St Kitts had been beautiful and the trip on the train had truly encompassed the cinematic scenery. High volcanic hills had been replaced with flat plains that the engine had scooted through. Children waved from school playgrounds as the train rushed precariously by. And precarious was the only word for it. The carriages were the height of double deck buses, suspended on a very narrow wheel base. But no harm had come of them and the sway had been almost unnoticeable. Very almost, but not quite.

Cora had felt a surge of her breakfast on a couple of occasions and had steered well clear of the rum punch being offered up, settling with water. In fact, she hadn't had very much alcohol since the first week of the holiday having been overcome with either a sickly feeling after drinking it or a preference for the water that was served at every table onboard. It was no doubt the hormones and she just tried to ignore the feeling. It was just a reminder of her age that she was trying to forget.

Thankfully Peter hadn't been present on the train trip, which had not only settled the apprehension that had kept her awake for most of last night. But it also gave her more time to decide what's she was going to do about his following her. She didn't know if it was just coincidence that he was on this holiday, it was a possibility, and she had seen him once playing in the pool with two girls. But the way he looked at her, but didn't approach suggested that he was on this holiday to spy on her. And the only person he could be doing such a thing for was Simon.

The obvious thing would be to tell Robert but somehow she couldn't. She wanted to know the motives first, the reason Simon was obviously trying to get in contact with her again. And well, she'd never told Robert that the man was Simon. He's never had a name because she'd always known Robert would want revenge and if he knew one of the man's friends was watching her closely they'd be abandoned at the next port for bad behaviour, never to return to the cruise company again. Besides, they were home in a couple of days it seemed ridiculous to fuss- he was unlikely to stalk her in London, he could have done that before now.

"How are you feeling?"

"Oh, fine." She'd had a headache after the bus ride back from the train and had, without realising fallen asleep on Robert's shoulder.

Her side of the bed rises as he lays down beside her. He'd refused to leave her when she'd said she was going to lie down for a while. Even going so far as to order some room service for afternoon tea. She desperately wanted to go up and have a swim but every time she stood she felt strangely dizzy and an empty, continuous ache that reminded her of the feeling she usually had before her period throbbed in her stomach.

"Cora?" His hand makes a lazy pass on the dip of her back. "I don't want to tell you what to do...but, maybe...I know you said it was menopause. But maybe the doctor might be able to help...you've had some quite severe reactions." His hand presses harder on her back, circling, rubbing. She knew he'd ask and she knew he was right really. But she so wanted for the time to run more slowly. Everything at the moment was making her feel so very old.

"I will go. I just-"

"I'll always love you Cora. This doesn't make you inadequate or less beautiful. You're still beautiful and still perfectly capable of all those things we did when we were younger." His voice is close by her ear, and he nips it once, a clear reminder of those such occasions.

She tries to let the emotions take her, let the soft caress stir her thoughts away from the secrets she was keeping. The looming worries that pounded softly in the corners of her mind however much she tries to keep them at bay. It wasn't Robert she doubted.

"Even if I change?"

"Cora. I made a vow to you. Just you. The vow was made knowing that things change in life. I know this has caught you unexpected. I know it reminds you of the past, of the man whose name is unknown to me. But I do truly love you." She concurs to his embrace finally wondering why she needed him to say it. She knew. Sometimes months went by without them saying it but it had never mattered before. Yet, at the moment it did. She thought it had been the menopause but she wondered now if it was more to do with the man she now knows is Peter. His mortality had swung her past properly back into focus. And quite frankly it terrified her. What if Simon came back? What if he met Robert, tried to hurt him? Tried to hurt her? What if he went for one of the girls instead?

The problem was she didn't know, she couldn't know until she knew if Simon was behind Peter's appearances.

"Mum! Dad!" It was Edith hammering on the door. Robert jumps from the bed at her clear anxiety and she is swift behind him feeling a wave of that nausea washing over her. But she stumbles onwards, there could be a problem with the baby.

"Is it the baby? Are you alright?" She and Robert talk right over each other, Edith standing a little white in the doorway. Cora's head swirls as she looks at her daughter. Baby. Baby. The word trips over her lips. Sitting oddly. Strangely. It was the thought of her young Edith being a mother no doubt.

