Now or Never aka Melanie’s Big Adventure

Mela is going on a trip. Starting at the mighty Victoria Falls, followed by a Big Five safari staying in a luxury lodge, she’ll finish up at beautiful Cape Town.

This is a trip she’s wanted to do for a long, long time. And now is the right time to finally do it – return to Cape Town and her memories of Africa, and find a way to move on from her recent setback.

She’s delighted when her best friend and original travelling buddy Cara comes along too, taking a break from the endless packing and arrangements in Cape Town. What Mela’s mother can’t understand is why her husband Adam isn’t going with her – and why Mela even feels the need to do this sort of thing in her 40s…

I'm excited to write this story over the next year, and see if this is The One - which gets published, and sets me on the track of the published, full-time writerly life..!

Hello again!

As promised (quite a long time ago), finally some more writing from me…

When I launched this website back in those uncertain murky first days of 2021, I made a promise to visitors and readers: “I'll keep adding more to this page, diving back into old previously unshared material as well as new and current writing, so please read away – and then come back again soon!”

        It was exciting – and also daunting – to share my long-stored half-decent stories (‘A Single Gal’, ‘Measure for Measure for the 21st century’), the finally-finished novella ‘Professional Survivor’, along with a chatty post (I didn’t like the word blog at the time; I’m still not sure, it sounds too much like blob, or blurgh) about my writing, not to mention a new story for 2021, ‘Blessings’ with an audience.

And then I fell silent, for years.

I am sorry, I really am.

     I have a pretty good excuse, but an excuse it is.    

I didn’t write much at all for the next year and a half, and then our world changed: we became parents!

        Parenthood is, without comparison, the most challenging, absorbing, cataclysmic thing that’s happened to me. It has taken over every aspect of my life, changed my energy levels (physical and mental), my sleep pattern, and the way my brain processes on an hourly basis.

       But it also becomes normal life. This is how it’s going to be forever now, so I began to look for ways to fit writing into my life again. And I’m getting there…

        The main thing is: I have ideas again!

       Unusually for me, I have a big non-fiction idea I want to get out of my head and into book form, but hand-in-hand I have fiction story ideas floating around too. Have a look here at the synopsis of my work-in-progress, with a working title of ‘Now or Never’, aka 'Melanie's Big Adventure'.

It’s time for me to heed this little nugget of advice: get on with it, write this novel, share Mela and Cara’s story with other people, because if not now then when?

Happy reading, and happy 2025 everyone!

Blessings

- Congratulations Ellie! You look fabulous.

- We wouldn’t have missed this for the world!

- And where’s the lucky Joe? Ah yes, I see him now, chatting to your Mum. Well, this is really your day anyway, isn’t it?

- Just a little something from us, to say congratulations.

- We are so happy for you, this is just great!

“You don’t have to stand here all night, you know,” Joe said, handing Ellie a fresh cool glass of white wine. “You can do what you like – this is your party! Go and mingle, chat, schmooze, and enjoy all the attention.” He kissed her flushed cheek.

She took a gulp of wine. “I feel a bit fluttery,” she said.

"I know. Go with it, you look on top of the world,” he said.

“I should talk to the publishing lot,” she said, as they glanced at the huddle of people in a corner, talking amongst themselves. “But I really just want to talk to Clara and Kim.”

“Good luck with Clara, she and Nick have been flirting at the bar for a good twenty minutes now.”

“Really?”

They looked at each other, to gauge how the other felt about Joe’s twin brother and one of their best friends hooking up. “That could…”

“… just about work!”

Ellie and Joe had been a couple for over a decade now, after getting together in their final year at university in Bristol. Clara had been part of the small group of them who stayed in Bristol for a few years after graduation, before they’d all predictably ended up moving to London.

Ellie’s sister caught her arm as she tried to slip past to talk to friends. “It’s a good turn out,” Jenna said. “Nice place, you look good. Well done.”

“Thanks,” Ellie said. While she didn’t appreciate her sister sounding like a parent, she couldn’t help enjoying the rare tone of approval coming her way. “I’m enjoying it, which I wasn’t sure would happen.”

“Not surprised, it can be overwhelming. Go, go – we can talk any time,” Jenna said.

Ellie took the exit, while reminding herself she didn’t need her sister’s permission.

