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☆✼★━━━━━━━━━━━━★✼☆
VALENTINA GRABBED HER handbag and pulled on her large faux fur coat, as she got ready to leave work. "See you on Monday!" She called to her colleagues as she exited the building. She headed down to the bus stop just outside her work building, and waited for the 6.10pm bus that she always got home from work. While waiting, she pulled out a cigarette from the packet in her bag, and slid it between her lips. She pulled out her pale blue lighter and lit the end, inhaling the smoke.
Valentina worked as a designer for a company called Topshop. She designed and made clothes with a big team of other people. She loved her job, as it had been her dream since she was a little girl to make clothes for a big company. She had always been obsessed with fashion, and making her own clothes. At the age of 10, she got her own sewing machine for her birthday, and from that point onwards she was always making clothes. When she was younger she would design clothes for her dolls, and when she entered her teenage years, she started to make clothes for herself. She would make skirts and tops and jumpers for herself, and she loved the whole process of it.
When she reached the age of eighteen and finished school, she came to London for university so she could do a degree in fashion design. That was successful, and she soon got a job making clothes for a small independent business after she graduated. A year later, she got the job at Topshop, and that bought her to now. She genuinely loved her job, and she knew how lucky she was to get to do what she had always wanted to do. She earned enough money from it to continue to live in her medium sized Kensington apartment, and still have money to enjoy the pleasures of life and go out drinking with her friend Emilia most weekends.
She did this nearly every Saturday, and she enjoyed it. They would go out to a bar of their choice, drink a reasonable amount of alcohol, and fairly often the night would end with both women stumbling off with a man each that they had met at the bar. Valentina didn't mind this, it was her life and she was used to it. She didn't have the time or the interest in finding a long term partner, and one night stands were more her thing. This way, she didn't have to feel lonely on a Saturday night, yet she didn't have to worry about a relationship.
Valentina was just not interested in love, or relationships, or any of that stuff. After being severely hurt by it in the past, she had decided to take a very long break from it all, in hopes that 'time would be the greatest healer' like everyone told her. She obviously wanted to find someone eventually, whom she could marry and maybe even have children with, but she was in absolutely no hurry to do that. Not to mention the fact that men were slightly afraid of Valentina, be it her way of speaking in an incredibly blunt and straight-to-the-point manner, the way she walked and swung her hips with purpose, or the way she shut down anyone who offered to take her on date, she seemed to have a way of making men stutter and lose their way with words.
She came across as this independent, fierce, powerful woman, who was incredibly sure of herself. This was true to some extent, however underneath this facade of strength she was a woman who had been used, abused and had her heart shattered into a million small pieces by a man in the past. She was still slowly picking up the pieces and metaphorically gluing her heart back together, and the attitude she now had was something she had built – as one would a wall – to protect herself from others who may have the same intentions as her past lover.
Valentina heard the bus pull up, and she pressed her cigarette to the wall, stubbing out the end before she dropped it in the bin. She stepped on to the bus, flashing her return ticket to the driver, and slumped down in a seat near the window. She watched the city buildings fly by her window, and soon she was back in the area in which she lived. She hopped off the bus and reached her apartment building. She walked up the small gravel path that lead up to the building and entered, twisting her keys around in the door to unlock it. She quickly headed up the stairs to the third floor, apartment 8B, where she lived. She flopped down on the sofa almost immediately, feeling exhausted after a 10 hour day at work.
After five minutes of resting on the sofa, the phone rang. She headed over to the cabinet which it sat on and picked it up. "Hello?" She called into the phone. "Val! It's me" she heard the familiar high voice of her best friend Emilia. "Oh hey! I've only just got in from work. What's up?" She asked. "Oh, sorry. Just wanted to ask if you're coming out tomorrow with me?" She could almost hear the smirk in Emilia's voice. "Of course I am." Valentina smiled.
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AUTHORS NOTE I feel like this is a bit of an odd place to end a chapter, but I didn't know where else to end it. This was mostly just an introduction to Valentina's life so you can kind of get an idea of who she is and what she does. Don't worry, Roger will be introduced in the next chapter!