"No. No, it's Sybil. She wants you Mum." Cora slips a set of shoes on. The pounds of 'baby' echoing in her head. Edith's baby was fine, but her own dear Sybil was seemingly distressed. "She wouldn't let me help her. It's just her period but-"

"What!" She abandons Edith in the hallway. She had thought Sybil was just disagreeing with someone's idea for the afternoon. But her little baby becoming a woman! Edith obviously hadn't realised it was her first one. No doubt she had thought it was just bad cramps or something.

Cora finds her youngest, fiercest daughter leaning against the sink in the bathroom. Her hair falling about over her face and the gentle sniffles prove she really is crying.

"Oh, my dearest one." She wraps her arm immediately around her shoulders. "I'm hoping the crying is shock rather then pain." Sybil just nods, slowly but decisively.

"I had an ache all day and then I came to the toilet and I just-"

"It's alright sweetie. Now, have you cleaned yourself up? Did you find everything you needed in Edith's bag?"

"She's only got enough to last me today." Cora knew that might be the case. What with Edith's condition, she no doubt had only packed her usual emergency supply.

"That's okay. I can find you the rest." She herself had packed plenty, hoping and praying internally her period would come, just to prove she wasn't as old as she was feeling. But alas, it seemed she was. "Now, is there anything you want to talk about?"

"No. I understand it all and I was fine. And then suddenly it all washed over me. Something changed and...anyway, I'll be fine. I think I just needed a brief bit of reassurance."

"Well, that's what I'm here for. The first year or two will be odd anyway. Not very regular. And no doubt you'll be taken by surprise a few times but it's nothing to be embarrassed about."

"It's alright Mum. I do know. I have two older sisters." Cora feels the rebuff far more harshly than Sybil meant it, she knows she does but it doesn't stop hurt prickling close behind her eyelids.

"Of course. I'll go." She stands. Her arms gently wrapping around her middle as though she's cold. But she's not. It's an emptiness, a surreal feeling of no longer seeming to have a purpose. Her baby was grown up now and her other girls quickly embarking on the next parts of their lives.

She hadn't been sure she'd meant it when she had promised Robert she'd go to the doctor. But now she felt she was sure. The emotions were getting overpowering and quickly diminishing her beautiful holiday. Clarkson was sure to give her something, he was a good doctor.

"Was she alright?" Cora feels herself nod, but her thoughts aren't behind it. She's thinking of that day, Sybil's birthday. The smiles of the nurses, the ear piercing scream of her newest baby girl. Robert had been there, she could still feel his warm kisses to her damp hair. His hand helping her support their baby's head as she'd tossed about. She had been so very big compared to her sisters. So heavy. Cora can remember how her frail arms had protested at the weight that really wasn't anything. But she was weary, the long labour for a baby who was a little too big having taken it all out of her. She can still feel the way the water had swum before her eyes, the blurring of her Sybil's face. Robert had been whispering something about Cora being her middle name by her ear and she must have nodded in reply because that's how he'd filled out the birth certificate. But she doesn't remember that. It's the racing of those emotions and hormones. The pain and then the tears.

"Cora, darling. Please, don't cry." Crying? Was she really crying? She blinks hard the droplets falling into her cheeks. His hands are there, around her waist, rubbing on her back. They always soothed. He always made her feel better. They stand like that for what could easily be hours.

"Do you remember her? So small but so heavy. And-"

"She had plenty of chocolate curls already. Her eyes were so beautifully blue. And she tossed and gurgled. And the very sight of her made you pass out." She can hear the teasing. The gentle rumbles in his throat.

"I'd just given birth to your gigantic child. But if I remember correctly, you took a break at one point because you were feeling faint."

"But I didn't give the whole ward a fright. They honestly thought they might lose you." She leans a little out of his embrace finding his worry laden gaze. "I was handed a hungry, squirming Sybil. Buttons were pushed and you were hooked up. One nurse told me to go with her and she carried out the last few tests on Sybil and handed me a bottle and the birth certificate. I filled it out. Unthinking. Just staring at the baby girl who I was so sure was about to be without a mother. It was so very odd. Not at one moment did I panic and yet I was filled with a dull aching of dread." She smooths her fingers over his shirt, feeling the racing of his heart beneath one side, it's steady echo on the other. She'd heard the tale quite often, about the period of time she couldn't remember. The story of Sybil's middle name. But it still made her heart melt. It still made her want to cling to him and never let go.

"Well all I remember is opening my eyes and you were there holding my hand, kissing it. Cradling our little baby." His lips grace easily over her forehead but she tilts her chin up and he presses them instead gently to her own. "Do you ever wish we'd had more. That we had managed the four children we always dreamed of?"