She and her friend Kim had worked together at the first London agency Ellie had had joined, and although neither stayed there longer than a year, a friendship born of long hours, low pay, high London drinks prices and careers forged from that starting point was still going strong.

“How do you have time to do anything outside of work?” Kim asked. “I’m so proud of you, I am in awe of you achieving this.”

“It sounds crazy, but Joe moving to Frankfurt kind of made it all happen. We found our new normal, and good things actually came out of 5 days a week spent apart,” Ellie said.

“You never breathed a word though,” Kim said.

“Ah, till it actually, physically happened, I couldn’t quite believe it myself. Don’t be offended, I didn’t tell many people.”

They were interrupted by a tall grey-haired man standing by the table in the corner, with the ‘publishing lot’ calling for quiet, and knocking his signet ring against his empty pint glass.

“I’ll just say a few words,” he said loudly, as the last voices quietened for him. “We are all here this evening to celebrate the wonderfully talented Ellie Glavin. Ellie, ladies and gentlemen!”

She felt her cheeks burn as Kim stepped back, and all eyes turned to her with cheers and a round of applause.

“She has achieved great heights with her hard work, her determination, and her exceptional talent. I know you will all join me in toasting Ellie tonight, and to her future!”

Glasses were raised, and cheers were roundly repeated.

“I speak for all the team here,” he went on, nodding towards his colleagues behind him, “when I say we are delighted to have Ellie onboard, and we’re already seeing signs of the great success we felt certain of from the first time we met. Raise your glasses with me one more time please ladies and gentlemen – to Ellie’s debut novel, ‘The Silence’!”

“To ‘The Silence’!”

“Ellie, would you like to say a few words,” Jonathan, her managing editor commanded her, gesturing that the floor was now hers.

She handed her glass to Kim, and took a deep breath.

Ellie presented to clients on a weekly basis at work, and had a knack for talking round difficult speakers during the high-pressured presentations she managed several times a year. This should come easily, but this was about her for once – the story she had written, poured her heart and soul into, put out into the world, and defended from well-meaning knowledgeable publishing professionals, to finally produce her first book. She could hardly believe that the stack of shiny white-covered books piled in the corner were her novel.

“Thank you all for coming tonight. Some of you have travelled a long way and many hours to be here, and I am so happy to see you all – and share this with you. Thanks to Jonathan for his kind words, but to be honest he and the team’s hard work are the majority of the reason I get to be here, living out the dream I’ve had since I was a child. I’m a writer! I am a real life author!”

She could see her Mum wiping a tear, and had a feeling her sister had rolled her eyes. Joe was standing beside them with a huge grin on his face.

“I’ve been scribbling stories since I was a kid, and always dreamed of publishing a novel one day. It’s been a long journey from acceptance of my manuscript to the book you see here today, and I have learned a lot. Although I haven’t given up the day job just yet, this book has opened my eyes to so many new experiences, and I feel quite giddy with pride that I finally got here.”

She took another deep breath, and tried to stop smiling quite so widely. Her cheeks were aching.

“Now, that’s the serious bit of the evening done – let’s carry on celebrating!”

“Just to say,” Jonathan could just be heard saying as the music was turned up again, “these copies are FOR SALE this evening, for a discount rate of ten pounds. Get one tonight, and Ellie will no doubt sign it for you.”

“Ah, so the books aren’t free,” Nick, Joe’s twin brother said to Ellie as she headed for a refill at the bar. “Like the drinks, hey.”

She laughed. “I’m a first time novelist, with a quirky book that doesn’t fit into the literary or feelgood buckets,” she said. “I’m just happy there’s a party at all, that I didn’t have to arrange myself!”

“Well done my darling,” Clara said. “All that tap-tapping away in those lonely evenings while Joe was off living it up in Germany, and now look at you!”

Ellie was thirty five years old: an account director at a marketing agency, she was in a great long-term relationship and lived in the lovely flat they’d saved and scraped five years ago to buy in west London – and she had just had her first novel published.

She had a lot to be thankful for, and to celebrate tonight.

Two months later, Ellie arrived in the office on Monday morning exhausted but happy.

It had been quite a weekend: a big conference she and her team had been working on for over 6 months had taken place in Amsterdam the previous Friday and Saturday, and they had all been out in the Netherlands for almost a whole week to deliver it.

