… You see? … It’s all there.’

 He let out a heavy breath and started to drop his shirt to cover himself, but I put my hand out and stoppe... him.

 ‘Ruth said that there was something else.’

 ‘What?’ he said with a nervous laugh. ‘There’s not supposed to be anything else. She’s a married woman. She knows that.’

 ‘No,’ I said. ‘I mean … she said it must stand upright.’

 ‘It will, I promise you,’ he said.

 ‘She said for me to make sure.’

 I confess I was in a sense not telling the absolute. Although the pins had been removed, the mishandling by stage hands had slightly distorted the clasp and she couldn’t release it from the inside, she didn’t have the strength. She was trapped under water for at least three minutes.”“What did you do?”“I said ‘Oops’ to the audience, calmly dropped the curtains down for two seconds and magically waved her back to my cabin. I thought she would appreciate more my floor being wet than hers. In fact, my whole cabin including my bed got absolutely. Ben shook his head and let out a chuckle. ‘That guy’s a hurricane,’ he said as he walked closer to Elle. ‘Do you need to go to the shelter later?’ ‘No, I’m not scheduled today,’ Elle replied. ‘That’s great,’ Ben said and hesitated, unsure. ‘Can I talk to you for a minute in my office?’ ‘Sure,’ Elle said. She followed him to the office and asked, ‘Ben, is something wrong?’ ‘Nothing’s wrong,’ he replied. ‘It’s just that I had a talk with River last night and he’s okay with us dating.’ Elle. Mandy Simpson stepped out of the bathroom and looked her new body over in the full length mirror that had been provided in the bedroom. The simple fact that she’d walked from the shower to the bedroom naked gave some indication to those who knew her of the change she’d undergone since extraction. Prior to extraction Mandy had been the proverbial dormouse, grey, fragile, always hiding from those she considered better than she was. Now, she was two metres and a hundred kilos of hardened muscle.