"She is busy this afternoon. If you don't want me, I'm going to take that nap." she informed me not too happily."Good, you will be in a better mood," ... suggested."Fuck you," Cheryl said.After she had gone I watched TV online, while I waited for Jen's call. Before Jen called, Lucas rang my phone. "Boss, I got half the names for you. The list you gave me goes back almost ten years. This prick has been at it a long time, I can't see how he has gotten away with it." I wondered that myself. He might. Not bad, out of 15... '. Our marriage, and our love, was inevitably ground under 15 years of sameness, and little in common, other than a past. John had succumbed to temptation in an office encounter, and to my own shame I hadn't given him enough reason to turn away, though I felt no other emotion.Now here I was, 34 years old, and it looked as though I wasn't likely to be a part of an "us" anymore. The saddest thing, I think, was the lack of regret I did, or didn't rather, feel. We'd separated. She hadn't heard him of course but just stood perilously close to the edge on the rocky cliffs staring out at the raging sea. Then he grabbed her and shook her. "Jump! I said. Jump! End it all, for once and all!"This jostled her back into reality and she let go a blood-curdling scream. Her eyes opened with fear as she stared into his violent twisted face. He looked more angry than she had ever seen him before. At first she didn't know where she was or how she had gotten there, then she felt the. “Hmm,” started Carter again. “Now we’ve got that all sorted out. We need you to do something for us.”“I’m already cut to the bone. There’s no more cutbacks and savings we can make. Please don’t take away any more of our funding,” pleaded Sturgeon.“That’s not what we’re here for,” the older man told him.‘Here for anti-government staff?’ wondered Sturgeon. A good quarter of the hospital staff, he knew, were actively anti-Thorn, most of the rest were at least ambivalent about him. Few now truly.