I always forget to apologise in advance for my potty mouth. Sorry. And apologies in advance for my potty mouth. Thank you for the reviews, looks like there's a little bit more mileage in this one, so here's a quick and brief update. Lady J, your wish is my command. ;)


Harry stared at the door in disbelief, then with a hissed 'Oh, bollocks to this!' he grabbed his door keys from the hall table and ran outside. Pulling the door shut behind him he stood on the top step and scanned the street. Thank god for rare-as-hen's-teeth London parking, he could just make out the top of her head as she strode towards the corner.

'Ruth!' he yelled. 'Ruth!' Forgetting his bare feet, his bare chest, he hurtled down the steps and started running after her. Unsurprisingly, passers by moved swiftly out of his way, and despite his age, his lack of fitness, his dodgy knee and his Zola Budd impersonation, the gap between them swiftly narrowed. 'Ruth, will you bloody stop!'

He was sure her pace was quickening, and he could now see her car up ahead. Momentarily distracted, he cannoned off a young man emerging from a shop. The two of them stumbled, Harry panting 'Sorry, sorry!' and as he recovered his balance and began to run again, he didn't notice the shard of glass lying on the kerb. It sliced into the ball of his foot, and with anguished yell he toppled to the ground.

Ruth, hearing the commotion, turned just in time to see Harry, his face contorted in pain, clattering off the pavement. She gazed at him in incredulity for a moment, then the awful thought struck her that he was having a heart attack, and she began to run. As she got closer she realised he was clutching his knee, and blood was oozing from his foot. And she was pretty sure that someone having a heart attack wouldn't be able to swear like that.

'Harry, what on earth are you playing at?'

'My arsing fucking knee, I've bust my arsing fucking knee, that's what I'm playing at. And my foot, shit.' He looked up at her. 'Why the hell did you run off?'

'I had some half naked, foul mouthed weirdo chasing after me,' she said drily.

'Not...funny...,' he grimaced.

The man Harry had bumped into waved his iPhone. 'Should I call an ambulance?'

'Hang on.' Ruth knelt down beside Harry and nudging his hand out of the way felt around his kneecap. Harry's head lolled back, his eyes wide, his forehead wreathed in perspiration, as he silently mouthed every expletive he could think of. Examination completed, Ruth reached for his now rather grubby, bloodied foot. The piece of glass lay beside his thigh, and she gingerly picked it up and dropped it in the gutter. Cupping his heel she inspected the wound. 'I don't think there's any glass left in it and I don't think it's deep enough to need stitches...if they can even stitch there...No,' she pronounced, finally. 'I just need to get him home and cleaned up. The knee, I don't think the patella's fractured or dislocated; it's just taken a bit of a dunt. It'll be fine.' Ignoring Harry's aggrieved protests and the aspersions he was casting on her diagnostic skills, she looked up at the young man. 'Can you help me...?'

'Joel.'

'Joel. Can you help me get him home, Joel? It's just a few doors down.'

'I am here, you know,' Harry snapped.

'Piggy back?' suggested Joel.

'Oh, for the love of god,' said Harry.

'I just need to get something to bandage his foot with, so he doesn't bleed all over you.' She stood up. 'I'll try the shop.'

But an elderly woman was one step ahead of her, emerging from the butcher's with a small green box. 'Here you go, love.'

'Oh, thanks.' Deftly she cleaned the wound and patched Harry up. 'You do have a kit in the house, don't you?' she asked.

He nodded. 'When you've been shot as often as I have...' The onlookers palpably recoiled. 'Joke,' he added wearily.

Somehow Ruth, Joel and and one of the onlookers got Harry upright and up onto Joel's broad back. Harry wasn't sure which was worse, the searing pain that shot through his leg with every step, or the utterly undignified procession through his own neighbourhood back to the house.