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The next 32 minutes were amongst the most surreal of my life. There were too many emotional contexts rolling together for one day, let alone half a crowded hour on a railway platform in Hamburg teeming with furs. I had told the girls about Laerke, in the midst of a moment of beer fuelled morose self pity. Now they got to see the real deal, and the reactions from all concerned would probably have been amusing were I not feeling so shit.

There was possessiveness, most surprisingly and touchingly from Beate, who gave Laerke a serve in German. Laerke then replied in kind, getting the German Shepherd rankled in ways that made me go all gooey inside which probably said only bad things about my relationships with women back then. She pushed me back into Erika's arms, and went nose to nose with my mare, in ways that even the French would hesitate to emulate.

Then I noticed some anger and jealousy from Laerke, her pointed looks at me in Erika's arms, with the wolfess hugging me tight and nuzzling my neck. I felt the need to regain some control, of the situation if not my emotions, so I screamed enough, in French, which had them all looking at me puzzled, until I did it in English. I yelled, at all three, and fought back tears of frustration, and they all backed off until I managed to get Laerke one on one and begged her not to get on the train and at least give me a day.

The German girls waited, arms crossed with Beate looking like she wanted to perform a commando move on the mare, while I pleaded. I held her in my arms, and looked into her eyes, and I saw her tears. Like she had for me, as I sat in L'Orangerie and felt the aches in my life, I kissed away her tears, getting a moan of 'awwww' from Erika and snarl from Beate. The last call for passengers went out, the doors closed, and still she looked into my eyes. Then the train pulled out of the station, and I was still holding her.

"You will be ok Aussie?"

Beate asked, pointedly loudly.

"Yes. Give us a minute."

"I need to give you more. Erika and I have a rehearsal today. We need to go. But you have our details, and where to go. Text horse. Or I will be angry."

Now my mane shivered, and Laerke looked daggers.

"What gives you the right Laerke?"

Her eyes clouded and she nodded. I turned to the girls.

"We will be fine. Hope the rehearsal goes well. And thanks..."

I got a last kiss on the cheek from each as they headed up the stairs.

Laerke promised to talk, but we had to walk first. After leaving my bags and hers in lockers at the station, we were at least mobile, and we headed off on our hooves into the Free and Hanseatic city of Hamburg (whatever that meant, it was everywhere though).

The day felt cold, with a wind whipping in from the Baltic, and I drew my scarf tight around my neck. The warmth felt good, and the feeling of Marjorie that went with it. I could almost feel her hug, from a distance. I let Laerke lead the way, and we trotted a short distance towards a sort of large lake called the Alster. I looked up and smiled, recognising a building; the Atlantic Hotel, star of the worst Bond movie ever made. I didn't care; at least something in this place looked familiar. I suddenly didn't feel so bad.

We went inside out of the cold for coffee and cake. The one thing in food that Germany does well, and it does it in style. Kaffee mit kuchen. The angst from Laerke didn't even make the apple cake taste any less delicious.

Eventually we got down to it, one emotional disaster at a time.

"Who were your German friends."

"Beate and Erika. They are a couple, I met them on the train."

"They looked very friendly."

"They were."

"Erika looked like she would eat you for a nice English breakfast, and Beate looked like she would hit me for some reason. What did you tell them?"

"The truth Laerke, as much as I knew."

"Oh? And they comfort you so well? You move fast Paul, I should have known when I met you..."

"If you need to feel that way to feel better about what you did, fine. Yes, I fucked them. Well, Erika; Beate isn't really into guys. I was drunk, but that's not really why. I was upset, and down, and I felt like the worst loser and my heart was dead and I wanted to feel alive again. You did that, and you haven't even told me why. So make this about the Germans if you want, I don't care."

"God must have it in for me Paul. When I saw you in the hostel, I knew it must be some sort of fate. When I saw you on the platform, I knew I would pay for what I did, and my fate would be a bad one. Maybe the one I deserve, but not a good one."

She looked over the Alster,her eyes misty with tears. I gripped her hand, and held it and kissed it. Time to try another tack.

"Laerke, I told you I loved you, when we were in bed together. I thought I showed you that too. I never had what we had that night before. And I didn't have it on the train either. So tell me, please, what you felt, and why. It's all I ask. Then I will go away, and not follow you across Europe any more, though I promise you I never intended to come here anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"I was trying to get to Berlin. The train split up during the night and I was in the wrong bit..."