"I'm perfectly content with my daughter's. This was how it was meant to be. Besides us men only care for the conception part, and it's not as though we didn't do plenty of that." Her cheeks redden, his fingers toying with the hem of her blouse.

"That's not true. You've always been a very attentive father." His arms seem to nudge her towards the bedroom. It doesn't take much to guess his intentions. They had just over an hour until they'd go up to dinner and Robert it seemed wished to spend the time actively.

"I hope I've been an attentive husband too." His fingers dance on her blouse again. She really did doubt whether this was the right time for his plans. Surely they should be taking a stroll on the deck and enjoying the last scenes of St Kitts but she couldn't bring herself to stop him.

The knots that were hard in her back softened at his touch. The tensing in her neck became soft as his lips washed over them.

"You've never been anything but attentive."

"I would say you're being too generous. You seem to have forgotten how we were a few weeks ago."

"Everyone has bad patches Robert. It's getting through them that singles our relationship out as something special." He'd taken her distraction with the conversation as an opportunity to unbutton her blouse and his fingers now hover over her shorts but they don't reach for the clasp.

"It was special long before then. It was special from the first moment you said my name in that accent of yours, poised opposite my desk as if to slap me." She arches an eyebrow but he laughs, pressing his forehead to hers and dipping his lips to find hers.

She falls backwards onto the bed as he tries to wrestle unsuccessfully with her shorts. Her thoughts try to find a moment in their past, a moment when she had first truly realised what she had in Robert. She felt it then, the twitching of her feet as he settled beside her, kissing circles on her neck; his breath making the little strands of hair rise and fall by her ear. Yes, his breath of her neck, his words shivering on her cold skin. Her feet moving on their own accord, with his.

"For me it was special when we waltzed at the Downton ball." He eyes her in a manner that she thinks is with shock before he grins and pins her beneath him. And then he begins to hum, softly and slowly, letting the melody form though his fingers as he trails each digit over her skin.

It was sweet and soft all at once. But Cora had a feeling it was only going to withhold the fire burning in her mind for so long. In a few hours she'd be panicking again and possibly feeling ill as well. She was trying to escape her age and Peter and Robert was even more than the ideal distraction; he was heavenly. He knew exactly what she needed.


Robert couldn't help glancing between his eldest daughter and Matthew. Had he asked yet? Robert couldn't tell, and quite frankly it didn't really matter, he knew it was going to happen. He couldn't fathom where his sudden reluctance had come from. He really liked Matthew. Yet, he'd seen Cora in a state this afternoon, a state being even worse than a usual Cora trauma. She blamed it entirely on the menopause he knew she did. Yet, he couldn't help feeling that she was wrong. Maybe his mind was just conjuring up desperate measures to try and make her sorrowful situation full of joy. His thoughts would steer successfully down that route and then all of a sudden along came that doubt and in all honesty his own common sense. He thought that maybe Cora was missing a level, she'd jumped from to period to age to menopause in seconds and yet...that first day on the cruise hadn't been their only condom free sex in the last two months.

That night after the kiss with Jane that he couldn't quite wipe from her memory he'd come home to find her snuggled (which was more like sat- but his charged mind had read that wrong) on the settee with an old American friend from school. A male friend. He'd flipped out, sending said gentleman running. In fact they'd said a lot of things that night neither of them had meant. They'd slept in separate rooms of the house. It was the following evening (Sybil having neatly excused herself to Rosamund's) that he'd come home to his favourite dinner on the table and the offer of a movie. She'd talked over most parts of the film, uttering some comment or another about how sorry she was or how she thought she may have neglected him. He sat and listened to too much of it, inching painfully nearer and allowing her to cuddle against his side as she always did during films. And then it had all been quite odd, he'd mumbled something about him being an idiot and how much he loved her and then...the next thing he knew they lay naked together on their lounge floor, laughing and chuckling together.

The image tumbles over him as he remembers how she'd run her hand over her stomach.

Pregnant.

Could it be possible that Cora was in fact pregnant. It certainly wasn't impossible. He hadn't told her his suspicions yet, what was the point? She'd agreed to go to the doctor when they returned home and he would tell her if his thoughts were indeed the case. And then there was the evening he had planned for tomorrow, he didn't want to ruin that.

In the mist of his thoughts he fails to notice Mary sneaking away and a pint appearing in front of him, a soft kiss to his cheek and a whisper of 'be nice' causing him to frown. Her shimmering dress wafts off between all his daughters.

