Interactions - A Sample

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RACT I O N S

Ruth Rendell Toby Young Nell Dunn Seamus Heaney Alan Ayckbourn Max Stafford-Clark Lolita Chakrabarti Alan McCormick Christian Cook Adrian Henri Emily Peddler Vicky Paine Pete Barrett

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IN RACT I O

Roast Books

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A Collection

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Miracle Seamus Heaney

Not the one who takes up his bed and walks But the ones who have known him all along And carry him in – Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deep-locked In their backs, the stretcher handles Slippery with sweat. And no let up Until he’s strapped on tight, made tiltable And raised to the tiled roof, then lowered for healing.

Be mindful of them as they stand and wait For the burn of the paid-out ropes to cool, Their slight light-headedness and incredulity To pass, those ones who had known him all along.

This hardback edition first published in 2012 by Roast Books Ltd. www.roastbooks.co.uk Individual Contributions © by the contributor Selection © by Roast Books Ltd. “Miracle” by Seamus Heaney. First published in Human Chain, by Faber & Faber, 2010 “Catamount” by Ruth Rendell. First published in Piranha to Scurfy by Hutchinson, 2000

The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this Work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 9781906894115

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from Roast Books Ltd.

Illustrations: Rachana Jadhav Cover Illustration: Rachana Jadhav Cover Design: Roast Books Ltd.

CONTENTS Introduction Vegas The Sacred Elephant Where does the time go?

Long and the short of it The singer Fairacres haikus Angel speak Family ties Patience is a virtue Granny Gram Selected poems Catamount Random thoughts I slept on boards Underwater Saint Jade Follow me Stroke Haikus The hit Facing East Flames The overcoat

Nirjay Mahindru Toby Young Alan McCormick Alan McCormick Max Stafford-Clark Annabel Bosanquet Fairacres Active Voices Group Lolita Chakrabarti Lolita Chakrabarti Lolita Chakrabarti Lolita Chakrabarti Adrian Henri Ruth Rendell Alan Ayckbourn Grayham West Emily Peddler Emily Peddler Emily Peddler Nirjay Mahindru Manor Garden Group Pete Barrett Christian Cook Vicky Paine Nell Dunn

6 17 27 35 45 50 52 55 63 71 79 86 93 106 108 111 119 127 132 134 137 143 149 155

INTRODUCTION The actor surveys the stroke ward. There are twenty-three beds and today they are all full. The speech therapists have left a list of patients that would benefit from a reading and the actor makes a note of the names. The sea of faces on the ward are as diverse as the emotions those faces reflect.

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A patient in the corner opens his eyes, looks at her and closes his eyes again. The actor decides to approach him. She sits next to his bedside and introduces herself. There is no verbal reply from the patient, but a shy smile slips out inquisitively. The actor scans the Get Well cards and notices they have a common theme; they all have something to do with gardening. The actor is curious and starts to make conversation around the subject of gardening, asking whether he’d watched the Chelsea flower show.

The patient’s eyes light up. He is relieved he is not undergoing yet another battery of medical questions, tests, more tests and more prodding. Here in front of him is an actor that wants to talk to him, to interact with him. He wonders if he’s seen her on the telly.

The actor tells the patient that she has a super story about the gardening in her library which she will read to him. She proceeds to open her book.

She doesn’t just “read” the story; she brings it to life, with the accents, the characterisation, the dramatic pauses, always making eye contact with him, always ensuring they go on the journey together.

He remembers the past now, and words come back to him that were not there before. The story brings pictures to his mind’s eye. He sees radiant lilies, petunias, roses, and ornamental grasses swaying in the wind. Memories come flooding back and once the story has finished he shares some of his memories, recalling the tall foxgloves of the Jemima Puddle Duck story. He tells her some of his experiences as a parks attendant.

‘Thank you so much for coming and reading to me. That was better than four months’ medicine.’

