A CHRISTMAS TALE IN 25 PARTS: PART FOUR

Olive Scrimp had never been happier in her life. For days now she’d been checking and rechecking the holographic blue cube as it danced in her hand, making quite sure that it was addressed to her.

SnatchCon must be a very generous and loving company, she decided, if they would invite someone like her to go to the annual office party just as if she was just as worthwhile as all of the other employees

She’d gone out and had her hair done, then popped into a supermarket on the way back and found herself a “little black number” on the sale racks to wear. She’d worried about spending some of the week’s precious food money on something so frivolous but it hadn’t cost that much, and it would be worth it if she didn’t have to spend the evening feeling quite so uncomfortable.

Her shoes she’d decided to live with. After all, even if they were inclined to look down their noses at her, they weren’t likely to be looking quite that far down, were they? It didn’t matter anyway. She knew that she’d be walking in order to get there, and as she clicked her way across the empty piazza, she knew that her feet would always forgive her for choosing a comfortable option over a fashionable one.

As she approached the gleaming shining tower she really had to pinch herself and she became increasingly nervous and shivered slightly as she got closer and closer to the security guards standing by the main doors, but when she showed them the dancing cube, they let her go straight inside.

At first, she’d not wanted to check her coat into the cloakroom as she felt slightly ashamed at the cheapness of the dress she’d picked out from the supermarket when she saw all the glamorous young things dazzling each other with their smiles and charisma as each of them played the game of playing the room. She thought that she heard the occasional slightly embarrassed giggle as people noticed that she was there, but she dismissed that as merely being her own sense of lack of self-worth which was mocking her.

After all, did she not have just as much right to be there as everyone else? The glowing cube in her little clutch bag proved that, at least, did it not? Presumably, each and every one of the people crammed into those offices that night, those masters and mistresses of the universe who bought and sold the world on a daily basis had one too, and no matter how many times they might have looked askance at her with their cold, dead eyes, as she stood amongst them in her cheap dress and tattered shoes, so did she, and there was nothing any of them could do about that.

She was surprised to notice that curling around their legs and moving around the room almost oblivious to the chaos it was causing was a long but very low dachshund, which everyone else seemed to be doing their very best to ignore, despite its many efforts at drawing attention to itself by sitting up and begging in the hope of getting its jaws around some of the tasty morsels which were being passed around on the silver platters carried around by the catering staff who also managed to look at Olive as if she’d just landed from another planet.

Once or twice the ornate delicacies had been reluctantly waved under her nose in passing as they headed off towards more “deserving” clusters of bone-thin women and their tuxedo-clad companions and she’d even managed to smuggle one or two of them into her bag for the family later. They might, at least, contribute in a small way towards offsetting the cost of that little black dress.

“What’s that dog still doing here???” roared a voice from amongst the melee. It was Mr Snatch himself and the crowds parted to allow him to get through.

He spotted her standing there awkwardly and made a beeline for her as she did her very best to vanish into the wallpaper…

“You! You!! What the hell are you doing here…?”

“I…I…I…” she stammered ineffectually in the face of this human force of nature, looking at her shoes and suddenly becoming very aware of how scuffed and worn they were.

“Didn’t you get my message…?” Mr Snatch was suddenly towering over her, apoplectic with rage and mere inches from her nose.

She reached timidly into her bag and meekly extracted the dancing blue cube.

“Where the hell did you get that?” he raged, backhanding it across the room. Olive watched sadly as it bounced off the wall, shattered and fell down to the floor.

“You… you… sent…” she attempted to explain, but Mr Snatch really wasn’t in the mood for listening. “You were supposed to be dog-sitting Mitsy for me this evening, you know!” he bellowed, now playing to his audience who were obviously enjoying the distraction of someone else’s humiliation.

“I can’t have the dog running around everyone’s feet at an event like this!” he continued, almost without pausing for breath, “Surely you understood that someone like you would never be invited to an occasion such as this, you idiot…”

Olive glanced across at the remains of the holographic card lying darkly in pieces on the floor, and bit her lip, realising what a fool she’d been to even think that they thought someone as low down the food chain as she was would be worthy of being allowed to enjoy such indulgence and opulence.

It had obviously been some mistake. Why hadn’t she seen that?

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!