They were not wrong."We must be near the top now," whined Barbara. "You said it wasn't far Stan. We've been going for miles and miles and now the sun ...as gone and it's started to rain." Others were moaning too. Stan tried to goad them on but he himself was weary. It was far harder than he expected and he could hardly put one foot in front of the other. It was also far steeper and the rain was beginning to make things slippery."We should have listened to Robert. He seemed to know about mountains. C’mon, let’s have one more drink and then get to sleep. I’m playing golf in the morning.’ Veronica leaned down to kiss my cheek. ‘Thank you, Richard. You have another drink, I’m off to bed.’ She released my hands and walked out of the room, leaving the door open. ~~~~~~~~ TUESDAY morning I drove straight to Gaynor’s house. No sham appearance at the golf club this time. Trusty Mick was my alibi if required but he’d raised his eyebrows when I gave him Gaynor’s phone number and told him why he’d. “I bloody well better. This should be fun.”I took a look around and the entire group looked surprised, but were moving so they could both see and keep an eye on everyone else. The one that surprised me, however, was the missing Mark who was standing on the roof with a rifle in his hand. When he saw me looking his way, he gave a two-fingered salute and crouched down again. He was in the shadow of a roof-top condenser unit and damn-near invisible.Dean stepped close and quietly, so no one else. I love you, I say and smile at Emma. I love you too Allison, she says and smiles back at me. Then I walk over to the grill, the heat is almost painful even though Im just standing next to it. I look at Emma, then I carefully sit down on the grill. It burns my ass and it hurts really badly. I scream out loudly but I force myself to lie down on my back. My head is outside resting on a table so I dont burn it. My back is hurting badly but the pain is going away minute by minute. My back is going.