It was such a relief that it was finally done. And also a big sense of achievement: it was a huge project, with many side projects feeding into and flying out of it, and Ellie was really proud of what they had pulled off.

Ellie had been working in the communications world for almost ten years now, but this kind of thing never got easier, or less exhausting. When you were on-site, you were ‘on’ from the moment you left your hotel room to head out for breakfast right until you set foot back over that threshold, usually after dinner in the late evening. After all these years, and with a bit of age creeping up on her, she knew it would be about 2 weeks until she was really back to normal.

There was always mop-up work to be done in the days immediately following such a big project though: expenses to be done while she could remember what the receipts were for, plus debriefs on what had gone well and what should not be repeated in future. The good news about this was that it didn’t take very long to go through, so she was booked on a Thursday afternoon flight to Frankfurt and to Joe, who had Friday off so they could have a slightly longer than usual weekend together.

She was surprised to find a meeting invite from her manager’s manager in her inbox that morning, but she quickly assumed it was to review the project and client account directly with the powers-that-be and nothing more curious.

She was wrong about that though.

Ellie looked around the room in shock, as what they were saying to her slowly sank in. They were giving her the push!

“We’re all so proud of your achievement – you’re an author!” Neil said. “We’re just a bit disappointed that you haven’t told us more about it, as we’d love to have celebrated it with you more.”

She looked at her line manager Penny: she had often asked Ellie about the book, what was happening, how Ellie felt about the whole thing – almost as if Ellie was keeping something from Penny, and the company.

“This is the time to dedicate yourself to your novel, and your success,” Neil droned on. “And we will not stand in your way. That said, we look forward to the day you come back to us, and rejoin the family here.”

They were offering – well, almost foisting upon her – a sabbatical, for which the Head of Operations clearly didn’t have a script prepared. While trying to quash her indignation at having this decision made for her, she could see that they really did think this was the best thing for her: with the big conference now delivered, she would have been allocated to another team and set of projects in the next couple of weeks. And they really didn’t want her to disappear off on an impromptu publicity tour just as she bedded them in.

“I couldn’t disappear on you if I wanted, I have a three month notice period,” she said.

Penny looked affronted. “We would never stop you if you needed to go – for this kind of reason. We would always find a way to enable you to follow your dreams.”

The harsh reality though was that as a first-time novelist, an unknown writer with a debut book, Ellie was in very little demand at all.

She had been beyond excited to accept an invitation to read at an independent bookshop in north London, on a Tuesday evening next month. Hot on those heels came a request to read at a library one Saturday morning, and another library one evening the week after. To deliver these commitments, Ellie didn’t even need to leave work early, nor a day off – let alone an unspecified number of unpaid months off work.

She needed to talk to Joe about this.

“I need some fresh air,” she said.

“Take the afternoon,” Penny said.

She called Joe as she walked out onto the street, and before she’d said a word, he said: “I’m coming home.”

From his tone she could tell he didn’t mean ‘this weekend’ or even that rare ‘week working remotely’ either. What was going on?

She knew there was a right way to respond to this, and not what she was actually thinking, but out it came anyway–

“Oh. Why?”

What Ellie needed now was a glass of wine. And frankly, that first one was barely going to touch the sides. She needed a sympathetic ear, an understanding friend, and one who could keep up with copious wine intake.

She sent out a desperate plea to Clara, who she was lucky to see in these days of her all-consuming romance with Nick, and also Kim – who was rarely available for anything with less than a month lead time, as a full time working mother of a toddler.

This time she’d struck gold: they both accepted.

Clara arrived first. “They’re giving you a few months off? And Joe is coming home to London? This is all fabulous news!”

“Well, you say that,” Ellie said, “but actually it’s a huge pain in the arse.”

Kim slid onto the bench seat beside Clara, depositing a bottle of Malbec on the table next to rapidly emptying Rioja Ellie had bought on arrival.

“They aren’t paying me, you know!”

“What are those bastards expecting you to do for free?” Kim asked. “Don’t do it, they earn a fortune out of us. Make ‘em pay, or just refuse.”

“They’re giving her a sabbatical,” Clara said. “From, like, next week, right? Three or six months off, whatever she needs. To do the debut novelist thing right.”

“They have what?!”

“See, Kim gets it,” Ellie said.

“Just like that? Next week? You’re off the hook, nothing to wrap up, no long notice period? Just freedom to go and float about being a ‘writer’” she waggled her fingers for the air quotes, “leaving all the usual shit far behind you?”

