One of the girls who helped out at the care home café at Samoto came dashing down her stairs at home.

“Damn, I’m late for work”, Ginny said to her mum. “See you later?”

“Not going out like that you aren’t”, said her mum. “Get back upstairs and put your work skirt on.”

“Oh mum”, Ginny cried, “I hate that skirt. It’s so uncomfortable...”

“Go! Now!” said her mum. “You know that there’s a strict uniform code at your work. Companions have to wear those skirts, so the residents can recognise them.”

Ginny sadly went back up the stairs. Shortly, she re-emerged.

She was wearing a thick blue denim skirt, with gold buttons down the front. She was also wearing a matching denim waistcoat.

“You reminded me”, she said, “they added the waistcoat to the uniform last week”.

“You’d better wear this, too”, her mum said. “It’s chucking it down outside...”

Ginny’s mother handed her a thick long transparent rain poncho..

“This should cover over your uniform ok. Don’t forget to put the hood up, the rain’s really heavy.”

Gunny pulled it on, and fastened the poppers to hold the hood up and the ones that tightened the poncho round her wrists to stop the rain getting in. She then left and walked quickly to the café in the driving rain.

Fiddling with the poncho as she walked, she found a visor in the hood that she could pull down, to keep the rain out of her eyes.

She eventually got to the café and went in the back door as usual.

As she went to get ready, however, she got stopped by her supervisor.

“They want to see you upstairs”, he said. “Keep the cape on, they want you up there right now.”

Dashing upstairs, still wearing the cape and dripping on the carpet, she stood in the managers office, wondering what happened next.

Someone suddenly reached over and pressed on one of the poppers round her neck.

There was a click. The visor in the cape slid down, completely covering her face, and a collar hidden in the cape clamped itself round her neck.

Ginny realised by the way the visor flexed as she tried to breathe that the hood had gone airtight, and her hands flew to her head trying to pull it off.

“Stop f’ing about, girl, get your skirt off”, said a voice. “show us what we’re paying for.”

Ginny whimpered, pulling harder at the hood of her cape.

“Come on”, the voice said.”you’ve got at least five minutes of air trapped in that hood. Take your skirt off, show us what you can do, and we’ll open the air vent. Surely you realised why we insisted on skirts with buttoned fronts for all our staff, and wearing a cape like that is just asking for it. Toys wrapped in plastic bags… Your mum was more fun when she joined.”

Sobbing, Ginny carried on struggling with the cape. She was still pulling at it as she ran out of air, and she passed out and collapsed on the floor…