First try at the opening.
“Elizabeth, can you hear me?”
Blue. Red. Blue. A hand let go of her shoulder and the figure had moved away slightly. There was a loud obnoxious noise somewhere around, repeating. It was so loud. The only thing she could feel was the hard plastic of her phone clutched too tightly in her right hand. Her knees burned from their prolonged contact with the hard floor, but she couldn’t move. Blue. Red. Blue. Red. Even through her closed eyes she couldn’t ignore that light. The noise wasn’t stopping. There was a conversation going on somewhere above her in low voices. She wasn’t listening. She couldn’t hear. Blue. Red. Blue. Lights flashing. Sounds that didn’t make sense. Nothing was making sense. A hand closed tightly on her shoulder again.
 “Can you hear me?” The phone was intermittent.
“Yes, just – what do I need to search?” Lizzie was getting annoyed by the bad signal making organising more complicated than it needed to be. The excitement at the idea of getting everyone together again made it bearable, getting six adults together was never the easiest task. Holding the phone with her shoulder pushed to her ear she typed the address into her laptop. The sun was shining, and she could feel the rays caressing her arm as she waited for the webpage to load. Lazily she listened to the work tales with excruciating amounts of detail that were being described down the phone.
“Tuesday, no Wednesday…No it can’t have been Wednesday because I’m sure I saw Michael and he doesn’t work on Wednesdays…but I thought I had put the bins out…Maybe I put the bins out on the wrong day this week! Well anyway, I think it was Wednesday…”.
Lizzie’s friend Evie found drama in the smallest of things, but Lizzie secretly loved that about her. She was entertaining and had the biggest heart Lizzie had ever known. The page had loaded. A large picture spread the width of the page showing a gated courtyard, a slideshow of pictures started showing various bedrooms a nice bathroom, kitchen and living room all looking very clean and modern. It had a 5-star review from 129 different people, lots of lovely comments from other holiday makers and it looked perfect for a weekend reunion.
“Yeah, it looks great!” Lizzie interrupted the story about how someone she didn’t know may or may not be getting together with another person she also had never known existed before this conversation.
“Fantastic!” Evie chirped, not phased at all by the interruption, “I’ll book it all! I cannot wait to have everyone back together, I’ll tell you everything when we finally get together, but I do have some news!”
The phone call was over nearly as quickly as it started, and Lizzie just sat eyes shut, head resting against the back of the sofa enjoying the warmth of the sun, absent-mindedly rotating her phone loosely in her hand.
Her group of friends had met some years previously as they all attended the same university - which she always saw as a fantastic stroke of luck. They were brilliant people and the idea they were all going to be seeing each other made Lizzie smile to herself as she was flooded with happy and hilarious memories. Lost for a few seconds, the only thing that made her pull herself back was Muddle crawling onto her lap with her always surprisingly heavy paw steps. Blinking away the blue hue that had descended since the sunlight Lizzie scratched Muddle’s head absentmindedly.
