There were some more monosyllabiccomments. In the end, Mandy thanked Brian for his time, and said that nowshe understood the situation. She ended the ...all and put the phone back inits recharging cradle on the security monitor."Well?" asked Emma, preparing herself to launch into Mandy for hersilliness, extravagance and scattiness, as soon as the facts were clear."Well, he explained it," Mandy said flatly, looking a bit shocked."And?" Emma insisted."Well, there's an annual credit limit of two. They still had each other, but Eileen had quickly become the parental-figure that Billy had never known and Karen had long since forgotten. Eileen had a full-time job and was out of the cottage for most of the week during the day, so when the weather was good her two house guests spent hours outside, either working on the garden or relaxing. They both had rudimentary cooking skills, but Eileen built on that, so apart from the weekends, she was catered for and also rarely needed to do any. "But the last time he hit me," she sobbed, "he hardly left a black and blue mark." That's horrible," said Rudy."It gets worse," she cried. "I had a headache a few days ago, through no effort on his part, and he offered to give me a Tylenol to ease my pain."Rudy held his hands to his mouth. "The monster!" he gasped. "Everyone knows it's illegal to give pain killers to a woman. I know you can't call the police; they won't take a report from a woman. But do you want me to?" No," she sighed. "I. Several times during that grinding day, I had to stop my mind from wandering to the delights that lay ahead for me: two glorious days on The Magnificent Mile as a woman, topped off by a dinner date with a cool guy who wanted to get into my panties! By five o’clock Tuesday evening, I was dragging ass when I got some unexpected good news: my dinner that evening with the CEO and CFO of an important customer had been cancelled so they could race to New York to handle some crisis. Heaven! I was.