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Cinderella When InterAct Reading Service was founded in 2000 by theatre director Caroline Smith, one of its primary goals was that one day it should be seen as an important service working in conjunction with speech, language and occupational therapists in hospital stroke wards.

In the early days of the charity’s work, the arts in relation to health matters were looked upon rather condescendingly as ‘something awfully nice to do’ but largely as an addendum to the ‘proper stuff of medicine’. Since then, opinions have changed quite dramatically. Today, the arts in health are regarded as a valuable asset in improving the overall wellbeing of a patient, and clinicians are now far more sensitive to the whole concept of emotional wellbeing in relation to physical improvement. Indeed, the whole idea of the “patient experience” now takes centre stage for hospital practitioners, and anecdotal evidence is highly prized, where once it was frowned upon as having less value than clinical evidence.

‘I think it’s wonderful – makes you realise you’ve still got your marbles!… I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.’

Patient, Royal Sussex Hospital, Brighton

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Compared to other conditions, stroke has always been a “Cinderella”, missing the proper recognition that it deserves from the NHS. It was only recently, for example, that it was necessary for hospitals to have dedicated stroke units as a requirement of law. However, too many hospitals satisfied the legal requirement simply by placing the words “stroke ward” onto a general ward, whilst lacking the necessary staff with the requisite skill-set to deal with stroke effectively.

The perception of stroke in the minds of the general public is an issue that still needs to be challenged today. Many people assume that it’s only the elderly that suffer strokes. In fact, every year in the UK, over 1000 babies will have a stroke. Jon Barrick, Chief Executive of the Stroke Association, told me this shocking statistic just a few weeks after I had taken over from Caroline as Chief Executive of InterAct, following her retirement. Stroke can affect anyone, of any age or background.

Adaptive Re-wiring Active stimulation is the cornerstone of our work with stroke patients. By interacting with them on the hospital ward, we stimulate the neural networks of the brain, stimulate conversation, stimulate memory, and stimulate language recall.

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‘The more I listened, the more I felt my language improve.

I’d only have to hear a forgotten word once for it to then relodge in my memory (or at least that’s how it seemed to me). The more I could listen, the more I could learn.’

Patient, Lewisham Hospital, London

The phrase “adaptively re-wiring” has been coined to reflect the idea that the damaged brain can, via stimulation, find new neural pathways to overcome or bypass those damaged by trauma, and our goal is to help such re-wiring. Our work has also been shown to alleviate the depression that so often accompanies stroke. A professor of stroke, Lalit Kalra, said that in a 24-hour cycle, the total intervention a stroke patient receives is about 1 hour, so for nearly 23 hours they have no interaction with others unless the are visited by friends or family.

In the latest research scientists acknowledge that post-stroke depression can have an adverse effect on cognitive function, functional recovery and also survival after a stroke, placing the emphasis on diagnosis and treatment.

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Our actors work on the wards for two hours per session, and in many hospitals we do three or four sessions per week. At present the charity reads in 22 hospitals, 15 of which are in London. In our last year we delivered over 15,000 individual readings to nearly 5,000 people.

‘I was expecting an enema and you gave me a very enjoyable twenty minutes.’

Patient, National Hospital, London

Actors Not all actors are suited to working in the sensitive environment of a hospital ward. Actors with a “look at me” mind set are not for us. An InterAct Reading Service actor should regard themselves as a conduit, a facilitator helping the person in the spotlight, the person centre stage, the patient. We only use professional actors because they have the dramatic skills to hold the concentration of somebody who is not only unwell but also in a hospital environment. They have the vocal stamina to sustain long periods of reading, the antennae to respond to unspoken reactions from the patients, and the technique to read for lengthy periods of time and bring stories to life dramatically.

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‘I looked forward to the visits of the InterAct readers and to the variety of stories they had to offer. It was made more interesting through the skill with which they told their stories. As my speech was affected by my stroke, it was very useful to have conversations with the readers and encouraging when they noticed my speech had improved.’

