"Hey Mikey! Check this out!" As Mikey joined Paul I looked up, and again our eyes locked.

"What’s that?" he yelled, pointing. I thought that if I pretended he wasn’t talking to me that he’d give up ... but I was wrong.

"Yeah, you! Don’t look around, I’m talking to you." Paul pointed at me. "Give us that!" He waved at the walking stick, which I wish I had layed on the floor. But it was too late, and now Mikey was joining in.

"What’s the stick for?" Mikey asked. Pretending and ignoring them obviously wasn’t going to work, so I gave in.

Everyone laughed as Paul and Mikey had a tug-o-war with my walking stick. Paul won, and proceeded to do Charlie Chaplin impersonations around the set, much to the amusement of the audience. Even I couldn’t help but laugh. This then lead to a limbo under the stick, with some other people coming out and joining in. Paul started singing the song Limbo Rock, Mikey joined in, even some of the band played along. There was a procession of Paul, Mikey Julie, Sandy and two band members doing the limbo under my walking stick, which was being held be Flacco. The audience was in hysterics. They soon got bored with this and turned back to me.

"So what’d ya do?" Paul asked. God, how was I going to get around this. But before I had a chance to answer, Paul continued. "Did you fall down the stairs? Or did you fall off your bike? Or did you fall off a ladder? Or did you fall down a well?"

Then Mikey butted in. "Did you fall out of bed? Oh, I know. You were about to make the Olympic ice skating team and your rival attacked you with a metal pipe!"

"Nah, not a rival ... an ex-boyfriend!" Paul threw in. That comment hit a little close to home. I felt all my muscles tighten, and the blood drain from my face, leaving me feeling light headed. I think Paul sensed something because he passed the stick back and got the show started.

The show was so funny. Once I relaxed and got over the comment by Paul I had so much fun. I laughed so hard that I actually got a stitch. Lano and Woodley threatened to take Paul hostage if they weren’t allowed to sing a song. They got as far as the guitar introduction before Frank realised they really didn’t have a song to sing, so they sang Humpty Dumpty. When Mikey was in the booth for Scattegories, Paul somehow wedged the door shut so it wouldn’t open. Mikey almost broke it trying to get out. And in the middle of answering a question, which didn’t involve moving at all, Rove fell off his chair. It looked so funny, there was this crash and he just disappeared! But the funniest bits probably won’t make it to air, they were way too crude. Thankfully nothing further was said about the walking stick.

At the end of the show Paul joined the band to sing. They did the song ‘Especially For You’, originally sung by Kylie and Jason. This version was so much better, they had the audience pissing themselves with laughter. Sandy joined in, singing Kylie's part. After they did the song four times (Sandy and Paul kept laughing) a few promos were filmed and they all disappeared. Slowly the audience started dribbling out.

When the show had finished Tim, Scott and I hung back a bit after the rest of the audience had gone. I was pretty worried, we were getting glared at by some of the security guards.

"Mr Ferguson?" a voice behind us asked.

"Yep, that’s me." Tim turned to face a young woman holding a clip board.

"Paul’s expecting you, come with me." She signalled for all of us to follow her as she walked quickly down the corridor.

"Wow, she makes him sound like royalty. Pretty different from when I used to work with him" Tim said.

"You’re lucky, he’s in a really good mood tonight" the woman said, turning her head to talk to us.

"Is he normally?" I asked.

"Sometimes. If the show goes well then he is, but there have been days when its been best just to avoid him" she answered as we arrived at a closed door, which she knocked on.

"If that’s the Avon lady, Piss Off!" a familiar sounding voice yelled.

"Well we better go then!" Tim turned and began to walk away as the door was thrown open.

"Oi! Ferguson!" The man himself, Paul McDermott stepped out into the hall.

"Well, well, well ... Mr McDermott. After all these years you finally got a decent haircut!" The two men shook hands.

"Yeah, I see you still haven’t changed your hair. You’ve had the same bloody style for eleven years!"

"Hey, why change the perfect?" Tim grinned, modest as always.

"Ah get over yourself." Paul turned to me and Scott. "Hi, I’m Paul by the way. I thought I’d better introduce myself seeing as our self-absorbed friend here wasn’t going to."

"Oh sorry. Paul this is Scott and baby sitting extraordinaire Samantha" Tim introduced us as we shook hands.

"You didn’t let your kids loose on this poor young lady did you?" Paul asked.

"What’s that supposed to mean? Everyone tells me how much the kids take after me!"

"Yeah, that’s my point." Paul turned to me. "Samantha, I’m sorry if I went too far with the knee thing out there."