She smiled for the first time and ruffled my mane.

"Oh my poor horse..."

That made me wince, remembering her look when I met her cold and wet in the hostel and she noticed my injuries from the fight with the wolf. She seemed to sense she made a mistake, withdrawing her hand suddenly, and cupping her coffee mug instead. Eventually she started in a low voice.

"Paul, I am not in love with you."

I bit my lip, and tried not to go the full emo. It took all my strength, and eventually I nodded.

"But I do love you."

Now I was confused. "Um...maybe my English is lacking,but..."

"Paul, I love you. You are sweet, beautiful, kind, funny, and so very young. I liked you a little when I first met you, and I knew I should not be with you again for your own sake and mine. Then when I saw you in the hostel, I remembered and I knew I wanted to spend time with you. Every day I found new things in you I love, and when we...when we were together in bed, you made me feel like I have never felt before. But I am not in love with you; you are not the one who owns my heart, and it is not fair on you."

I was angry now, and loudly called bullshit, but she just looked sad so I let it go. Still, I needed an explanation.

"So who are you in love with. Who owns your heart?"

"Rasmus. We have been boyfriend and girlfriend since I was in school. We are engaged, though we do not marry yet. He is not well; he suffers depression, and we fight. I went away, to try to be happy again for a time so I can help him. I love Paris, we have been there together. We were supposed to go together, but he did not want to come and I went because I was angry with him too, for leaving me even when he was with me. Next to him I feel him so far away now, I am frightened. I knew he saw another, and it made him sadder. So I went, and I wanted to get even with him, and I hoped that it could be different when I come back if he had something to be angry at me about too."

I took this well, which is to say I didn't cry. I just bit my lip and nodded, and felt like I wanted to die too. I hated it when Henri was right too; here I was pining over someone as remote and unattainable as his straight stallions. And it hurt like a motherfucker.

"I know what that's like...on the other side."

"I know Paul. We talked, remember. I wanted you to feel good, even though I knew I should not."

"You did make me feel good, for a time, and then you made me feel worse than I have since I left Australia."

"I should not have done it mon p'tit cheval. I knew it. And I did it anyway; I am sorry."

"So I was just a fuck then."

"That was what I intended, but that is not what happened. I am paying for it too, but not as much as you. Please forgive me Paul."

"It's ok, I forgive you."

Never lie to a girl. That's my advice. Unless it's on this one. I didn't forgive her, not then, not for a long time, until I got what it was like to love someone and want to see them happy and want to feel what it was like to be with them even when you knew you didn't love them all, not really, not that way. Then I forgave her, and rang her up and apologised for hating her, and we have been best friends ever since. I'd still fall at her hooves if Rasmus ever stuffed up enough to let her go.

So I had one day with my mare, one day to say farewell to all my hopes. I let her down easy, making sure I laughed a lot. I even tried not to make her love me more and forget Rasmus. I felt an uneasy kinship for the bastard, to be honest. I knew when Sharon finally dumped me, she had been screwing one of my friends for a month. I was no use to her. If I had the choice of freeing her on the condition she came back to me when she was ready, I would have taken that in a heartbeat, free for a moment of the guilt that always made depression such a bitch. It's bad enough feeling shit without hating yourself for making the people you care about feel like shit too.

We toured Hamburg, walking round the Alster, seeing the immaculate streets and the shops and the people everywhere. I was confronted by one thing I really had no experience with though, and that was the obvious trappings of war.

I had seen it first in Paris. Every now and then, there would be strange reminders. A plaque on a wall in Le Marais, bullet holes in the walls of the defense ministry. It wasn't until that day with Laerke in Pere Lechasse that it hit home though. In one corner of the cemetery, a whole corner of memorials sat in mute testimony to the power of hate. Dachau, Auschwitz, on and on and on, a record of every French man, woman, and frequently child who died. The physical reminders were mostly absent in Paris, city of beauty and light. In Hamburg, it was never far from the surface.

They had kept the greatest church in the city as a burnt out wreck, a permanent memorial to the war. Only the spire remained, like a rotten tooth amongst the perfect buildings. We walked around it just holding hands. That was the other thing I remembered most about Germany; they don't forget. It was like the whole country was engaged in an ongoing therapy session, constantly remembering, constantly on guard to prevent. It was moving, and an unexpected counterpoint to the jokes about the Germans and the ever present societal angst about immigrants and asylum seekers. I had Japanese friends back in Australia who knew nothing of Sandakan, Nanking, Manila. For Japanese my age, the war began and ended with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the story was all about their suffering. I expected similar in Germany, and at least in this beautiful Hanseatic city, I found something different.

