"The women just sat there in stunned silence. The old man was raising every one of their secrets and if they whinge he'll probably only have their sec...rets brought up.Marianne Willis stood, "What do you men want?"The mayor stood as now it is his turn. "Ms Willis, we want faithful, honest wives who love us. As is blatantly obvious we don't have that, now. If your menfolk were called away again, to do their duty again, the lot of you would do exactly as your forebears did. The men had no choices. Scanning through, I wasn't disappointed. At 8:15 on the dot, two cars pulled into the driveway. There was Pete, and following him were Jen and Howard.Jen and Howard were married. Jen was a paralegal at Kathy's office. We had met them at a holiday party but I was pretty sure Jen didn't like me. I had made a somewhat off-color joke about her being "the eraser girl" referring to how prominently her nipples were showing through her blouse. I think that comment made it back to her, and she had not. Picking up the hire car after queuing through customs and passport control allowed the 3 of the 4 in the family to feel as if the holiday had started. The 4th had stayed at home, part work part because the OZ family didn't care if he turned up or not. The first leg of the journey to her sisters wedding was to pick up grandma from the north suburbs, took longer than expected but once on the road the k**s entertained grandma with stories and tales from their life far away, until dusk when they. "Michael, what was that?" I asked incredulously."Nothing, Mom," he replied dismissively, drawing out the word 'Mom' and rolling his eyes to let me know that my maternal concern was to him just another annoying impediment in his quest for pure scientific knowledge.I walked out to the car with Danny and the children and gave both of the kids a big hug and a kiss and told them to be good and to behave themselves while they were away. I reached out for Danny's hand but he wouldn't let me have it..