She’d slammed down the phone on Stu after he’d called her, and howled in anger at the top of her voice at the ridiculousness of the man. Ringing her up at this time of night pretending he was concerned about Chris whilst still making those veiled threats that she should keep her mouth shut. Well, she hadn’t kept her mouth shut for long and had unleashed a stream of unpleasant oaths in his general direction that would have no doubt shocked her mother, but which would have come as no surprise to the regulars down the local.
She passed up and down in agitation, wondering quite what she should do. The warm, comforting feeling she’d had in her system from the alcohol was already forgotten.
She’d known Stu, of course, from her days working behind the bar at the Oddfellows, and he’d always been a bit of an old devil.
What had he said? He’d had to leave Chris behind in the woods because he’d fallen over and he didn’t have any chance to stop and help him. Why ever not, for God’s sake? Isn’t that what you do? Well, it’s certainly what she would have done, she thought, and what most people worth their salt would have done, too. Mind you, it was Stu she was dealing with here, she rationalised, so his own neck was bound to have been his priority. She wondered quite what they’d been up to out there anyway, but decided to let it pass.
Chris, was going to have some explaining to do.
In the meantime, well, she was a fully trained nurse, and she was blowed if she was going to let her Chris lie out there in Sixteen Acre Wood, possibly in great pain, no matter what he’d been up to.
She threw her jeans on over her leggings, put on her thick parka and snowboots, grabbed her medical kit and headed out into the night.
The Micra wasn’t really built for this kind of weather but she’d have to chance it. Unfortunately she had to spend about ten minutes scraping ice off the windows and messing around with the locks to try and get the driver’s door to open. Stupidly, the passenger door opened without the slightest hitch, so she scrambled in through that door instead and bumped her way over past the gear-stick, thankfully not doing herself a mischief in the process.
She fumbled around with the keys and at the third attempt got the engine to turn over. Praying a silent prayer to whatever Gods of motoring there were, she looked around for her medical kit and realised she’d left it on the roof of the car.
Swearing loudly to herself, she reversed her previous manoeuvre to retrieve it, and then manipulated herself back into the driver’s seat once more.
More by luck than anything else, she managed to get the little car out of the maze of side streets and onto the bypass, and she was just starting to feel a little better about things when she noticed the flashing blue lights in her rear view mirror, and realised that she’d forgotten to switch any of her lights on.
Then she remembered how much wine she’d had.
I don't know how you are keeping this up Martin. It took me two hours last night to perfect the next episode of the Ju-Ju Jesus Peanut and I only write that once a week!
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff. I'm hooked.