After sitting in the chair for a while, listening to the clock in the kitchen tick relentlessly into the vacuum of silence that had enveloped the rest of the flat, Sacha wearily, resignedly, picked up the newspaper she'd been looking at when Rona had rung her that morning. The light was fading in her poorly aligned flat, but she couldn't be bothered to get up and walk to the light switch.

She forced herself to look at the 'paper. It was folded roughly to show the job ads, columns and columns of them - but seemingly none that would suit Sacha. None of the jobs she'd worked in back home in Canberra over the last few years had come about as a result of answering ads - why would anything be different now?

She sighed as she thought about those jobs. She'd managed to save almost $10,000 before she'd moved to Melbourne - it was meant to be spent on adventure; now she was using it to buy groceries and bus tickets. She used to be paid enough to be able to buy a book if she saw it and not have to think twice - now she had to turn her back, and reassure herself that it would be soon, soon.

It had been coming soon for almost four months now. She wasn't used to being unemployed, or unoccupied: she didn't know what to do with herself. And she didn't allow anybody the opportunity to ask her how everything was - she wouldn't let anyone that close, so she couldn't talk about it. She was starting to recognise this as a fault, but she wasn't ready to change. She just had to be stoic.

She gritted her teeth and placed her index finger on the 'paper. Her glasses sat awkwardly on the bridge of her nose: the frames needed fixing. She ran her finger down the columns of jobs listed in the 'paper which dated from the day before. If she was a bricklayer, or a builder, she'd have no trouble finding a job. Lots of work around for hairdressers, taxi-drivers. Waitresses - she could go back to waitressing; she hadn't done it since university but she could pick it up again. Couldn't she? But truth be told she'd never been much good at it. She wasn't good enough at being friendly to strangers.

Her finger reached the end of the last column of ads. She couldn't understand how there could be so many jobs listed, and not one that sounded right. Was she being too picky? Just how desperate was she, she asked herself in frustration. She sighed, and moved her eyes and her index finger back to the beginning of the job ads, ready to start again.