Gawd, Natalie.

While I checked out the kitchen cupboards for food, I decided I’d call around her house later on that day. I’d come clean and just admit to being a little nervous about the whole thing. She’d take pity on me, surely, then leave me alone for a bit in the nooky department. Perhaps I could appease her by asking her to help redecorate mum and Uncle Mick’s bedroom in the house. She could choose the colours. Yeah, she’d like that. Women did.

Breakfast turned out to be a cup of tea, a dubious looking banana from the fridge, and was disturbed by a couple of Uncle Mick’s ex-colleagues who looked more shifty that any pair of criminals I’d ever seen as they stood on the doorstep. They wanted to know if I knew anything about the grave robbery. I said no, I’d been away. They asked if I knew anyone who’d want to upset our family. I said yes. Two pairs of eyebrows shot up and two pairs of eyes beneath gleamed with a blood-lust I’d only ever seen in the eyes of Mick when he was after me with Doris, his peacekeeper truncheon type-thing.

“Who?” the stouter of the two wanted to know.

“Oh, just about any criminal put away by my uncle over the last twenty years,” I told him.

The eyebrows dropped back down to at-ready and the pair tried hard to hide their disappointment. “Ah well…yes. If you hear of anything?”

I nodded. “Yup.”

“Thanks, son.”

I sighed. “No problem.”

I shut the door and went to check my email. There was one from Pete, nothing from Nat. I sighed again and opened Pete’s message.

“DUDE!”

(God, he even wrote that way too)

“I’m BACK in HELL (ThisTown) for a couple of weeks before going off to WAIT FOR IT………. CARNEGIE HALL in MANHATTAN at a teaching event thing in the recital hall. Shit, Stan-me-man, my balls are busting for this. I’m on my waaaaaaaaaaaaay……..!”