Although she was comparatively young, she was one of the strictest and most authoritarian of our teachers, and she always seemed to have a particular ...own on me – criticising my work, and pulling me up sharply for little things like running in the corridor between classes, the sort of things that everyone did and were nothing out of the ordinary. I was not sure of her age: she had been teaching at our school for several years, and was either in her late 20s or perhaps a little over 30. She. After a massive firefight, he could lay down, close his eyes and be asleep in two minutes. It would take me six hours. I'd only been here once before, about eight years ago.I was woken by the sound of curtains being drawn and a young voice saying, "Morning, Uncle Bob."Pushing myself up onto my right elbow, I blinked at the bright sunlight. Squinting, I said, "Eloise?"As she put two mugs on the antique bedside table she said, "I'm surprised you recognised me." Don't you fucking start," I. .. a lot. I suppose I always have since seeing her all the time in school; but never made my feelings known to her, of course. She’s from the posher side of our little town up the rise, while I live in the old Mineworkers’ tenements down below. Wendy’s father is the Workshops’ Foreman, while mine’s an ore and coal miner. Wendy and me are not exactly poles apart, we just live east and west of the same pole.Wendy’s beautiful and popular, but known to be somewhat picky. She’s said to only date her. Like most houses in the area they were mainly two-story frame houses.Not all of them had been made over in the wake of the neighborhood'slatest wave of gentrification. As they slowly drove down the street Jimknew, without even entering them that many of them had been split inhalf internally with a purpose built wall to convert them into twosubdivided units.Just looking at them from street level he could tell which ones werebeing still being rented out. Those were the ones with peeling paintand.