We found at least one church more than functional. The great spire of StMichaelis still stood, and an elevator took tourists to the top to get the best view of Hamburg you could find. I went up with my mare, and held her close to my chest, wrapping my thick coat around her to keep out the arctic chill of the wind up high, as we took in the view. Ships, cranes, water, you could see the city laid out in detail. And a few things I wanted to try out, including one long gash the map called StPauli but Laerke called the Reeperbahn.

We had a meal, mostly silent, in a little café set beside the port. It used to be the port office, now it did coffee and cake, as everywhere, and half decent sausages. I got my first decent German sausages, and realised maybe DeutschBahn were not representative. Thinking back on the true horror of V Line catering, that kind of made sense.

When we kissed goodbye, I couldn't resist making it a long lingering farewell, laden with promises of more. Hers was a farewell, though I knew she got the message by her ears. Her ears were expressive, and I learned to read them in the week we had. When we kissed hers jumped upright, and twitched, but soon flattened and drooped and I stopped kissing and took her to the station to meet the next train to Copenhagen. I wished her and Rasmus well. I think she even believed me.

I didn't retrieve my own bags though, they would get in the way. I knew where I wanted to go, and I knew what I wanted to do. Beer. Sex. Forgetting. The Reeperbahn awaited.

That night remains a blur in parts. I remember the street, which reminded me of Kings Cross in Sydney but larger and not as dirty. I was sixteen in Kings Cross, with a bunch of guys bunking out of our hotel when we went to Sydney on a football trip for school. We knew we would be in so much trouble, so we needed to make it good. The Cross was kind of a culture shock, from the prostitutes, to the druggies, to the endless parade of strip joints and sex shops.

A bunch of grinning teenage boys made for an incongruous sight I guess. The clubs all had touts, who would try and beguile you inside with their charms. Guys, mostly, who would attract women into some clubs and guys into others. I fell over laughing at one conversation, where a demure looking lady fox was making her needs known to the tout.

"Lady, come in here, you wont be disappointed."

"I don't believe you. I want to see it all."

"Lady, the boys in here, they will show you everything, I guarantee"

"No, I mean, I want it right up close."

"Lady, if you want they will flop it right on your face...now come inside it's cold."

That seemed to meet her requirements, and she disappeared into the brightly lit club while the tout looked for his next customer.

We were mostly ignored, until one lady decided to make our night.

"Hello boys...something we can interest you in?"

We all had fake ID of one sort of another, and this club seemed to be interested in not asking questions. So I got my first strip club experience at 16, complete with lap dance. We emptied our wallets so fast we barely lasted 15 minutes, and back at the hotel once we accepted our detentions and possible suspensions, we all emptied our boners in about 15 seconds. You don't need much sophistication at 16.

At 18, I found the Reeperbahn kind of like that, but not. There were sleazier bits, but also better, and more real rock clubs with music and interesting furs and actual fun to match the sleaze and the drug dealers hiding out of the light. I found a beer celler and got drunk, then a club and got drunker, watching the DJ light up the crowd as much as the odd shaped lights. I realised they were doll's heads with globes in them about the time I attracted the interest of a pair of goth girls, both felines, one tigress, one Lynx. They were dressed in black; black leather, black jewellery, black looks. And I seemed to have taken their interest.

The conversation progressed, but was hampered by my total lack of German, their limited English, and my beer buzz. So I found what I still think was a kind of remarkable solution, given my state of mind. I called Beate and Erika, and found them unwilling to answer. So I tried Sabine, and got her on her night off. And more remarkable, she answered.

"Hallo"

"Tschuss!"

"Paul, that means goodbye. I told you."

"Sorry Sab...need some help."

"Why are you giggling Paul. Why is there music?"

"I need some translation help, and you are the best English speaking German I know and can locate. So you got the gig. Lucky you!"

"Paul, what the fucking shit is going on? Where are you?"

"Hamburg baby! The Reeperbahn! I'm in this club with dolls heads for lights, its fucking aawesome, and these two girls want my sheath and you're going to help me!"

"The Reeperbahn? Paul, get out. Now. They will eat you alive, you are a tasty meal. Young stupid pony, scheisse! Get out!"