The dimly lit bar reminding him much of the dining room at Downton, which when used properly with candles and all, had the same feel if the men willingly stayed behind for a drink at his mother's badgering of 'that's how it was done.' But this time sat opposite him are not the faces of men his mother had invited but Matthew.

"You know what I'm going to ask."

"Actually I'm not sure that I do exactly. You ought to spell it out." Matthew transforms before him, looking suddenly terrified. Robert couldn't help but smile into his drink. He'd always wanted to see what the face looked like as he was sure he'd made it when Cora's father had made a very similar reprimand.

"Well, I um...that is..I would be grateful if you would allow me to marry your daughter."

"Sybil?" He really was enjoying this game, although it seemed Matthew was catching on, he dramatically rolls his eyes, something Robert is sure he has picked up from Mary.

"No, Mary."

"I don't see the problem. As long as you look after her."

"Thank you." He clinks their glasses together, Matthew's shoulders falling softly- he really had been tense.

"There is one thing." Robert finds the amber liquid so much safer to watch than Matthew's face. Cora had asked him to check and she would be expecting an answer. "Your reasons for marriage are what exactly?"

His shoulders tense again and a hard expression lines the features of his face.

"I love Mary very much. And well, there seemed so little point in waiting. We have the money. And to be honest the week we spent apart last week was not to either of our tastes."

"Marriage doesn't always bring just peace Matthew. Every decision that was once just yours is now hers as well. And then there's children they-" Matthew splutters beside him.

"I think that's some way off."

"Perhaps. But you have to be ready for it. It's the biggest step. Full of the most wonderful memories and some of the worst. The children will come before your time as a couple for a time. And in many situations they always will." This holiday was becoming a prime example. Every time he and Cora had a moment alone that wasn't behind the confines of their cabin door one of the girls was asking questions, needing help or growling at their decisions.

"How do you and Cora find the balance?"

"When the girls were very little we didn't. But when they got older and Rosamund was willing to have them we used to go out once every two weeks, or stay in depending on what we felt like. But it doesn't stop bad patches. The moment you start taking those hours alone for granted and one of you, mein our case, starts using them for work the relationship crumbles little by little until you're climbing into bed at night and barely saying goodnight."

"Are you trying to put me off!" Robert laughs, he really wasn't.

"No. But I can tell you I'm far less brutal than Cora's father. But then I was tearing her across the sea." He could still picture Isidore, over the kitchen table, on his one and only trip to England before the wedding. He had truly looked as though his world was ending.

"Yes. Which ironically enough made you safer from the dogs he might send than I am from your dear Isis!" Robert was more than pleased Matthew was finding the funny side of things, he truly wasn't trying to put him off. But he supposed the last few weeks had worn away at him. He and Cora had always thought themselves above the whole jealousy situation and flirting with other people- but clearly in moments of anger or desperation nobody was passed it, even with twenty-five years of marriage under wraps. If anything the more years that go by the more complacent people become. Maintaining the balance was key, he and Cora had worked it out alone but then they'd had been older and far wiser than he felt Mary and Matthew were. He'd seen a lot of different women and was running his own company, Cora had almost lost the whole meaning of life and love. They had therefore been mature beyond their years, he didn't think he could say the same for his eldest daughter. Edith he actually thought, despite her lesser years was wiser. Michael's life and her job had made her wiser, they'd forced her too. Mary had just enjoyed university and was now thinking, and was very likely to, end up making sure Downton Establishment was doing all it was supposed to be with regards to the law. She was hardly spreading her wings.

"Honestly. I don't mean to scare you. But Cora has a saying and I think it fits here. Love is all very well when you're tumbling in the sheets but it's so much harder to say and fulfil when you're washing those sheets."

"I appreciate that Robert. But I don't think time is going to change what Mary and I want. We're both willing to put in the effort to secure our future and are equally prepared to disagree." Robert felt wrong, so wrong to doubt the man who had agreed to take on Mary. They were perfectly suited and Robert was in fact sure they'd be happy. It was only that he felt it strangely, as though he and Cora had pushed Mary to this, with their traditional values and he wanted to be sure Matthew was ready to have Mary properly in his life.

"Disagreeing isn't a thing in marriage. A man quickly learns that to say no is futile. She will always win if only because you love her." He and Cora had never had a problem with disagreeing so much as forgetting to check with the other and taking their acceptance for granted. There was only in two situations he would say Cora and he had disagreed and those either involved his mother or that one instance before their marriage, when he'd asked her to move in with him.


