CHAPTER 40
I had hands holding both of mine by then, Tom reaching over to squeeze my shoulder, as another witness took the stand.

“Verity Hallam, doctor, St David’s hospital trauma team”

There was an extreme screaming sound in my ears as I opened my eyes to see Coach Register yelling at me.

“Dennereck! You alright?” He barked in a voice that would never sound calming to anyone.

I nodded and stood up.

I was back at school.

“That was a major hit,” Keith replied as he brushed at the dust on my shirt.

“Yeah,” I answered as I looked around and saw about every other guy in PE playing soccer, turning the center of the track into a mosh pit. “What hit?”

I woke up with the sunlight blazing through the window, which it normally would not do until around nine.

I was late for school. Really late!

“Mom! What’s happened?” I yelled as I moved to throw the covers off, but there were no covers to throw. I sat up and looked at a bedroom with a lot of whites and grays with some shades of blue on a comforter that still covered the bed. I planted my hands on the mattress, vaulted myself off the bed and onto a hardwood floor.

I did not have a hardwood floor.

CHAPTER 35
I was still reliving that break a month later, realising that we had a high bar indeed for good food now, thanks to Madame Boucher, and just as high a set of standards for fantastic places to stay. We had settled on one of those other ideas for our post-nuptial break, flying to Rome for a few days and then taking the train to Florence, Venice, Austria and Germany, flying home from Cologne, where there was apparently a chocolate museum. I joked that it would be an excuse to get her into her ‘barmaid’ uniform, and see if she could yodel. She had slapped my arse and told me to behave, or rather only misbehave in ways she could enjoy.

The paddle is in the bag in the hall closet and I've been looking at the closet door since eight in the morning.

I get it out around ten. The bag has the new paddle in it. It's the replacement I ordered after I put the other one through its edge guard the night this started. I take it out and grip it. The grip wraps the same. The flare of the handle, the weight forward of my hand, all of it as it should be. I bounced a ball off the face a few times in the apartment and it goes where I aim it.

Part 15 The Shiny New Penny

Monday morning arrived on time and so did Sam to take me to the studio. Odette went in Tonys’ Porsche and Tanya went with Steve, via his place so he could get a change of clothes. It looked like the penthouse had gone from housing one tenant to now looking after five, at least.

At the studio we had a cast meeting to talk about the direction that the show would go next. We ended up with a good set of scenes that would take us beyond the halfway point, and we would think about the further plot lines then.