“It’s two o’clock in the morning!” Eve bellowed through the front door, in answer to the persistent ringing and hammering upon it that had woken her up at least a minute ago now.
She’d been grabbing her dressing gown and dashing down the stairs almost before she’d realised she’d been awake. It wasn’t like this was the first time it had happened. In fact, lately it had been happening rather a lot.
“Let me in! Let me in!” bellowed a muffled voice she instantly recognised as being Stu.
“Not by the hairs on my chinny-chin-chin” was, surprisingly, the first thing she thought, remembering the old nursery rhyme, but knew better than to actually say it. Instead she merely undid the latch and opened the door.
“You took your time” snarled Stu thanklessly as he rushed past her into the hallway and slammed the door behind him, before turning and pressing his face against the glass to peer out into the darkness.
Eve had always known that Stu was a bit of a wild one. In some ways that’s why she liked him. That, and the fact that he never seemed to be short of a bob or two. Certainly her life was never that quiet now that he had become part of it.
“What’s going on?” she asked, not really expecting a proper answer.
“Best you don’t know!” he growled back at her, baring his teeth.
“Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf…?” Again? What was that all about? Maybe she was still half asleep…
“Rough night?” she asked in her most matter-of-fact manner, the one she knew was likely to irritate him the most.
“Don’t want to talk about it. Got anything to drink?”
“Fair enough” she thought before heading into the kitchen and clicking on the lights.
“Don’t put the lights on!” roared Stu angrily, dashing over to switch them off again, “Someone might see!”
“Might see what?” Eve replied “Me getting up in the night and making myself a cup of tea… That’s hardly a crime is it?”
“Someone might ask you why you were up…” He looked around at the front door again, warily.
“Maybe I fancied a Cup! Of! Tea! It does happen, you know…” said Eve before flouncing off into the kitchen, making an emphatic point of switching the lights back on, and giving Stu a look that just dared him to try switching them off again.
Stu admitted defeat and strolled twitchily into the kitchen, and paced up and down aggressively, like a lion in a cage, whilst waiting for her to brew up. She pointedly pulled out a chair for him to sit on, and after a momentary locking of steely eyeballs, decided to sit and wait. After an icy couple of minutes of silence, a mug was plonked down in front of him.
“Not got anything stronger?’ he asked.
“Don’t push it” she replied, and sat down opposite him to sip at her own drink, looking him up and down with an appraising eye. She knew it was the middle of the night, but he looked in a right old state, like a wild animal. She knew better than to push him to give her any more information. She knew he’d tell her in his own good time.
“You’ve ripped your jacket,” she said as she spotted a huge gash in his sleeve. “Been fighting again?”
“What?” he cried, patting himself all over until he found the offending hole and probed around at it to discover that a piece was actually missing. He leapt to his feet and roaring a string of invective, pelted out of the kitchen, through the front door and dashed off, panic-stricken, into the night.
She presumed he was heading back to his own place to his kids and his wardrobe full of fresh clothes and, for all she knew, his wife. She sighed to herself, collected up the two mugs and placed them into the sink, and resolved to herself not to let him in next time. But she knew she always would. She wasn’t sure she could handle the consequences otherwise. He was such an old rogue, but she still found him irresistible, and as long as he still wanted her, she was fine with that.
“Anyway, if I did lock him out, he’d probably only try and get down the chimney!” she thought, shaking her head to try and cast aside that persistent image again.
Then she had a wicked thought: “Maybe I should get some more coal…?”
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