"That’s okay" I replied, surprised that he thought to say that. "And please, call me Sam. Tim’s the only person who calls me Samantha, and he only does that to annoy me."

"Yeah, he’s good at things like that. But I mean it, I am sorry, you looked upset about it." Paul seemed genuinely sorry. He led us back into the green room, which was surprisingly empty. I had been expecting lots of people to be there.

"We have the place to ourselves tonight. It looks like everyone else had things going on. Usually its a mad house in here. Have a seat." Paul threw himself into a chair.

We chatted a bit about the show. Paul asked us what we thought so I told him I thought it was great. Then he and Tim went on a trip down memory lane, talking about the Dougs. I listened, thinking about how great it would have been to know the guys back then.

"So Sam. What do you do?" Paul turned his attention to me.

I told him I was in my final year of uni. He asked what I was studying and I told him that I was nearly finished my Medical degree. I think this impressed him.

"Wow. That’s a lot of work isn’t it?" he asked. "Which uni do you go to?"

"I started here in Sydney for seven years, a combination of full and part time. I’ve done the past two years full time at Flinders. It is a lot of work but I enjoy it."

"Yeah, Sam’s a geek. She likes working!" Scott always ribbed me about this. "It’s paid off though. She’s already been offered a trial placement at a private surgery in Adelaide."

Paul raised his eyebrows.

"It’s nothing much," I said, wanting to change the subject.

"How long are you in Sydney for?"

"Until Monday. Then back to boring old Adelaide."

"Bummer. We’ll just have to make sure you enjoy your time here. Are you coming to the show on Friday?"

I nodded, looking over at Tim and Scott, but they were deeply engrossed in a conversation about Sandra Sully.

"Well maybe after the show we could go get a drink or something" he asked quietly.

"Umm ... yeah. Sure."

"Great." Paul looked at me for a moment then turned back to Tim, leaving me in shock with a blush rising on my cheeks.

I was jolted awake by a loud crash quickly followed by a long string of swear words. I dragged myself out of bed to see what was going on.

"Oh, morning Sam. Sorry, did I wake you?" Tim was on the kitchen floor, surrounded by pots and pans.

"You’re making enough noise to wake the dead" I muttered, reaching for the coffee pot. "What on Earth are you doing?"

"I was looking for a frypan." I looked at the floor, where there were three frypans lying where they had fallen. "Yeah I know," he said when he saw what I was looking at, "but none of them are right. I need one with the egg thingys so I can put one of these in it to poach an egg. While I was looking, things kinda fell out of the cupboard."

I took a sip of coffee. "I don’t think Scott has one of those."

"Well that would have been useful to know before making this mess!"

"Yeah, tell me about it." I am rarely in a good mood when I get woken up early or suddenly. In this case it was both. "Where is Scott?"

"He had to go and pick some stuff up from the city. He should be back soon, he didn’t want to wake you so he left me in charge of breakfast."

"Did he have any sort of idea what a mistake that would be?"

"What’s that supposed to mean?" He took one look at my face and understood. "Oh, the whole loud noise wakes Sammy thing. I really am sorry. Hey, sexy Pjs!" He looked at my bright pink and purple satin pyjamas. "Maybe you should wear them Friday night!"

"Huh?" It was way too early to try and understand what he was talking about.

"Nothing. So what do you think of Paul?"

"He seemed nice. Different to what I was expecting though."

"Really? How?"

"I don’t know, just different."

"I bet you weren’t expecting him to ask you out" Tim was grinning as he said this.

"Yeah, you could say that". I tried to cover my smile with my coffee mug.

The sound of the phone ringing startled me. Scott and Tim had gone out so I rolled off the couch and crawled over to answer it, made pretty awkward by my knee.

"Hello?" I asked when I picked up the receiver.

"Hi. Is Tim there?" The voice sounded familiar but I couldn’t quite pick it.

"No sorry, he’s not here right now. Can I take a message?"

"Is this Sam?" Why did I know this voice?

"Yes it is" I replied. "Who’s this?"

"This is Paul. We met last night."

"Oh yeah. Hi." Why was I suddenly having trouble controlling my breathing? "How are you?"

"Good thanks. How about you?" We chatted for a while about general things like the weather and stuff.

"Look, do you want to meet for coffee?" Paul spat the question out quickly, catching me by surprise. I said yes and we agreed on a time and place.

After I hung up the phone I wrote a quick note to Scott and stuck it on the fridge. Then I left the house and made my way to the bus stop.

I slowly approached the cafe, a million things going through my head. What was I doing? I don’t know this man. What are we going to talk about? I saw him sitting at a table and made my way towards him.

Paul looked up as I arrived. "Hi" he said. "I’m glad you came."

