It sank down like an old friend, an old friend that was going to make her feel guilty in the morning with the realisation that red wine is probably not part of any sensible detox. Nevertheless she drank it down in large gulps, aching for the numbness it might bring if she consumed enough.

Sitting listening to the sweet voice drifting from the speakers, singing about love and pain, Sarah smiled to herself. Was this the life she had hoped for as a child, as a teenager? Her memory was vague these days, and she guessed somewhat biased towards the monumental rather than the mundane. There were so many points in her life where it all seemed to be going catastrophically wrong that it was impossible to say which one was the root cause of her mental state, or if she ever truly recovered from one before the next one came along. She wondered all the time whether she was unusual in this respect, or if everyone felt like that to some extent. After all, everyone has a story to tell, everyone has defining moments, turning points, epiphanies of the mind, don’t they?

She smiled, because she was in the kind of mood where she found her sad existence amusing, in a narcissistic way of course. She stood up and walked barefoot across the room, the wood cold under her step, but somehow familiar. She flicked through the cds on the shelves. She had way too many. At some point in her life music had become to her what handbags and shoes are to most women. Shopping was one of Sarah’s least favourite pastimes. She hated the trawl round the shops searching for a size 16 in amongst all the clothes that had about as much stretch in them as a piece of cardboard, only to get into the changing room, to fight with some unsightly pair of trousers that despite saying size 16 on the label wouldn’t pass over her hips never mind her sagging stomach. By the time she had got undressed, thrown herself around the changing cubicle making various squeaks and puffs, realised the trousers were not going to fit anyway, and wiped the sweat from her brow, it further cemented her opinion of herself. It was not a good confidence building exercise for her, or she had to imagine, anyone else that dared to be bigger than a size 12. She almost always came out of the air-conditioned havens of beautiful people feeling ten times uglier and fatter than when she went in. The ironic thing about it was, she wasn’t even that fat really, she was well proportioned, the obvious signs of having carried and given birth to three children was undeniable, but she did not live the life of a cake wielding monster. Still, a music shop did not judge your waistline, or your sense of style, it was not frequented by people she couldn’t even hope to resemble, it was safe, cool, and did not require you to get undressed. What more could you want out of a shopping experience?