed to be considering the option. The other end of the line stayed quiet for longer than Naomi felt comfortable with. She twisted neck round to check the green doors. No sign of movement.

'Okay. Kill the phones.'

Naomi released the breath she'd been holding, 'You sure?'

'Yeah, if there's really nothing else you can do.'

'Okay ... and ... our deal, it's still good yeah? You won't mention my name?'

'Yeah, yeah, just get on with it.'

Naomi's phone bleeped the three tones of its 'call ended' alert and Naomi immediately began scanning the plant room for the main phone connection. With trembling hands she traced veins of treacle-coloured wires back to the control panel. Finding the correct cable, she drew in a shaky breath, checking the door again. The emptiness of the room crowded her, looking over her shoulder, breathing down her neck.

Naomi ran a clammy hand across her warm face. She took a shaky breath and clipped the wire. Nothing happened. No alarms were triggered. No lights went out. No crackling arc of electricity shot out of the control panel to strike her dead where she stood.

She backed away from the panel slowly, lifting her arms to push the green doors open and flee the scene, when she was forced backwards by the doors opening out towards her.

She stopped still, as motionless and silent as a nocturnal animal under the glare of artificial light, the wire-cutters clutched incriminatingly in her fisted hand.

Skidding to an abrupt halt as she burst through the doors, a girl stopped just short of impaling herself upon the wielded pliers. She stared at the weapon momentarily, before lifting her gaze to their owner.

Naomi dropped the pliers.

They landed with a clatter at Emily's feet.

'Jesus fucking Christ!' the expression left Naomi's mouth before her brain had time to engage.

Emily blinked several times, as if trying to clear her vision of an affliction of the eye. 'Naomi?' More blinking. Naomi felt her name hanging unanswered in the air. 'What the fuck are you doing here?' she asked, glancing around the room briefly, 'In the home security section of the plant room?'

'I'm ... the maintenance,' Naomi stammered. 'I do maintaining ... alarms ... and that.'

Naomi had to claw back her sense of reality from back over the edge of the earth. She felt like she had stumbled into an intangible dream world. Emily's chest rose and fell as she alternated her incredulous gaze between Naomi and the control panel that hung open from the wall like a dislocated jaw. Breathing. Just breathing in and out.

'Maintenance?' Emily asked. Her perfectly sculpted brow crinkled in confusion, as if tightening around her thoughts. 'Are you here to fix the phones? Because they've only just stopped work-'

Naomi could almost see the connections fusing together in Emily's mind. She swallowed guiltily.

'You did this!' Emily said, noticeably restraining her voice from shouting, pointing at the pliers which had sprung open like a vicious mouth upon hitting the floor.

'I did not!' Naomi argued. 'I was fixing the alarm.' The notion of running away only just entered her mind, like she had snapped out of hypnosis.

'Piss off,' Emily wafted away her defence like it was smoke in the air. 'You cut the phone-line,' she said. She paused thoughtfully. 'Mind if I ask why?'

'Look Em,' Naomi said, her panic making her throat small and her tongue huge, 'Please. Don't say anything?'

Emily's eyes widened and she twisted her palms up to face the ceiling, 'Well, what am I supposed to do?'

Naomi put her hands to her face, distraught. Emily looked so soft and smooth. Her eyes were wide and searching, flicking across Naomi's face like they had lost something. Naomi felt her insides twist and murmur like something was wrenching them in a vice.

'Please Em,' she begged, 'Please?'

Emily looked down at her feet as if they knew something she didn't. 'Fuck ... Naomi ...'

'Emily,' she said again. Every nuance of the way her name felt and sounded rippled through her body.

Emily closed her eyes briefly.

Naomi stared.

'Okay,' she said, before opening her eyes again, 'Get out of here quick though.'

Naomi didn't say another word. But as she darted past Emily towards the doors she extended a flat palm out to Emily's shoulder, pressing briefly down and squeezing ever so slightly, her eyes bearing intensely into Emily's for a split second, and then she was gone.

...