"No deal Sab, I'm going full retard. You gonna help me?"

I eventually persuaded her, and she let out more expletives even as she had a fast conversation with the girls. Not before hurting me a little when we got back on the phone, but I ignored it as best I could.

"You have changed Paul. Maybe I started something bad. When you come back, we will talk pony. Meanwhile, the girls do like you, and if you want a night of fun, they have a place just behind the Reeperbahn. They are students, lots of students live just behind the Reeperbahn, it's not that bad. I told them I know people in the BfV who will hunt them down if they hurt you. You should be safe."

I laughed, until I realised Sabine was not laughing. Maybe she was just being German.

I trotted around a corner and up a street, and had the night I needed, which is to say a night with even less emotion than I had with Erika and Beate. I stripped for them, and got to see hunger in the eyes of the Lynx girl. I got my first blowjob, while her friend ate her pussy from behind, a three way chain of orgasms that left me breathless. It was good, and not. I was still a little disappointed; physically stimulated but unsatisfied. I didn't yet know what it could feel like from someone who actually cared about you.

I ended up with the lynx mounting my cock while the tigress mounted my muzzle. They rode my body for an age, kissing each other passionately and ignoring me entirely. I felt something, and I sure came enough, but it was like a part of me was anaesthetised, the part that felt and loved and gave a shit. That part felt precisely nothing.

The moment of guilt came then next morning, when I realised I had forgotten their names. I still have, it's as if my mind wanted to protect me from that in some way. It never happened. But I still remember their cries as they made love to each other with a stallion somewhere under them obligingly hard and eager. Love hurt, this didn't. It was more like McDonalds, which tasted weird when I had it for breakfast before retrieving my bags from the station. Like McDonalds, the damage was usually cumulative. I used to laugh along with my mates when they bragged about scoring some random at a party they didn't even know, while telling myself I would never be that callous. Reality is a bitch, a sobering one.

I spent a week based in Hamburg, and came to love the place, which wasn't bad for somewhere I knew not a thing about and never intended to visit. Beate caved and let me stay with them, a stallion ball on their couch who didn't snore too bad and was mostly housetrained. I never spent a night in their bed, something remained of me enough to know that would not end well. Erika was disappointed, Beate came to me one night and kissed me for it.

"You know das pferd, you are ok."

If only I didn't feel so dead inside, I might have taken it better.

We went on trips when their rehearsal schedule allowed, and I saw their city, Bremen, as well as Lubeck and Luneberg. I got the Hanseatic bit, eventually, after that many Hanseatic experiences. It was kind of nice, in a very different way to Paris, but I was heartily sick of marzipan, and twee souvenirs, and sausage. The nights saw me back at the Reeperbahn feeding very different appetites.

At some point, the inevitable drew me to it. Partly it was my rapidly diminishing bank balance, partly it was the hurt that never went away. I still dreamed of Laerke, and I wanted to feel safe. I knew where I last felt that, but it was also where I first felt like a total loser. Marjorie was making all the right noises though. Maybe Henri was wrong; maybe it would be ok.

I flew this time, retracing my hoofsteps from Heathrow. Marj had left a key under the pot plant by the door, and I let myself in to that familiar place, still looking as I had left it not that long ago. February had come, and I was 18, but I wanted to reclaim a part of myself I left here, something of the young lost colt who found an unexpected ally in a world weary and world wise friend of my mother's.

My first shock was the knock on the door. When I opened it, around 6:30, there was a well dressed Husky about 40 standing there.

"Marjorie home yet?"

"Errr....." I had no clue what he said, that translation took several seconds. It was English, but not as I knew it.

His name was Gerald. He was such a Gerald. A public servant, a Glaswgian, and a denizen of the City of London. All he was missing was the bowler hat. I was intrigued, and kind of mixed. I had to share Marjorie, but I was relieved that it seemed whatever tensions might have existed would be avoided. Here stood a sweating mass of beta male who I could almost smell the sexual competition from. I smiled for him. He need not worry, I wasn't even on the field of battle. I might even cheer from the stands.

Which was not to say that I wasn't competitive. Far from it. Football and rowing are hard schools, and I knew a Gerald would be no match for me in any physical dimension. That first night, as Marj came home from work and went out with a smilingly triumphant Gerald, I went to the Churchill in pursuit of a job and Sabine, not necessarily in that order. I managed to get both, the first with her recommendation. They needed a dishwasher for the kitchen and general dogsbody, starting tomorrow night, and I would fit the bill on minimum wage. Enough money would be coming in though to take Sabine for a drink, and persuade her back to the flat. I could hear the sounds of passion from upstairs, sounds that were kind of brief.