Her lavender perfume washed over his nose as he turns to climb from the bed. It was dreadful he thought on Sunday nights, when they'd spent the whole day and night together and then in the early hours of the morning he'd sneak home, or she would depending on whose house they were in. He was beginning to find it all a little tiring. The problem was he has only himself to blame for that, as he knows full well. He has the ring, he'd taken her to Paris, booked a table for dinner at the Eiffel Tower and had then chickened out of proposing just because he was unsure about getting down on one knee in front of the other diners. He was a wimp. And so, he was sneaking out of her house at four am so he could get home to find a suit for tomorrow.

"Stay." He freezes, quite simply freezes in the doorway, trousers halfway up his legs.

"Cora, go back to sleep." He couldn't do this now. She'd regret it when she properly woke. She had decided at the beginning of their relationship that this was how it was to be. Weekends together, but the weekdays were for working and the office. She felt that if they started a Monday morning together in bed the routine they had at work would be disjointed, or rather that they'd never get there- which Robert couldn't deny.

"Please?"

"Cora. We'll see each other in a few hours anyway." Her unwillingness to see him go certainly made him slightly more relaxed, he had been contemplating for a while asking her to move in with him, and since his failed proposal he'd been toying with the idea more and more.

The lamp flicks on and he watches as she rubs the sleep from her eyes, her mouth wide it in a small ladylike yawn. He chuckles and half pounds, half stumbles to kiss her goodbye. Her lips linger and he can't help capturing them in his again, teasing them. Her little gurgles of laughter give him the much needed confidence and he takes her hand, smoothing his thumb over the tight knuckles.

"Move in with me Cora."

Silence.

A short puff of air.

Silence.

The warmth of her fingers slipping from his palm.

Silence.

Then just one single word.

"No."

"What? You just said you want me to stay. We talk about how ridiculous it is we separate in the wee hours of Monday morning and yet you won't move in with me!" He takes a step back. Standing from his siting position on the bed, perhaps it was a good thing he'd never proposed if this was response he was to expect.

"Robert that's a big step."

"And the possible marriage you talk about isn't!?"

"It's different."

"Different how? Both involve the two of us. Together. Enjoying ourselves. Being in love." If his sister was here she'd tell him to stop, she'd remind him he was tired that he was panicking about knowing what Cora wanted from him. She would remind him that the problem was really his worry about commitment, nervous at the thought of a marriage like his parents'. She'd remind him that fighting was not the way to find out Cora's intentions, that having an adult conversation was a far better bet. But she wasn't here.

"Different because one involves a commitment by you and the other does not."

"Commitment Cora! Is this what this is about? And you think that you moving in with me isn't a commitment for me!? I'm intending on giving up my life, my house to you. For us."

"Robert please..." He can hear the tears, he can visualise them slipping onto her cheeks as he grabs his jacket and heads for the stairs.

"I want to settle you into my life properly Cora. Twenty-fours hours every day all day, and what do I get, a no! No what?! No because I don't love you? No because I'm not ready? What Cora? What don't you want? I hardly think marriage is likely to suit us if we can't agree on even this!"

"Robert, please...wait." But he doesn't, he feels each of the stairs pass beneath his feet. He hears her gentle steps behind him, her sniffles and sobs. His one toes spasm at the cold wooden floor she'd had laid in the hallway. He'd chosen the wrong moment that was clear.

"We're too tired for this. We will discuss it another time."

"No. Robert..." She stands in front of the door, blocking his way out as he struggles on his shoes. He can't help but admire her, the unruly chocolate curls, the curves of her body. "I know. I know what you're asking. But, I fell for that trick once. Moving in with someone for me is a false sense of commitment for a man. It's a time frame in which he can dawdle and try to decide if marriage is in his best interests while the woman thinks it most certainly is because, well 'he's let me move in.'"

Silence. It's him that keeps silent this time. Then his body forces a breath between his clenched teeth. Of course. Commitment. Promises. Trust. All this came down to trust. She had to be one hundred percent sure his thoughts were only fixed on marriage. However much she loves him and trusted him, however many words he spoke to assure her, she wouldn't quite believe him until he got down on one knee.

He stumbles as he falls onto the bottom step of her stairs. His face resting in his hands while she stands like a ghost across from him, guarding the front door.

