Rat Catchers

Sandwiches

Rose woke in the dead of night, her boots still on her feet and lay awake for a moment, trying to remember her dream. It slipped away from her though, save a vague idea that it had been a very nice one.

Rose didn't know when she'd fallen asleep, but she'd missed both lunch and dinner and now that she was fully awake – feeling the best rested she had in weeks, actually – she found she was absolutely famished. Rose sat up and looked over to check if Charlie was asleep, which he was, snoring very quietly; so she got up and silently made her way downstairs.

The fire was burning in the front room but all the other lights were off, the orange glow falling through the door and onto the bottom of the stairs was in equal measure inviting and creepy. Rose heard the tell-tale clink of glass on glass, the sound of someone washing away the bits of the day they wanted to forget, carefully stepped over the creaky stair and made it to the doorway unnoticed.

Her father was sitting staring into the fire, glass in hand, the bottle beside him not too empty though, just staring and staring, like he wanted to disappear into the fireplace. Abandoning all stealth Rose walked into the room.

"Are you hun-" she started.

Tommy jumped out of his skin. He dropped the glass, knocked over the bottle as he flew from his chair and had a hand on the holster before Rose had even closed her mouth properly. Rose jumped back and took cover behind the other chair.

"Good fuck, you don't sneak up on a man like this," her father rasped and dropped back into his seat.

"D'you want a sandwich?" Rose asked, still crouching behind the chair.

There was no answer until Rose was confident that she'd either be sent packing without a chance to even make food for herself or had been forgotten about. She could hear him picking up the gin bottle and the glass.

"That'd be lovely."

"Are you gonna shoot me when I come out?" She craned her head carefully over the back of the chair.

"No, Rosie," her father gave a very dry laugh, a humorous cough, really. "I'm not going to shoot you. Not until after you've fed me, at least."

Rose went into the kitchen, found bread, butter and some cold meat and assembled two sandwiches roughly the thickness of house bricks. She took them into the front room, passed one to Tommy and settled on the floor to be close to the fire with her own.

For a while they sat and chewed in silence.

"Any chance of a story?"

"Aye?" Rose looked up at her father, fairly certain she'd misheard him.

"Have you thought up any more?"

"I've one about horses," she said shyly. "D'you really want to hear a story? Now?"

"If it's no trouble." Tommy reached down to retrieve the bottle and refill his glass.

"No trouble," Rose said quickly. "None at all."

Her father abandoned his chair and joined her on the floor, his back resting against the wall beside the fire.

"So...right...there's this man, building a hut for himself to live in in the woods. He used to live in town before, but one night he got in from the pub and his children were gone; so he just walked away until he got to the woods."

"Where'd his children get to?"

Rose looked over at her father and, just for one small moment, could imagine that he'd once been a child himself. The thought made the rug against her legs more scratchy somehow.