Patient, Clayponds Hospital

Stories If the actors are the heartbeat of our work, then stories are the blood supply, the ‘good food for the brain’ described by one stroke patient.

It is critical that each patient is given material that will provide optimum stimulation to them personally. For this reason, InterAct developed a library of short stories, reflecting a plethora of genres to accommodate the tastes of a varied population. Our stories are too short to reflect the reality of the concentration spans of stroke patients and it is essential that what is read to a stroke patient is something of interest to that person, rather than something of interest to the actor delivering the service.

We have commissioned many stories over the years and in 2008 we launched our first short story competition. In 2010 the second competition carried Ruth Rendell’s name, and the quality and quantity of entries has increased dramatically ever since then. We’re delighted that previous winners of the competition are published here in this anthology alongside the most recent winner of the 2012 Ruth Rendell

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Short Story Competition. We are also extremely grateful for the donations of stories and poems given to us by Ruth Rendell, Nell Dunn,Toby Young, Seamus Heaney, the late Adrian Henri, and the vivid testimony of stroke as described by Alan Ayckbourne and Max Stafford-Clark, both patrons of the charity. The material in this anthology is diverse because the range of patients we meet everyday are diverse in their personalities, backgrounds and tastes. We had reached the point, after more than ten years of building up the library material, of feeling that there was an impressive spectrum of contemporary writing which we wanted to share in this collection.

The Future for InterAct Ten years ago it was not uncommon for stroke patients to spend several months in hospital. Today, the reality of rehabilitation is that the hospital stay is more often weeks rather than months. Rehabilitation is now centered in the community and the work of the charity has to reflect that reality.

We are now looking to follow patients along the integrated care pathway, from rehab unit to stroke club, and then later, possibly, to a community setting where we can encourage stroke survivors to find their own creativity. We read in over 50 stroke clubs. In one such club a pilot project was conducted entitled Active Voices, designed to encourage stroke survivors to work with actors over a 10-week period to create their own audio pieces. The key notion was that it was the stroke survivors that would be artistically creative, with the actors acting as facilitators and recording the resulting work on dictaphones.

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What came out of the project was a diversity of wonderful projects. Some used the sessions as oral testimony, to talk about themselves and their experiences of the Blitz. ‘Others used the sessions to develop a “Murder Mystery”; still others to create a musical, all different but all designed to empower the stroke survivor creatively, to move away from being fixated around notions of permanent dependency. We witnessed stroke survivors creating their own haikus, beautiful short sentences capturing the essence of feeling, an element of their personalities and we felt their simplicity was worthy of publication. The resultant audio pieces were edited and can be listened to on our website.

It is Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar named Desire who utters the immortal lines ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers’ and in many ways such is the position of many stroke patients in hospitals when they encounter an InterAct reader. Such is the feeling of those of us that work in the office when a cheque arrives from a patient or their relative, impressed, thankful and grateful for the work that we do. We are not in receipt of any government funding, we do not have millions to spend; so for us, every penny really does count,

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The actors are the heartbeat of the work we do, they represent the coal face, but every good charity is usually blessed with a wonderful set of patrons and trustees and we are no exception. Our patrons include actor Richard Briers, theatre director Max Stafford-Clark, writer Ruth Rendell, who has also been kind enough to put her name on our biennial short story competition, the multimedia artist Mark Ware, playwright Alan Ayckbourn, and writer Alan Bleasedale. Each of them in their own way has provided great support for our work. The same is true of our wonderful trustees led by Chairman Ian Talbot OBE.

‘This is therapeutic. And it’s a bonus having all the accents thrown in. This is the only thing that keeps me happy.’

Patient, Mile End Hospital, London

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and the kindness of strangers has moved us onward and upward.

We owe a huge debt of thanks to everyone that has supported us, and we are especially grateful to the marvellously talented Faye Dayan and all at Roast Books who have been so kind to the charity and who have helped turn our dream of an anthology into a reality. We are also grateful to the work of Rachana Jadhav for her amazing illustrations.

