Easy As Finding The End Of A Rainbow.
by Angharad
part: 32 doz.

I sat in the kitchen, Stella, Tom and I had just eaten. I'd cooked a casserole with some liver and bacon. It was quite tasty and I'd possibly eaten too much. I found myself drifting while Tom and Stella's voices faded away in the distance.

"She's nodded off," I heard Stella's voice, causing me to wake up and jump a little.

"You were sleeping, Cathy. Are we that boring?" asked Tom.

"Was I? No of course not, I'm just a bit tired."

"All that cycling, it's too much too soon," Stella was doing her Job's comforter bit.

"It's not the cycling is the problem, it's the recovery time. Hopefully it will recover in the next few days."

"You were quite ill, you know." Tom was trying not to patronise me. In turn I was trying not to say something I'd regret.

"I know, Tom." I was there for God's sake.

"You had about ten units of blood."

"Tom, can we change the subject? I'm going to pop in to see Spike and the other dormice tomorrow."

"Is that wise?"

"What do you mean?" Was there some sort of coded message here I wasn't seeing?

"Well, you're supposed to be on sick leave. They don't like you in the university if you're on sick leave."

"Since when?" This was news to me.

"New policy, through the health and safety laws."

"But there are no student's there, so I'd only be doing some very brief admin stuff."

"I don't care, you shouldn't be in there."

"Are you instructing me to keep out of the place?"

"No, I'm advising you of the new policy."

"Is there some reason why I should stay away? Nothing has happened to Spike has it?"

"Not as far as I know, why?"

"Maybe I'm tired or getting paranoid. I think I'll go to bed. If Simon rings, tell him I'll talk with him tomorrow." I bid them goodnight and kissed them both. I was in bed and asleep inside half an hour. I think I heard a phone ring, but I tuned it out and went back to sleep.

I awoke the next morning feeling full of the joys of hell. I was stiff and sore and knackered. Perhaps I had overdone it? I refused to believe it, I was just out of practice with regard to exercise, especially on a bike. I looked at the clock, it was six in the morning. I turned over and zonked again.

I slept for another three hours, waking when Stella brought me a cuppa. It was a struggle to surface then, but I finally made it. "Hi," I sort of grunted as I strove to keep my eyes open.

"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty."

"Yeah, I was tired."

"Simon phoned just after you went to bed. He guessed you'd been out on your bike. He wasn't very pleased."

"Tough, he'll live. Did you tell any more tales on me?" I was a bit ratty.

Stella blushed and her whole body language changed after my remark. It was annoyance. "I didn't tell tales, if you must know. It was Tom, who told him, because he was concerned for you. You looked very pale when you went to bed."

"I'm always pale, unless I've been exercising and then I'm red in the face. But it's a pale red."

"You forget that I have seen you, Missy. You go about as pale as a ripe tomato. At least you did yesterday."

"Anyway, I'm going in to the uni today."

"Tom told you not to."

"No he didn't, he advised me against it. I'm beginning to wonder if something has happened to Spike."

"You said yourself, that she was quite old."

"She is, which is why I'm worried."

"She's only a dormouse, Cathy."

"That's like saying Darwin was only a Victorian gentleman."

"I thought it was a town in Australia."

"Ha ha. Anyway, I have decided that I am going to see if she is alright."

"Why don't you just phone them?"

"The dormice don't have any phones."

"No, you dummy, the technicians who look after them."

"They often don't answer out of term times, claiming they were setting up an experiment or using some equipment that drowned out the phone."

"Maybe they were?"

"I've been there in holiday times, they don't do much at all except feed the dormice and clean out the cages, and feed any other animals we have there."

"Why do they have other animals?" She looked at me, I kept silent. She looked at me again. "They use them for experiments, don't they?"

"I'm not involved in that sort of stuff."

"But they do don't they?"

"It's all licenced by the government."

"I think it's appalling what these poor animals have to suffer in the supposed name of science."

"I don't do that stuff, I just count and weigh and try to understand what's happening in populations from my data."

"Don't try to get round me, I know what you white coated sorts get up to."

"Stella, that is pure prejudice. That is like me accusing you of fox strangling, just because you used to ride horses."

"Well, I don't. I was blooded by my grandad when I was six and became hysterical."

"Blooded?" I wasn't sure what she meant, never having hunted anything except to observe or count it.

"Yeah, you know, rite of passage stuff. They daub your face with the warm blood of a fresh killed fox. I went crazy and rode off. It took them two hours to find me. I didn't talk to Grandad for months, and we'd been very close. Daddy, didn't like foxhunting and as soon as he inherited the title, he banned it across our estates."

"Estates? You have more than one?"

"Of course, we have two in Scotland, farms in various parts of England, some woodland in Wales, mining areas in Cornwall and several small areas in France and Spain, including the Balearics."

"You lot are wealthy, aren't you?"

"Yes, Daddy is a billionaire, although much of it is in trust."

"So he's the Richard Branson of the banking world?"

"Well if he lost most of his fortune, he could sill buy out Sir Richard."

"The Bill Gates of banking?"

"No he isn't that wealthy, besides he has to work to earn his money, he doesn't have a monopoly."

"Except, what you're saying sounds like Monopoly money to me. Even if I got to be a professor, which I don't particularly want, I'd never make anything like half a million by the time I retired."

"Yes, you would, earning between fifty and a hundred K, you'd get there in five to ten years."

"Money doesn't interest me, it really doesn't."

"It would if you had either loads of it, or very little."

"That's as maybe, anyway I'm off to shower and go and see my bairns."

"I thought you were going to see your dormice."

"I am, my bairns, wains whatever."

"Ah yes, now I see what you're on about."

I managed to shunt Stella from my room into her own. I showered quickly and went down to eat a small breakfast. Then it was a few stretching exercises and out to the bikes. Stella accompanied me, which was nice and despite all her grumbles, she was actually not a bad cyclist.

It took about half an hour to get to my office and secure the bikes. Walking about in lycra got a few stares from people and one of the security guards walked into a door post while staring at Stella, who is currently bigger in boobs and bum, than I am. I do however have a relatively small waistline and I'm hoping my hill climbing will improve with the lower body weight.

We set off for the labs and bumped into Neal. "Hello, Cathy, what are you doing here, I thought you were sick?"

"I am, I've popped in to see Spike and the rest of the dormice."

"Oh dear," he said and I felt my stomach flip faster than the Olympic champion in floor exercise gymnastics.