There’s a lone loose thread in my pink quilted bedspread. I can’t help picking at it, worrying it free. As the stitching unravels I desist, and smoothing out the satin fabric, I sit up. Facing me is my own image, reflected in the winged mirror of my white-painted dressing table. I look to the row of dolls lined up on the high shelf above, legs dangling. The dolls of my childhood, staring straight ahead with their big doll eyes. In the centre is the odd one out, a rag doll, with woollen hair in bunches, a floppy doll leaning on the shoulder of the big mamma on its right.
Good or bad, omens come in peculiar ways. I wonder what the rag doll would think about that. This omen is surely good; my first day back and I’ve achieved a new personal best. All the better for I had not been expecting to