We thank those that contributed to this anthology and we thank you for buying this book and making your own contribution to the work that we do.

Nirjay Mahindru, Chief Executive, InterAct Reading Service

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VEGAS Toby Young

Jesus H Christ! Talk about a hard ass! Getting his ex-wife to agree to let him take his son out on the boat had been like negotiating the Camp David Agreement. So what if he’d once been busted for DUI? That was, like, ten years ago – and everyone knows that driving a boat and driving a car are not the same thing. Who doesn’t get drunk on a boat? In any case, that wasn’t the issue. He was in the programme now – she knew that. He was more than 90 days sober.

She was basically saying, ‘You’re a deadbeat who can’t be trusted to take care of his own son.’ How was that supposed to make him feel?

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Billy Ray had met Kelly on the casino floor of Caesar’s Palace eight years ago. It was the old story: he was working as a Blackjack dealer, she was a cocktail waitress. She was 19 at the time and as cute as a bug’s ear. Fresh out of Kentucky, straight to Vegas, do not pass Go. Every dealer in there wanted to nail her, but he had a secret weapon: tequila. He had her doing slammers with him on their first date. She’d moved into his trailer the following day.

It hadn’t worked out, obviously. He blamed it on the “personality change” that occurred when Billy Ray Jr. arrived. One minute she was a fun-loving party girl, the next she was a sour-faced scold. And about 90 pounds heavier! It was as if she’d aged 20 years in one night. Which, when you come to think of it, made her the same age as him – but they weren’t in the same place, emotionally. She wanted to settle down and start a family and she was always on at him to get a civil service job because of the benefits. Police officer, something like that. He didn’t tell her about the 18 months he’d served for possession of cocaine back in the 80s. He’d been caught with enough to put him away for 20 years, but he managed to cut a deal with the DEA. Basically, he gave up his supplier. They let him keep his boat too, even though they had every right to seize it.

“Amicable” would not be the word to describe Billy Ray and Kelly’s separation. She kicked him out when he rolled in drunk one night. It didn’t help that he smelled of cheap perfume. He blamed it on the pressure of suddenly having a family to support. He had to give up the trailer – his own trailer, goddamnit! – and start sleeping

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on the boat. It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, until he found an apartment, but that was over three years ago now. He still had a job as a Blackjack dealer – at the Luxor – but he had to commute an hour each day to Lake Mead where he kept the boat.

It was Billy Ray Jr.’s fifth birthday and Kelly had agreed to let him stay with him for the weekend. Up until now, he’d only ever taken his son out on day trips – Adventureland at Circus Circus, Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay – so this was a pretty big deal. Kelly knew there was no point in insisting that Billy Ray didn’t take the boat out because he’d only do it anyway. Any case, the boy wanted to go out on the boat. He’d been going on about it for six months.

It was hot by the time Billy Ray Jr. pulled up at Colville Bay Marina with his son sitting beside him in the pick-up. This was real heat, too – over a hundred degrees and it was only 9.30 am. It was going to get hotter. Lake Mead had been created when the Reclamation Bureau opened the Hoover Damn back in 1936 and it looked like what it was: an artificial lake in the middle of a desert. On every side, these volcanic rock formations jutted out of the earth – not mountains, exactly, more like pyramids. The whole area looked barren and inhospitable, like the surface of some alien planet. Whatever galaxy it was in, it was a lot closer to the sun than planet earth.

Billy Ray’s boat was called Crystal, but apart from that there was little to identify her as a drug dealer’s boat. She looked more like a floating trailer home: an oblong box that contained a bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchenette. She was driven by two engines, one in

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each pontoon, and she was built when gas was cheap and plentiful.

When he’d bought her in 1982 it had cost him less than a hundred dollars to fill her up. Now it cost around $800.

