(Subplot) Lexie for Sale

"Ooh, looks like we had a contribution overnight!" April chirped cheerily as she opened the shop door and checked the donation basket that was always left under the letterbox overnight.

"What? One poxy frog ornament?" Chelsea, the largely uninterested work experience girl replied "Bit of a stingy donation if you ask me!"

Hey, who are you calling poxy, motherfucker!

Lexie had heard Mel use that slang term before. She wasn't entirely sure what it meant, but she knew it wasn't complimentary.

"Every little helps, Chelsea!" April reminded her younger colleague.

"So what shall I do? Price it at a quid and stick it in the bargain bin?"

Hey, you keep me the fuck out of the bargain bin, bitch!

"No, it's worth more than that, a fiver at the very least" April had picked Lexie up and was examining her body thoroughly "The detail on this is exquisite, almost like a real frog cast into stone. I want to find a nice spot where the customers will see it. I'm pretty sure it will find a new owner before long"

April scanned the store for a few moments before seeming to settle on somewhere.

"Ooh, I think I've found the perfect home for you!"

Man, you have got to be fucking with me!

Lexie was mortified as she was carried towards her new temporary resting spot. She was placed carefully on top of a ceramic lily pad between two cheap and tacky looking garden gnomes. Also on the shelf with her was a small, porcelain pig, a china duck and painted, clay rabbit.

Tania, I am fucking coming for you as soon as I get back to normal!

With Lexie's position in the shop settled, April and Chelsea quickly lost interest in her, not that there had been much from the latter in the first place, and prepared to open up the store.

Now Lexie was no more than just another cheap item for sale in a charity shop. This had to be an all time low for her. Before she had gotten herself mixed up in NA she had been a highly promising young lawyer. How had it come to this?

It was bad enough that she now had no means whatsoever of warning Mel, Barbie and the others about Tania and her true intentions, without the **** humiliation of her current predicament to add to her woes. To make matters worse, her absence would pretty much give James a clear run at Melanie. Lexie had never been one to believe in the old adage about absence making the heart grow stronger, after all.

The door soon swung open and the first customers of the day entered the shop, an elderly couple followed by a bohemian looking young woman. All Lexie could do at this point was hope that nobody decided to buy her. She knew the shop she was in was at least near the mansion. There was a very slim, but not completely implausible, possibility that one of the glitches might come in here, recognise her and realise she had been turned to stone. If she was sold and taken away to someone else's house or garden then even that remote slither of hope would be taken away from her.