Amber cast an anxious look over her shoulder at the purple Marilyn Monroe clock on the wall and felt her pulse quicken. 7:05am. That meant she only had ten more minutes to get ready before she would have to leave her flat and get to the train station. She looked her full-length mirror at her appearance and mentally calculated how long it would take to get ready. She had already showered and her clothes were laid out waiting for her, having been decided the night before. All she had left to do was put on her make-up and do her hair, which could take anything between five minutes to two hours, depending on how whether she was having a bad hair day or not and how much time she had. Fortunately, this wasn't one of those days and eight minutes later she surveyed herself in the mirror again with a smile of satisfaction.
Not only was she ready on time, but she looked great, and she new it. Taking advantage of the fact that the sun had appeared for the first time this summer since last month, she wore a silk beige shirt dress that accentuated her curvaceous size 10 figure to perfection and complimented her chocolate brown skin. It dropped to just below her knees and hinted at the beautiful toned legs beneath that she had been working on every day in the gym for the past five months in anticipation of the fleeting English summer months. Her jet-black hair lay long and straight around her shoulders and framed the delicate features of her face. On her feet she wore the beautiful white Gina strappy sandals that she had saved up for three months to buy, she had painted her toe nails a baby blue the night before, and the small heel took her height from a respectable 5ft 2 to 5ft 4. She was ready.
Ten minutes later Amber stood on the platform waiting for her train. It wasn't due for another seven minutes, but she always tried to get to the station early. As she glanced down the platform she saw her reason why.
Halfway down the platform and just in view, was a black man, who looked to stand just over 6ft tall. But it was not only his height that drew admiring glances from passers by. Wearing low slung blue pin stripped trousers and a pale blue cotton shirt that was thin enough to highlight his ripping muscles underneath he looked like a modern day black Adonis. His shiny baldhead was bent forward, concentrating on the article in the paper he held in his hands. With the sun shining down on him it was hard to tell what he looked like from where Amber was standing. But she didn't need to see his face, it was already ingrained in her mind.
Amber had been taking the same train to work for the past 2 years. It was only a 35-minute journey from her station to the office. Because the journey was so short and her office hours so flexible, her departure times always varied in the mornings. Ranging anywhere from between 8:00am to 9:30am. That was until two months ago. Amber had been enjoying a particularly exciting dream involving Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (Sans baby), which had just started to get hot when she was cruelly interrupted by a very shrill sound that took Amber a couple of seconds to identify. When at last she shook herself awake and realised it was the telephone it suddenly stopped. Amber looked at her silver D&G wristwatch, 'fuck!' she thought. It was 6:00am in the morning. She didn't know why someone had try to wake her so early, but she did know she wouldn't be able to fall back into the dream again, which was already starting to fade in her memory. 'Oh well' she thought, 'at least I can go to sleep for another hour and maybe I'll bump into Chad Michael Murray'. She lay her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes, trying to imagine a scenario in which she would be likely to bump into Brad and what she would do to take his breath away. Just as she was about to sleep the phone rang again, startling her upright. 'Fuck!' she said again, this time out loud. On principle she wouldn't normally answer the phone at that time, but as she had just been dragged out of one sexy dream and torn away from a second before it could even really begin, she wanted to know who it was, so she could have the pleasure of shouting at them down the phone.
Amber quickly got out of bed and ran into the hallway just outside the door to answer the phone. Grabbing it she shouted a vicious 'Yes?' down the receiver, and breathed loudly and impatiently waiting for an answer.
'Hello? Amber?' a small female voice asked cautiously at the other end. 'Fuck!' thought Amber again recognising the voice instantly. It was her boss, Corrine. Ambers mind raced with all the possibilities for Corrine to be calling her so early in the morning, but with a sinking heart she knew it could only be for one reason. Someone was sick and she needed to go in early and open up. She had regretted putting her name on the Emergency list at work ever since she had volunteered. At the time she had been flattered that was had been asked, so early on in her position, little realising that everyone else had refused. Now, as she cleared her throat in an attempt to sound more composed and less like she had just woken up, she new that she would have to make good on her commitment.