“I know right,” Clara said. “What fabulous opportunity.”

Ellie looked from one friend to another, as they sat opposite her across the glasses and bottles on the table between them.

Was Clara right: was she making a big hoo-ha about something which was actually a good thing for her?

“But back to my earlier point: this fabulous time off is unpaid. They’re kicking me out without pay!”

“You’ve got the advance for the book though,” Kim said. “That will keep the roof over your head and wine in the house. You might have to rein in your swanky bar habit, but you aren’t overstretched, are you?”

“Kim, you haven’t even heard the other good news yet,” Clara said. “Joe’s coming back to London! His company are sending him home.”

“Oh.” Kim took a sip, and put her glass down again. “OK.”

“What, you don’t think this is good news?”

“Well, yes, if you do.”

“What do you mean, if I think it’s good news?” Ellie said. “Of course it is. Why wouldn’t I think that?”

“I don’t know,” Kim said. “You didn’t seem at all upset when they decided he should move to Germany. I thought that maybe you both like it this way better. You have your separate lives and do whatever you choose during the week, then live the couples’ life together at the weekends.”

“No – no, it’s not like that,” Ellie said.

“Really?” Clara said. “You guys are some of my oldest friends, but Kim is right. When Joe was told his job was now in Frankfurt, neither of you so much as questioned it. He didn’t threaten to resign and get another job in London, you didn’t consider going with him – you both just accepted it. Like it was a good thing…”

“It was a good thing: it was a promotion, and all the costs and travel back and forth were paid for. It seemed like a great opportunity.”

“Opportunity – for what? Or who?”

“Well, for Joe’s career obviously. But also, we’d talked about living in another country one day.”

“But you didn’t go with him,” Kim said.

“We have the flat, and my work was going really well. I just didn’t even think about it, at the time,” Ellie said.

“It’s been a year and half,” Clara said.

“I always wanted to write, and look – I did it!”

“You said it yourself though,” Kim said. “The novel came out of being alone, almost like writing was your substitute for the partner you used to have. Wouldn’t you rather have shared the process with Joe, found a way to weave this into your life together rather than it simply filling a hole left when he moved hundreds of miles away?”

“It didn’t really feel like that. We just got used to it.”

“It’s been a long time to live separately.”

“…and maybe you got to like it, just a little bit?”

Their routine was pretty well oiled these days. It wasn’t that Ellie didn’t miss Joe during the week, it was just the way things were right now. Working late was easier when no one was waiting for a call, or for her to get home for dinner. Last minute drinks or an impromptu evening shopping trip weren’t an issue either.

When Ellie and Joe were together – mostly at home in London, although she travelled to Frankfurt every month or so – their time was unencumbered by errands and tasks to be done; that was all pushed to the rest of the week. Their time together felt a little bit special, which is no bad thing in a relationship as long as theirs.

She felt stung by Kim’s implication that she might actually prefer living apart from Joe, in two different countries. It was simply that his job moved to Frankfurt, so Joe moved to Germany. He’d been set up with an apartment, and flights to come home as many weekends as he wanted; he was doing really well at work, she was super-busy in London – at work, and with her writing.

Had they actually built separate lives, without even realising?

“Was there an end date, when you were told?” Ellie asked Joe, when she arrived at his apartment on Thursday night.

Joe hadn’t requested the day off on Friday as planned, but he was realising now this was a big mistake: it was late already, Ellie was pretty worked up, and they were clearly going to talk about this now, and not tomorrow as he’d hoped.

“No, there was no end date to the job being here. You know this, I didn’t hide anything from you,” he said, topping up his own glass of wine now the decision about the morning was made.

“I know, I guess I just needed to hear you say it again,” she said.

Joe knew he’d ended up kind of having it all with the Germany move: in Frankfurt he worked with an international team at a rewarding job he was good at, and back in London he had a great relationship and group of trusted friends. Living alone in Frankfurt meant he spent long hours at work when he needed to without impacting his home life, with occasional nights out on the town which reminded him of the days when he and Ellie still lived in Bristol.

Weekends at the flat with Ellie were good, and actually more fun than they’d been before his promotion move. Life was good.

“What did you think would happen, in the end?” she asked.

