Elusive Package
(working title)
by Nicho

“It must be here somewhere….!”   Marion was on the verge of panic . Where the hell was it?

She looked at the detritus around her. The table was strewn with the contents of her handbag – which said item was at present lounging languidly on the floor with the lining hanging out forlornly.
Once again, she went thought the contents of her pockets – that took less than twenty seconds, women’s clothes being notoriously short  in the pocket category.

What HAD she done with it? Marion was now over the ‘verge’ and well on the way down the slope to despair!  How COULD she have been so careless with such an important item!

Marion very carefully picked up her sad handbag and started to replace her items minutely. It HAD to be SOMEWHERE…!  She really didn’t want to allow herself to imagine the results of her not finding it – they were too terrible to contemplate!
Apart from any other consideration –what would Donald think? More importantly, what would Donald DO…!

Marion sat down at the table with her head in her hands. The loss would be disastrous – her credibility gone and the financial repercussions didn’t bear thinking about!

Someone came up the stairs into her part of the little bistro.
“Are you Mrs. Duck?” a voice spoke, She jumped, startled out of her self-absorption.

“Yes..?” Marion looked at a young man of about twenty, holding her coffee in one hand and something else ion his other.  “You left this on the counter””

Marion nearly fainted with relief.

“Oh – thank you so much! I’d just missed it!” she exhaled the breath she was holding and thought the lad must think she was having an asthma attack!

“You’re welcome, “ he smiled and returned to his work.

She clutched at the small leather case holding her passport and papers to her new life abroad.
Marion sipped at her coffee, trying to calm herself before she could function in any sensible way.  She looked at her watch. The train was due in a very few minutes so she finished her coffee and left a £10.00 note under her coffee cup for her saviour.

Thank God she would be far away before Donald found out what she was up to.  He’d get the bank statement and he would open it, as she was not there to intercept it this time.

He would find out that she had run up about fifteen grand on one ‘secret’ card and removed approximately fity grand from the joint account.
She also had a small nest egg she had been saving from her ‘allowance’ for a couple of years which, she had told Donald, was for cosmetic surgery that he had wanted her to have so he had allowed her to keep that..
           
The bruises from their last ‘disagreement’ had all but faded now, but had that passport been lost, Donald would have found her out and would have scoured the UK for her. She shuddered at the thought of what injuries she would sustain should that have happened….

As she stepped onto the cross-channel train, she heaved a small sigh of semi-relief – she wouldn’t relax or be relieved until she landed in Wiesbaden in Germany, where, with the help of the Domestic Violence group, she had managed to secure a small house to rent.
She had nothing but what she stood up in and the contents of her handbag – which now included her passport and papers, safely zipped into it.
She was so glad she had never changed the name on her passport to her married name. She had never liked Donald Duck anyway….