(FICTION) (Thanks to Di at http://pensitivity101.wordpress.com/ for the idea for the story.)

Petra was practically dead on her feet. But working the New Year’s Eve party for the Jones’s did that to her every year.

Midnight had come and gone and the be-tied and be-gowned guests were showing no signs of wanting to go home. The men with their “haw-haw-haw” laughs and the women who gossiped about one another the moment they were out of earshot made Petra’s eyes roll so many times, she’d been able to count her own eyelashes.

So she was less than amused when she went into the kitchen with her umpteenth tray of dirty champagne glasses and Geeves, the elderly butler that looked like a fireplace poker in a waiter’s tux, turned to her and said, “‘Mother’ wants you upstairs.”

“Why me?” Petra asked, but Geeves just turned up his nose and walked out of the kitchen with a sniff in Petra’s direction and not much more. She was almost positive “Mother” hadn’t asked for her personally, but what was Petra to do? She needed the job.

So usually twinkletoed Petra weaved her way through the stuffiness of the living room full of guests and trudged up the massive, winding flights of stairs to “Mother”‘s room, passing portraits of “Mother” on her way.

(To be continued on Tuesday.)

(Di’s prompt was “Petra as a name, wine cellar as a setting, and ‘getting caught’ as your what if. “)

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