The interview didn't take five minutes. It didn't take ten minutes. It took - Sacha checked her watch again when she stepped blinking out into the street again - 21 minutes, and around thirty seconds she estimated.

The grey-haired man had smiled warmly and thanked her for her time, which she supposed was good rather than bad - at least she hadn't absolutely mortified them. She'd even made the younger man, and by extension the older man and the woman too, laugh at one point, which was some kind of minor miracle - though god only knows what it was that she'd said. Now that the interview was over she could barely remember any of it: it was like waking from a dream; and she supposed that was okay in a way, because one thing she was adept at on occasion was torturing herself over missed opportunities and faux-pas committed. (Of course, they were generally only faux-pas as far as wider society was concerned: they usually arose because Sacha thought some social rule or other to be absolutely ridiculous, and so steadfastly refused to heed it. Other people frequently did not share her opinion in these matters.)

One to two weeks, they'd said. She'd hear from them in one to two weeks. Well, she supposed that was not too long to wait - and yet it would be an agonising period to spend not knowing whether she could afford to let her hair down a little, or whether she should continue having baked beans on toast for dinner and forgoing her small radiator in favour of wrapping a blanket around herself to keep warm. Turning the radiator on in her flat would be a luxury indeed! But it was best to remain cautious. Especially because she couldn't really remember if she'd done well in the interview or poorly.

She wondered if it was what American sports-people (interviews with whom she occasionally stumbled across on late-night T.V. when she was too tired to read) called "being in the zone": she'd been on some kind of autopilot, that was for sure. She could recall a strange dizzy feeling of it all being remarkably easy: if she wasn't always the most tactful person around, it was invariably because she chose not to be - she was perfectly capable, when the time came, of telling people exactly what they wanted to hear - which she was pretty sure was what she'd done in this case. It was just a matter of suspending her morals and her pride and doing whatever it took to ingratiate herself with people. If that was the way she chose to look at it.

She allowed herself a small spark of excitement: imagine being able to save money again! It would be such a novelty to see her bank balance going up for a change. It'd been a while - six months or more. God, had she really been unemployed for six months? That was some kind of effort, that's for sure. It was curious how more than a year's worth of savings could be almost spent in only half that time, though. Well, that would all soon be over, surely. Maybe. If this job didn't come through, then at least the interview had proven to her that her C.V. wasn't going entirely unnoticed - despite all appearances to the contrary. Just don't get ahead of yourself, she cautioned herself. Don't get ahead, don't get behind, just take it precisely as it comes.

So. Now it was time to resume the waiting game. Well, that was one she knew how to play.