I almost fell about laughing when I heard the sound of snoring from the Husky not long after the sounds of bed creaking, and Sabine slapped me across the muzzle with claws extended and threw me down and fucked me hard to teach me manners. She seemed to reason that I needed no gentle treatment any more, whatever I had become after the Reeperbahn, so she let her hunger out and I was on the menu. I was the only one on the menu, for tonight at least, and I got to see that hunger and hear those cries as she mounted my cock and crushed my balls whenever I threatened to cum until she was well and truly satisfied. Then I returned the favour, turning her on her back and showing her not to mess with a stallion and made her scratch my back to ribbons in slightly exhausted pleasure before I finished. Our loud lovemaking could no doubt be heard upstairs, but I didn't care. Part of me wanted it, and I thought now we were equal, we could be ok. No jealousy. We both had someone.

Of course, all that sex and love and hurt had not cured my naivete. I was still dumb, and had added a self destructive selfishness to my otherwise charming dimness. Instead of going forwards, I had gone backwards, though I didn't know it then. In hindsight, I want to throttle myself but I know I had to do this before I could grow. Failure is not a bad thing, if you know it for what it is.

Marjorie seemed fine the next morning. Gerald however; I met him in the bathroom, I was having a shower and he suddenly appeared and got pissy. I watched him watching me having a shower, his eyes taking in the look of a 6'8" stallion as his muzzle turned even further down and he grumbled under his breath.

"Fooking lost before I began..."

I didn't know what that meant, and Marj was unusually quiet when she came down for breakfast. I made porridge for her and Sabine, an interesting meeting if ever there was one, while Gerald headed for the tube and another day clogging up the system. My pantheress kissed my nose and left with a significant glance at Marjorie.

"I got a job"

"Wonderful Paul"

"At the Churchill...with Sabine."

"I'm proud of you Paul. And Sabine seems a nice...woman..."

"She is, yeah. Sorry, about last night..."

"Paul, I told you, it's ok. I was shocked a bit, and in a bad place emotionally when I sent you away. I shouldn't have. You are welcome to stay, and of course, you are sexually active, I knew that from our time in Melbourne. All I ask is you are careful Paul."

I thought I could do that. Boots did a great lineup of condoms. Of course, as you find out eventually, protection when it comes to sex is one part about condoms, and 5 parts about the heart. I ignored that side, because it didn't matter any more. I wasn't into love, I was into sex. Sabine seemed the same, so everything was cool.

The weeks turned into months, and I got into a routine of work, sex, work, play. My weekends were shared between Sabine and Marjorie, and it seemed everything was great. Gerald kept coming round, and refusing to talk to me when he came to pick up Marj. I made sure I baited him, always running into him in the bathroom in the morning, wearing as little as possible. I could see how much it irked him from the way his tail thrashed and his eyebrows knotted. Otherwise he didn't speak much, and what he did say I couldn't decipher thanks to his advanced Glaswegian accent. And Sabine thought Aussies didn't speak English...

After a while I graduated to the bar, and Sabine taught me that as she had taught me other things, well and with patience. Something was changing though, I felt it in my tail, which was where I always felt things I couldn't place first. The warning bells began to chime loudly, and then the day came when Sabine told me she was heading back to Germany.

"Why all of a sudden?"

"Ohhh horse...it is not all of a sudden. I have been here too long, and now it is time."

"But you didn't say anything before..."

"I did but you failed to notice. Still young and stupid, my Paul."

I winced at the sudden harshness, and retreated into myself. She noticed, of course, and softened a bit, but there was a harshness underneath I could feel, and I was surprised to realise that I was the cause.

"Paul, what are we doing? You are great in bed, a champion. Congratulations. But it is like every night is another one night stand, in a long string. What are we doing?"

"I...I...I..."

"See, you do not know. I do...and so I am going away."

"But I..."

"Do not say it Paul. I know it is not true. You care, and you are sweet, and it is my fault too. I seduced a young pony, for my pleasure. I did not expect to fall in love with him, and find someone else had his heart instead. It is my payment I think, and I don't want to pay any more."