"I know I'm a pain Robert. I know that is what most people do. I just-"

"It was my fault. I was careless. I should have thought. I should have known that you would need my absolute word. And you're right. I don't think your ex is the only man in the world to have used the 'moving in' card to try and prove he was thinking of a future even if he wasn't. We won't talk about it again. The point is clear." He's stood in front of her now, avoiding her gaze. Her fingers twist awkwardly at her sides, her nails scratching at the skin down the sides of her thumb nail. Her other hand wipes at her eyes, pushing away the stray wetness.

"It's not just that Robert. I want there to be something new to enjoy when we marry. If we have lived together for months before it happens it isn't going to so amusing as we try and settle in together, we will have done all that and we will begin to wonder why we wasted so much money on a wedding when nothing has changed. I think our marriage will be more successful if we enter it knowing that our life's are different for it." He was often blown away by ideas she had at work, ways for him to let this client down or make sure another one agreed with his proposal but they'd never talked much about the future, and yet it seemed she'd already thought it all through, and her reasoning was thorough it couldn't doubt. He wasn't sure it did make a difference. Marriage required work, all the time by both parties and he very much doubted the choice of living together before it made much difference, but he wasn't about to argue with Cora. Her earlier point about men using the idea to seem as if they were thinking about marriage was very true, he knew friends that boasted about such a plan all the time.

"You should go back to bed, I need you on top form later. I believe I've got lots of important meetings." She gulps and steps aside her arms wrapping around her torso as she does so. Her cheeks glisten in the dim light of the moon through her front door and he dips his lips to her forehead quickly.

The wind and rain blast against his face as he half trips down her front steps. Branson met him on the corner every other Monday morning at this ridiculous hour. Robert paid him extra, it was only fair.

He doesn't sleep when he gets home, all he sees is her face, a halo masking her face, the soft tears running on her cheeks.

The office looms into view at the early hour of seven o'clock, his first appointment wasn't until nine but he was happier sitting here. An empty office was easier to stand, the pile of work on his desk an easy distraction from the whirl of Cora's face.

Eight comes and goes as does half passed. And then twenty-five minutes crawl by as he glances up at the opening of every door, hoping to see Cora swinging through the doorframe with his coffee in her hand and her bright smile. But when the door opens at one minute to nine it's his client, a client he'd much rather not see. Gary. The same Gary who had insulted Cora at her first Downton ball.

"Morning Crawley. See you're without a secretary these days. Did the American job run off?"

"No. No."

"Only I had heard that was quite serious. And you look quite downcast. Recent change?"

"Gary-"

"Only I quite liked her. She had a kind of-"

He's saved from hitting him by the phone ringing on Cora's desk. He rushes to get it, if something meant he could avoid Gary he really would do anything.

"Hello. Robert Crawley's office, how can I help you?"

"Sounds like you would manage alright without a secretary." The air around him is sucked in, filling his chest. Yet, her words numbed the soft fire that had begun to lick away and warm him at the sound of her voice. It sounded as though she wanted to leave. That this was indeed it. He kicks the door violently, closing Gary in his office.

"Cora."

"You already sound worn out. Gary's arrived I'm guessing."

"Yes." She was using a delaying tactic he could tell. She was trying to avoid the conversation she wanted to have. He could picture her, sat on one of the stools that rested on the central island of her kitchen, drumming her fingers over the granite as she spoke. "But he can wait. What is it you wanted to say?"

"An apology for abandoning you this morning." He closes his eyes, she was a hopeless liar, even over the phone.

"Cora. I'm not stupid. I understand if you wish to call us a day. If you wish to move on. I was unfeeling earlier."

"None of that really bothers me. You were just asking me something perfectly realistic that I disagreed with. But what did bother me was the last thing you said about you needing me at work early because you have so much on. I don't want to be your toy Robert. For you to demand things from as and when you choose-"

"Again Cora. I was being an idiot. Wrong words. Wrong expression. I want you here because your morning smile and cup of steaming coffee delivered with a kiss make my morning bearable. My lunch break is so much more fun with you sat opposite me in the restaurant. My hours of meetings are separated by you with a biscuit or a joke. And most of all every day that we survive here together is another meal I can afford to take you out for, another weekend away." He hears her deep breathing on the other end of the line, he hears Gary's pacing in his office and then he spies a photo of the two of them, passport sized, that they'd had taken in one of those booths, propped on the base of her computer. She was grinning, clinging to his neck as he kissed her cheek. "Another load of money we can spend on our wedding."