Free Some Girls Do by Clodagh Murphy

somewhere else to go.’
    He opened the door and looked out at the rain. He couldn’t bring himself to go out into it when he had a better offer. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked her.
    She nodded.
    ‘Thank you,’ he said, closing the door. ‘I promise I’ll be out of your hair tomorrow. I’ll leave first thing in the morning.’
    ‘Well, you know where everything is. Help yourself to anything you want,’ she said, as he removed his jacket and hung it back on the coat-stand. ‘I was going straight to bed anyway.’
    Shit! Why couldn’t he have had the decency to brave a bit of rain and leave her alone? Now she was going to spend the night hiding in her room because of his stupidity last night.
    As she turned to the stairs, he stopped her with a hand on her elbow. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry about last night, about trying to—’
    ‘It’s okay,’ she said, not turning to look at him.
    ‘No, it’s not okay,’ he said, more sharply than he’d meant to. But she shouldn’t let him off so easily. ‘I behaved like a total dick, and I’m really sorry.’ He needed her to know that his apology was genuine.
    She looked at him and nodded.
    ‘Please don’t feel you have to go and hide in your room to avoid me. I’m not a complete savage. I know I didn’t show much evidence of it last night, but I can behave like a civilised humanbeing if I have to. If you really can’t stand to be around me, I ’ll go to my – er, to the guest room.’
    She shook her head. ‘It’s not that. I was planning to go straight to bed because I’m knackered.’
    She did look exhausted – not just washed out physically but emotionally too. She was clearly on the verge of tears.
    ‘Bad day?’ he asked gently.
    ‘Pretty shitty.’
    ‘Not helped by coming home and finding me still here,’ he said, smiling wryly. He noticed she didn’t deny it. ‘Have you eaten?’
    ‘I’m too tired to even think about getting anything. But you help yourself to whatever you want.’
    ‘Why don’t I make us both something? You cooked for me last night, so it’s the least I can do. That is, if you’d like …’
    ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I have in, though.’
    ‘How does scrambled eggs on toast sound? Not very exciting, but I happen to know you have the ingredients.’
    ‘It sounds perfect.’ She smiled.
    ‘Cool. You were drinking tea when you found me. Why don’t you go and finish it, and I’ll bring the food in when it’s ready?’
    ‘Okay. Thanks.’
    ‘This is really nice,’ Claire said later, as they sat side by side on the sofa with plates of scrambled eggs and toast, and big mugs of tea. ‘Thank you.’
    ‘Are you usually this late getting home from work?’
    ‘No. I went to visit my mother on the way home. She’s in a nursing home at the moment.’
    ‘Oh. When you said she was away, I assumed holidays.’
    ‘She had a hip replacement last week, and she’s in convalescent care now.’
    ‘But she’s okay?’
    ‘As okay as she ever is.’
    He looked at her questioningly.
    ‘The operation went well. But she has a lot of ongoing health problems. She has a very dodgy heart so we constantly lurch from one crisis to the next.’ Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke, and her jaw tightened as if she was trying hard not to cry.
    ‘Is that why you still live with her?’
    She nodded. ‘She’s quite incapacitated with arthritis, and between that and her heart condition, it’s not really safe for her to live alone.’
    ‘What about your dad?’
    ‘He died when I was two. But he hadn’t been on the scene for years before that. Mum raised us on her own, really.’
    ‘Us?’
    I have two older brothers. They’re both married with children.’
    ‘No sisters?’
    ‘No.’ She sighed wistfully. ‘I’d love to have a sister. So, how about you? You said you grew up near Yvonne, so you’re from Dalkey originally?’
    ‘Yeah. Well, not originally. I was adopted.’
    ‘From Romania.’ She