Ha! I’ll have to pull his leg about that. They walked to reception together, polite small talk to the accompaniment of that modern backing track: t...he rumbling of suitcase wheels. Checking in made her smile. He hadn’t changed: he corrected the pretty receptionist (Lithuanian? Russian?) with a winning smile. No, they didn’t have the same surname. They weren’t Mr and Mrs Anything. The receptionist looked up from under her eyelids and caught his gaze. She understood. She hardly bothered to look. The sheets were stained fromlong over use and body sweat. When I looked up he was crying in thedoorway."Tim? Did I say something wrong?" I asked in genuine concern."She used to say that all the time, I know you're not her, but you sureact and sound like her." I'm sorry Tim, I didn't mean to bring back painful memories." After afew minutes he realized I was holding him. He buried his face in my hairletting me hold him until he stopped crying."I know you're planning to leave in a few days," he. She seemed happy enough and noted something different about her, she couldn’t quite put a finger on it but somehow she was more alert and laughed a lot. Two months later Susan had to travel to Germany with her firm for a month but regularly kept in touch with her mum by phone. On her return Joe said her mother had a surprise and to ring her immediately upon her return. ‘Darling, you have no need to be concerned about me anymore.’ ‘You have decided to buy a laptop, or even a car mum?’ ‘No,. As she snuggled in close, I felt the warm, soft firmness of her seventeen year old body against my six foot long, nothing but sharp angles, thirteen year old frame.I lowered the blankets over our entwined bodies and tried to make some sense of what was going on.At thirteen, I was two years into puberty, but apart from the occasional cracking of my voice, the always bothersome and inopportune erections and the rampaging herd of zits that continuously migrated across my skin; I hadn't had to deal.