“I didn’t give it a lot of thought,” he said. “In the back of my mind somewhere, I think I assumed I’d get another promotion in time, and be in a position to make my own choice on location. And move back to London.”

“But they closed the London office altogether last year,” she said.

“I didn’t know that was going to happen when I moved here though.”

“So why are they now sending you back to England now?”

“I asked the same question,” Joe said. “There’s no team there any more, there’s no business reason for me to go. Or so I thought…”

Joe was proud of Ellie’s book. He told his team about it, and a few of the guys from his five-a-side team who always went to the pub after, and beamed like the proud partner he was. Then he went back to normal.

But now this.

“We know your job can be done remotely,” Pablo said. “It can definitely be done from the UK. We’ll get you back here for a few days each month, but there really is no need for you to be living here permanently.”

So it was about the cost of the apartment and the flights then, Joe realised. One flight a month and a couple of hotel room nights would be much cheaper for them.

“They said it’s about you though,” he said.

“Me?”

“They thought I was going to resign, when they heard your book got published. They thought I’d leave the company and Frankfurt, and go back to London to live off our new riches!”

“Riches! Why does everyone think I’m suddenly a millionaire?”

“In a totally backwards move, they assumed I would definitely leave so they decided to pre-empt this, in order to keep me.”

“So you have to work from home, set up a home office, travel back here once a month, and stay in a hotel now. All for the same money?”

“Yes, you’ve got it.”

“It doesn’t sound like a great offer.”

“The offer is you. It’s our life back.”

“Yes, of course, I get that but…”

They both stopped.

“With this ‘sabbatical’, I’m going to be at home too, hanging around the flat,” Ellie said.

“After all this time spending most of every week apart, suddenly we’re going to be together all the time,” Joe said.

Ellie could hear her friends’ words and questions echoing in her head as he said this. But Joe just looked happy about this next step for them both.

Being a novel writer was a dream. The advance Ellie was paid for her book was a tangible sign that professionals in publishing felt sure it was worth investing in, and getting out to a readership.

Out in the real world, Ellie had built quite a career: she had a fancy job title with ‘senior’ and ‘director’ in it. She earned more thousands than her years, and she led a team. She was almost at the top of the organagram – she was a success!

The lifestyle she and Joe enjoyed was pretty comfortable. She didn’t take it for granted, and was thankful she no longer wondered which debit or credit card to try when out for dinner or paying for an expensive round of drinks. This situation hadn’t happened overnight: it was a combination of steady pay rises and the gradual paying off of loans over the years. It was a nice feeling, but a long time in coming – and well earned.

It was unsettling, then, to find herself without a pay packet now, at this successful point in two different careers, at the age of 35.

A lot of writers took time off to get their novel finished – not after all the hard work was done. Ellie had written it, then done rewrites, submissions and chasers, extensive edits and generally slaved over her book while holding down a busy and stressful full time job.

It was her salvation, the thing her mind could turn to and focus on when work got just that little bit too much. It’s what she worked on during the train journeys to and from the airports, for the trips to Frankfurt and the monthly client meetings in Paris too. When Joe left on Sunday afternoons to go back to Germany, she pulled out her personal laptop and put in a couple of hours, making the most of the time his journey left her with.

She could probably have done with some time off last year, especially during the deadline-driven edit stage, but it hadn’t occurred to her to ask for it. She loved having it as a filler, a cushion, a fall-back when work and Germany left her wanting.

“A sabbatical – how perfect!” her editor Jonathan said.

Ellie had given him a call to, well, check in, and find out any news. How her novel might be doing in sales, maybe.

“It is?”

“This is the time,” he said, “for you to thrash out the second book. I mean, don’t beat yourself up if you aren’t churning out 10,000 words in your first month or anything. But ideas, notes, an outline. This is the time. Perhaps a synopsis in a month or so?”

She laughed. He wasn’t joking.

He made it sound like this was a good thing – for her writing career. Till now, she had always fitted the writing in around everything else, her real life and the full time job. This was an opportunity to put it front and centre, to prioritise it above all the rest. Like a real writer.

Ellie and Joe clicked into a new routine pretty quickly.

Joe started work at 8am, conscious as he was that he was now an hour behind the rest of his team. By the time he left their flat to “go to work”, Ellie was pretty awake from all the movement and small noises. But instead of jumping straight in the shower, rushing to get ready to leave for the office, these days she got to lounge around reading, bring herself up to speed with social and news media, then head out for a walk – or on occasional mornings, a run.