We kissed, hard, and left it at that. I think if I had not been so broken up after coming home from Hamburg, I might have known how to treat her right, and for that I will always be sorry. When we Skype now, there is that regret still there, but the love has deepened too. I love her, after all, as she does me, though neither of us is going to be the one like Laerke's Rasmus. It was after this that I rang Laerke and had a tearful phonecall that purged a lot of sorrow, but couldn't purge the ache in my heart. I think it is still there.

That was the background though, the preliminary to what happened, and why I am writing this now. It helps explain, maybe. I was after forgiveness when I started, but I don't think I am now. Just understanding, and understanding that is probably several years away.

In the wake of Sabine's departure, I was a wreck. I felt guilty, in ways I had never felt in my life. When lost and alone, I had turned to Marjorie once before, as a 15 year old. Now I turned to her again, just as her own relationship went south. That it had done so because of me, I didn't find for a long time. Instead, I just knew we were kindred spirits again, and like the conspirators of that holidays in Melbourne, we could heal together, and confide, and pretend the world would wait while we did what we wanted.

Marj took time off work over Easter, and gave me the tour of London she wanted to when I first arrived. Like Laerke, she was knowledgeable, and found in me a changed horse, one who wanted to listen to her while she took me through the National Gallery, and the Tate. We stood with the Groundlings in the Globe and watched Hamlet, and suddenly I got Shakespeare. She watched me all the time as I loved it, and her smile was a mile wide and a thousand watts of pure happiness. We walked back up the Thames, and she reached out to take my hand, and we walked like that, hand in hand, along the water then over and along the Embankment to Whitehall. In the shadow of Big Ben and as it struck 12, we kissed, as I secretly wanted sometimes when I was 15 just to know how it felt. I never dreamed it would be here.

Now I wanted more, I wanted her, and she wanted me. We got back to the flat, discarding clothes in clumps all the way to her bed, and fell into each other's arms. Neither seemed to be in charge, it just happened. One moment I was kissing, the next I was inside her, and she was moaning out my name as we made love. I had discovered that again, how to make it feel with the heart as well as the body, and I gave it to her, covering her body with kisses as she did to me. Everywhere; I would kiss her neck, and the crook of her elbow. She would kiss my flank, or the spot where I broke my arm playing football and had the bone sticking out. I never knew so much pain as that day, now I never felt so much pleasure as when she kissed the scar and licked with her soft pink tongue.

I could forget the troubles for that first time, even the lines I was crossing again, bigger and darker than ever before. My mum's best friend, literally old enough to be my mother. She was just Marj, my chain smoking, understanding confidant and co-conspirator. She got me. I never knew how much I needed to be with someone who got me and actually liked what she found.

The next morning we made love again. I woke pressed against her, our bodies touching everywhere. I was hard, my cock pressed against her back. She woke gradually, feeling me there, and reached back to rub and tease and then lifted a leg and just slid me into her from behind. I rocked against her, one hand on her breast, my muzzle on her neck and her lips and her ears, and she touched herself and came and it went on and on, and we finished and fell asleep again and woke and made love again. We were in a different place, like I felt with Laerke, and we didn't need to speak, though that could not long be deferred.

So started a two month period of unreal joy as Spring now turned into Summer. We would travel further, picnicking in Greenwich, or Hampstead Heath, kissing as we boated on the Serpentine. I ignored the looks we got, the judgements I could see, though Marj saw them and they made her turn inside and frown. Her friends from work stopped taking her out for drinks, and when I did see them, they gave me the worst looks. I took it in my stride. Neither of us knew what this was, but it felt right.

Marj admitted she felt the first stirrings of something when she and I were in Australia. She resisted it then, and a part of her hated herself for succumbing to it even now. I would just kiss her and make her forget with my body until she fell asleep in my arms with that smile on her muzzle.

Until the day when she wasn't smiling. It had been coming, I realised. Something was up. My tail told me so. Moody, unwell, and brooding, she wouldn't talk to me, and she sent me back to the couch again while she recovered. Then one morning I found another envelope with another Eurostar ticket, and I was angry more than hurt. Again. What had I done this time...

"Paul, you need to enjoy Paris in the summer, and the rest of the continent. It is so much nicer, and you have some money now to enjoy it. You could get work over summer, and I am just hogging you unfairly. Enjoy, it is what you came for. I will be here when you get back."

I held onto the last, and didn't ask the questions I should have. I was still 18, and still a guy. We don't ask those questions. Even when our heart is dying.