Real living is having shoes that match your couch...

Leah (pronounced 'Lay' for no other reason than her mother didn't want her to have a boring name) was at a loss. Yesterday she had been the world's foremost fashion critic. Today she was on medication and she was a nobody.

"Got to get some smokes and sort this out," she thought to herself as she walked down the street away from the hospital. At least, she thought she had said it to herself. She was in reality talking in a loud and expressionless voice. The startled look of the private school boy walking past should have alerted her to this fact, but it didn't. She walked into a 7-11 and asked the sullen looking teenager behind the counter for a packet of Winfield Charcoals. As the boy turned to the perspex-fronted display case, Leah cast a disapproving eye across his clothes.

"Sorry, I don't want to be a bitch, but you are dressed sooooo badly," she said, having by now lowered her voice and forced a small amount of expression into it, hence the extended 'o' in 'so'. "I mean, you're making three statements at once, and they're all pathetic. Is it emo, scenester, or indie rock that you're after? I certainly can't tell."

7-11 Guy turned from the cigarette stand and gave Leah the most withering look his 16-year-old angst could muster.

"Look, I'm sorry if you don't want to hear it, but if you're going to wear a The Smiths shirt you need to pair it with something better than black slacks and some loafers. I'd suggest perhaps a pair of black skinny leg J. Lindebergs and some '92 Air Jordans, or possibly the '90 Air Max, laces out of course."

7-11 Guy, realising that his intensely emotional gaze was having no effect on the strange woman in the Macquarie University hoodie and grey fleecy tracksuit pants, changed tack.

"Do you want these smokes or not?" he asked, holding the cigarette packet on the palm of his limply held hand in a way that said "I don't care if you die, but if you do, please move out of my direct line of sight."

"Not as much as I want to spend 10 minutes inside your wardrobe planning you some outfits... but yes."

"They're 12 bucks," 7-11 Guy said, now looking past Leah at the drinks fridges.

Leah realised she had no idea what was in her pockets. She had been in hospital for two weeks, and had no idea whose clothes she was wearing. Certainly not hers. (They were hers, but two weeks ago the hoodie was a Hugo Boss short jacket and the trackpants were a D&G shift.) She checked her pockets and found an American Express with her name on it and a $20 note that smelled like someone had vomited Sambuca onto it. She handed over the $20.

"Just promise to think about what I said," she told the guy who liked The Smiths, or at least liked shirts with their visage on it.

"Piss off." he said.

"Idiot" Leah thought as she left the 7-11. "Who turns down fashion advice from..." Leah remembered she wasn't actually a fashion writer, particularly not a famous one. She had quite enjoyed it- the trips to Milan, Paris, New York, cocktails with designers and models. Leah wondered where she had really been during her "trips". (She'd mostly been in the sun room of a heroin addict's two-bedroom terrace tearing pictures of celebrities out of magazines. On her few ventures outside the sunroom she'd thrust the pictures into the faces of passers-by asking "What was she thinking when she left home in that!?!" Very few gave their honest opinion.)
"Well, I was pretty good at fashion writing then, I don't see why I couldn't do it again," she thought to herself, by this time having realised that if she consciously clamped her jaw down she wouldn't say everything she thought. "I'll give Fernando a call, see if he knows anyone." It occurred to Leah that Fernando was probably not real. In fact, very few of her fashion clique probably actually existed. What had the doctor said? Something about the power of the imagination creating pretend worlds blah blah blah. She'd stopped listening by that stage, distracted by his mismatched belt and shoes. "Bugger it then. I'll do it on my own. I've got an Amex and $6. I'll buy a pen and some paper and start writing."

Later that day, having purchased a black pen and a spiral bound notebook, Leah discovered that although her friends and career were imaginary, her credit card debts were all too real. She sat outside the heroin addict's house wondering how she was going to pay off $10,000 in credit without even a fictional salary. The junkie had refused to let her in, but had given her a milk crate to sit on, and maybe later to collect garbage in. She was now down to her last $1.85, and had just three cigarettes left. A passing homeless man aggressively mooched two of those from her, and she was left with a single cigarette. She opened her notebook and decided to write a review of his outfit. After about half an hour she had written "unoriginal and smelly" 17 times and produced a crude drawing of a small hairy dog. "I don't think I could sell this for much," she thought glumly. For the first time in two years the full reality of her situation was sinking in. Leah let her head drop down, her chin resting on her chest. The hard plastic webbing of the milk crate was digging into her buttocks.

A large delivery truck drove up the small lane and stopped oustide the junkie's home. Two large Eastern European men hopped out, with one running around the back to open the truck's the rear roller door. The second man sauntered up to Leah. "With the exception of the French Riviera, men should never be seen in shorts," Leah thought, having not yet totally given up on her fashion career.

"You Leah St John?" the big man asked.

"It's actually pronounced 'Lay'".

"I got couch here for you. You take?"

Leah nodded, slightly confused but feeling like this might be the first piece of good news she received that day. The two men unloaded what was clearly a $10,000 couch off the back of the truck and placed it on the footpath. Signature received, they hopped back into the truck and disappeared down the lane. Leah cast her eye over the couch. She wanted to describe it, but she was still fixated on "smelly and unoriginal", and neither of those adjectives seemed appropriate. The couch was a bold but elegant shade of red, and was so soft Leah wondered if its manufacturers had C-sectioned calves to get such fine leather. The couch's modern lines matched the boldness of its colour. "Sit on me," it seemed to say, "but always remember I'm better than you." Leah sat down on the couch and gathered her feet up under her. Yesterday she had been a famous fashion writer. This morning she was on medication and was a nobody. This afternoon she was a nobody sitting on a credit-bought couch in the late afternoon sun. She pulled out her notebook again and made a small entry:

"Things to do: Buy red handbag and shoes."