Joe hadn’t been keen on setting up his own office in their living-dining room, even before they knew Ellie would be around the flat most days too. He was perfectly prepared to find a shared office space nearby or some other working location outside of their home, and bill the costs back to his company. But in fact he’d found a solution much closer to home – but crucially, not at home.

Their downstairs neighbour Sunesh had moved into freelance consulting a few years back, and Joe went to ask him for some advice. He ended up providing more than that: he’d started off working out of his own second bedroom but it all took off so fast he soon needed to hire another consultant and hire premises for them to both work out of.

Joe jumped right in and asked if Sunesh would rent it to him. This was perfect: all the convenience of working from home and no commute, without having to actually work out of their compact top floor one bedroom flat. He and Ellie got to have lunch together every day now.

And it was in the afternoon that Ellie settled down to writing. Sometimes she really got going, but other times she took herself away from the screen with her notebook and scribbled away on the sofa.

More afternoons than not though, she found herself looking at the reviews of her novel online. It wasn’t like they were flooding in, and they weren’t all kind. But they did, each and every one of them, remind her of that incontrovertible fact: she was a published author.

“So,” Joe said.

“Mm. That was…” Ellie said.

“Not really a surprise?”

They’d been for dinner with Nick and Clara, and decided to walk home.

It was a 40 minute walk between the brothers’ homes, and there was a time when many a Saturday or Sunday afternoon Ellie and Joe used to do that walk over and take a chance on Nick being in, then drag him out to the pub when he was. It was a while since those days though.

“Another wedding. Another hen – and stag – weekend.”

“And another grilling.”

“’And when will it be your turn, do you think dear?’” Ellie sighed.

“How does it make you feel?” Joe asked. “We’ve been together forever, and they’re leaping right into it after six months.”

“I feel… Sometimes I feel like it’s a competition, and I’ve chosen not to take part. Points are won – and lost – wedding to wedding: this wedding won on flowers, but the cake was disappointing. The venue was stunning at that last one, but the food was only OK. And the bands – well!”

Joe laughed. “Does that mean you don’t want to get married?”

“It means I’m not interested in the big wedding. Marriage: yes. Wedding, stress, competing, squeezing in dress fittings and hen weekends around lots of others: no thanks. But what about you? Your twin, the person you’ve been compared to for your entire life is getting married – how do you feel?”

“Pleased for him. I’m happy he’s happy.”

They walked along in silence for a while.

“I miss Frankfurt,” Ellie said.

“You miss Frankfurt?” Joe said

“I really liked it,” she said. “I loved having a second home city, for a while. Every time we found somewhere new, something we liked, it felt good to know we could come back again soon. It wasn’t a one-time thing, like a city break. It felt like our place, somewhere we could show off to visitors. London’s never felt like that. I know it’s hardly the most glamorous city in Europe, but I like it. Remember, we used to plan on living in another country one day.”

“I miss it too,” Joe said. “I thought it was disloyal to you, to our life here to say that.”

“Would you go back, if it was an option?”

“If you came too – permanently. Yes I would.”

“Why didn’t we do that, first time around?”

“Because we didn’t feel confident enough in our careers, our worth to our employers, to add conditions to it ourselves,” Joe said.

“Yes! That’s it. I remember feeling scared,” she said. “I didn’t want to move to another country where I didn’t speak the language, and end up with no job and being dependent on you.”

“Now look at us: we have careers, and know that someone else will hire us if our current employers won’t support what we need. Finally, we’re prioritising us ahead of work.”

“And now I know I wouldn’t be going without a job, I can simply work remotely.”

“I wonder if they’ll take me back over there,” Joe said.

“Of course they will,” Ellie said. “But this time, it’s a move. Not back-and-forth. We’ll be moving entirely. No half-life in London…”

“I don’t want to go back to the apartment the company got me before though.”

Ellie laughed. “It shouted ‘single business man’ in all its shades of white and grey. It had no character.”

“Let’s find some high-ceilinged, winding staircased, wrought-iron balconied place in the old town,” Joe said.

“They have places like that in Frankfurt? Sounds like a combination of Paris, Barcelona and Rome…”

“You might be right, I’m not sure if they do,” Joe said. “But we can find out.”

“Yes we can… together.”