Sweating profusely I battled on until I had used all the bolts up. I finished up. The engine ran. I had my freedom back."It goes then?" my father enqu...red."Seems like it," I agreed. "I'll get cleaned up."I took a shower and wandered up to the manor, caterers were scuttling around, a boy band was doing a sound check and a group of very fit black guys were chatting around the back of the marquee."How do," I said in my best village idiot voice, "Whats going off then lads?" Thought it was a five. “Debora and I are trying to fix a gene problem with the tomatoes that we have on board. We should be able to increase their yield and to get them to grow faster without them losing their flavour. I know which genes need tweaking and now the darn splicer isn’t working,” he looked at the machine in disgust.By this time, Lee had the side off, and she was looking inside. “Well Prof, it would help if it had the cutter unit installed,” she said. She pointed to the empty space inside the machine.“What. She looked at herself in the mirror and then started to splash some water on her face. She went to the loo. As she sat down she heard the front door open. Mike walked into the house and headed straight for the kitchen. He dumped his bag on the kitchen table and glanced at the cooker. He looked into the oven to see what was cooking before deciding to get a beer from the fridge. He opened the bottle and shouted. “I’m home…” Melissa was too busy peeing to even contemplate a reply. She finished. I shivered again and went and stood infront of one of the two remaining mirrors. It was covered in grime andyears of dust. I rubbed at the mirror and created a swath of clearglass that reflected my own face back at me.I was ten years older than the last time I had looked in this mirror.My face was now thinner if anything, and there were flecks of grey in myhair but despite letting myself go before I came back to Chelmsford, themonths of gymnasium training and ten years of professional.