For You, Blue

2. Drive My Car

Charlie doesn't think she's ever heard the world this silent and still. Almost as if someone has hit the pause button and they've stopped turning, suspended forever in quiet.

Where earlier this evening there was the background noise of cars honking distantly further into the city and the occasional voice from outside the townhouse (high-pitched and female, no doubt) there was nothing now. Only the sounds of her own breathing. Hell, she's sure she could hear her own heart beating if she held her breath a moment.

So, when the sudden 'clank' rings out from somewhere inside, Charlie nearly jumps out of her own skin.

She hasn't been able to sleep for an hour or so now; it would've been impossible to tell if she hadn't had her watch - Harry's spare bedroom had seemingly everything but a clock. A combination of nerves - from what, she couldn't quite place - and the cool of the evening had kept her awake. No matter how she wrapped herself in her thick blankets, her feet were not dissimilar to ice cubes and she kept shivering.

There's a few more sounds, some shuffling around, and then silence once more. Charlie tosses and turns, trying desperately to quiet her mind before realizing much too late just how futile it is. She sits up, swings her legs over the side of the bed and hisses as her toes contact the cool hardwood floors. Her light linen trousers make slight 'swish' noises as she hurriedly pads to the door, rubbing her arms - the pants had (mercifully) been a purchase from the previous day, but the long-sleeved top had come on her 'trip' with her and was none too adequate to fight the slight chill the night had brought with it.

Charlie tip-toes down the hallway, fingers trailing along the wall in search of a thermostat to no avail. She lingers at the top of the stairs, holding onto the bannister and tapping her nails along the painted wood, deciding whether to tough it out and take the cold, or venture downstairs and risk waking the... guests.

Not that they weren't perfect gentlemen about the whole situation, it just seemed odd to her to think of them as her guests when she was less familiar with the place than they were. It had been glaringly apparent to her just how comfortable all four boys were with her Granddad's flat, how familiar it all was to them - and she had inexplicably started to feel like an outsider.

The party had continued after their arrangement had been ironed out, albeit with an air of tension about the four men and Harry, who was himself determined to figure out who had spilled the proverbial beans about the Beatles whereabouts.

"I swear, I'll have the head of whoever blabbed, the dirty snitch. D'you know, those boys can't have one day without a gaggle of idiot birds flapping about them, screaming their ears off?" Harry said, shaking his head and pacing back and forth in front of Charlie, perched atop the kitchen counter, sipping from her bottle of Coca-Cola with a straw. He paused, standing in front of her and continuing with, "Who can you trust these days?!"

"No one, evidently," she had dead-panned, knowing from much personal experience that the only thing to assuage Harry when he got into a huff was just to agree.

"Exactly - no one!" he responded, throwing his hands up in exasperation. "Bugger me, I just cannot believe - "

"Harry, mate, won't you throw in the towel already? You're doing your nut in."

John had interrupted, walking through the kitchen threshold, his tie undone and a pair of sunglasses poised on the tip of his nose, a half-empty tumbler of what Charlie thinks might be scotch in one hand.

"I don't know why you're not more aggro about this, Lennon," Harry said, rounding on the other man and crossing his arms.

John shrugged, opening the freezer and reaching straight into a bucket of ice, taking out a couple of cubes and plopping them into his drink.