That's quite enough of that 3

Amelia took great care of her garden. She’d modelled it on the gardens of Versailles, as far as the boundaries of her small bungalow would permit and as far as she could tell from the postcard of Versailles an aunt had sent her so many years before. Like her aunt, Amelia liked to think of herself as a hardy perennial, and in truth she had got by, under her own steam and without the help or interest of any man, through a variety of often harsh conditions.

Every day she pottered about her borders, fussed about her shrubs, descaled her tiny sputtering fountain and deftly negotiated her rockery. Her days, though uneventful, were a balm to her ageing soul. It was her nights that had become a torment. No sooner had she pulled the quilt up to her chin and switched out the light than the grunting began.

Urgent primal grunts they were, accompanied by scrubbings and rustlings. Hedgehogs, it had to be hedgehogs, fornicating amongst her primula. She tried to ignore them. She hummed school hymns, snatches of Gilbert and Sullivan, but to no avail. The nocturnal grunts bored into her head.

After two weeks of sleepless nights, she was a nervous wreck. Even pruning her rose standards offered her no solace. Something had to be done.

That night, after turning out the bedside light, she slipped out of the side door with a torch and a spray-can of oven cleaner. Cruel, she knew, but if they wouldn’t desist they were getting a blast. It was either them or her.

Crouched beneath her bedroom window, his hands oddly employed inside his trousers, she found Mr. Pratchett from down the road.

“Do you mind awfully?” he said. “Only I’ve been barred from the swimming baths.”