"Hi yourself" I replied as I slowly sat down. Just my luck that my knee would start playing up today.

We ordered our drinks then sat in an awkward silence. I tried to ignore the dull throbbing pain in my knee, but it must have shown on my face or something.

"Are you okay?" Paul asked, breaking the silence.

"Yeah, my knee’s just hurting a bit. It’s been pretty awful today." Paul glanced at the walking stick which had been a great toy for him and Mikey the previous night.

"Look," he said as our drinks arrived. "I hope you don’t mind me asking you to meet me, but I wanted to talk to you about something."

This surprised me. "Um, no. Not at all. What’s up?"

"I feel really bad about last night, when we were playing around and joking about your knee." He was looking at the table.

"Oh. I told you last night that it was okay. I know that you were just kidding around."

"Yeah, I know. But I remember the look on your face. You looked ... I don’t know ... almost scared. Your face went really white." He finally looked up. "Something that we said really upset you."

"I told you, it’s okay. Forget it." This was starting to make me uncomfortable. "Do you go to this much trouble to apologise to everyone that you think you’ve upset?"

Paul laughed. "Nah, if I did that I’d be meeting people twenty four hours a day. I’d never get a break!"

"So why are you doing this now?" I really was a bit confused.

"Well I figured that you were a friend of Tim’s, so I’d better" he joked. "Actually it’s because I usually don’t feel bad about upsetting people, but I was last night. So I really wanted to make sure you knew I was sorry."

"Well I do, and it’s fine. Thanks." I gave the cup in front of me my full attention, stirring the foam into the cappuccino. When I looked up Paul was looking at me.

"If you don’t mind my asking, what did you do to your knee? It looks like a pretty nasty injury."

"Yeah, it is pretty bad. It’s also a long story."

Paul took the hint and started talking about a band he saw the other day. For a long time we talked about different bands and music that we used to listen to. He was suitably disgusted when I told him about my teenage fascination with the Uncanny X Men.

"I had better get going," I said looking at my watch. It was nearly four, and I had told Scott that I wouldn’t be out too long.

"Yeah, okay. You’re coming to the show tomorrow aren’t you?"

"Yep. I told you that yesterday."

"Just checking. Are we still on for that drink afterwards?"

"Sure, provided there are no knee jokes" I teased.

"You have my word!" he said as we paid the check. He walked me to the bus stop and told me he’d see me tomorrow as I climbed the steps. As the bus pulled away I looked out the window, just in time to see Paul wave. I turned to look forwards, a smile on my face, thinking about how much I was looking forward to tomorrow night.

"Hi, I’m back" I called as I walked through the door.

"Why hello there!" Both Scott and Tim were sitting in the living room. As soon as they saw me they broke into giant grins.

"So where have you been?" Scott asked.

"I left a note, didn’t you get it?"

"Mmm ... but it didn’t really explain much" Scott said.

"Yeah, like who were you meeting?" Tim butted in.

"No one, just a sort of friend." I wasn’t sure if I should tell them the truth.

"His name wouldn’t start with Paul and end with McDermott would it?" Tim saved me the trouble of wondering.

"Yeah, so?" I really didn’t want to get into all of this. Luckily the phone rang. Scott got up to answer it and Tim went back to watching TV.

"Hello?" Scott said into the phone. "Oh hi ... yeah sure ... I’ll just get her for you. Sam, its Kelly."

I got up and he passed me the phone. "Hi Kel, how are you?"

"Not bad" came the reply. "How are things there going?"

"Great! You wouldn’t believe what’s happened!" I couldn’t wait to tell her.

"Yeah? I’d love to hear about it, but not right now. I only have a minute and something’s happened."

"What?" I asked. Something in Kel’s voice concerned me.

"Someone broke in to the flat. But before you panic, nothing was damaged or stolen."

"Then what did they want?" I asked.

"Umm ..."

"Kelly, what aren’t you telling me?"

"I know who it was."

"Who? Did you call the police?" Scott and Tim were watching me, curious looks on their faces.

"It was Steve." When I heard this my good knee collapsed and I sank into the nearest chair. Scott rushed to help me.

"What did he want?" I asked. I listened to Kelly explain things, growing sicker by the minute.

"So he knows where I am and what I’m doing?" I could hardly hold the phone properly my hand was shaking so badly.

"Okay ... I will ... Bye." I hung up and held my head in my hands.

"Sam, what’s wrong?" Tim asked. I decided it was time to let him in on the truth and told him the story of Steve.

"And now he knows where I am ." I looked at Scott. "He left Adelaide on a plane this morning. He’s on his way here." With that I burst into tears.