Billy Ray Jr. was pretty excited to be on the boat. It may have been a leaky old barge, but he didn’t know that. He ran around, pulling stuff out of closets, pressing every button he could. He sat up behind the wheel and Billy Ray felt one of those surges of emotion that almost knock you off your feet. He loved the boy, that was for sure. Loved him more than anything else in the world. He and Kelly had that in common, at least.

He decided to take the boat over to Sandy Cove, a swimming beach he knew of about a mile from the Marina. On the way, he smoked a little grass – not enough to get wasted, just to mellow out.

Being with the boy could be stressful – he asked so many Goddamn questions! – and it usually went a lot easier if he was stoned.

Sandy Cove looked different from how he remembered it. What should have been a beach looked kind of messy, like someone had scattered dirt all over it. Had there been a rainstorm since he was last here? A mudslide? Whatever, they could still tie her up here and go for a swim.

‘Junior,’ said Billy Ray, ‘you wanna help me tie up the boat?’

‘I guess,’ he said.

‘Don’t you worry. There ain’t nothing to it. You just find a big old rock and wrap this rope around it.’

He handed him one of the two bowlines, showed him how to tie

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a knot and then told him to jump off the front of the boat onto the beach. The weed was really beginning to kick in now. He felt higher than he’d expected to, but it wasn’t nothing he couldn’t handle.

Then a weird thing happened. Billy Ray Jr. hit the ground and just sort of kept on going. It wasn’t sand at all, but mud, and he was in it right up to his knees. Billy Ray began to laugh – it looked pretty funny – and told his son to get out of there and back on the boat.

But try as he might, Billy Ray Jr. couldn’t seem to get his legs out.

When he tried pushing down with his hands to get some leverage, his hands just sank into the mud, too.

‘Dad? Can you help me?’

Billy Ray’s laughter died in his throat. This was actually pretty serious. What if his son didn’t stop sinking? He felt a sudden spurt of panic that quickly spread to the rest of his body. The warm, fuzzy feeling he’d had as a result of smoking the joint seemed to curdle and turn sour.

‘Don’t worry, son. Daddy ’ll get you out of there.’

His first impulse was to jump overboard and try and pull him out, but what if he sank himself ? Then they’d both be up the creek.

There had to be an alternative.

He had an idea.

‘Okay, Billy Ray, this is what I want you to do. Take that rope and fasten it round your waist real tight using that knot I just showed you how to tie. I’m gonna pull you out of there.’

‘Okay, Dad.’

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Billy Ray Jr. looped the rope under his arms and then tied what looked like a pretty good knot. By now he was up to his waist.

Billy Ray pulled the rope until it was taut. It seemed okay.

‘Grip the front of the rope with both hands, Junior. I’ll have you out of there in no time.’

Billy Ray heaved on the rope, but it was no good. It had the effect of pulling the boy forward so his top half was almost spread-eagled across the mud, but his bottom half remained stuck fast. He tried again, summoning all his strength, but still the boy wouldn’t move.

‘Hang on, son. I’m gonna try something else.’

He let the rope go slack, dashed back into the cabin and put both engines into reverse. If he wasn’t strong enough to pull the boy out, the boat sure would be. He tried to slow it down just before the rope became taut again, but he mistimed it and it jerked against the boy’s body, causing him to cry out. The boat bucked against the rope, swinging from side to side, and Billy Ray increased the power. Both engines were now engaged at full capacity.

Billy Ray Jr. started howling out in pain, but he managed to keep hold of the rope. Come on, thought his father. Just a few more seconds.

Sure enough, the boat started to inch backwards and, for a second, it looked as though it might work. But then Billy Ray noticed that the rope was slipping through his son’s fingers. Within moments, the loop was up and over his shoulders and the boy let go, causing the boat to shoot backwards in the water. Billy Ray stumbled forward and hit his head on the steering wheel.

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By the time he got the boat back to where it was, with its nose touching the beach, all he could see of Billy Ray Jr. was his head. He was tilting it back, trying to keep as much of his face out of the mud as possible. He had a minute, maybe two, and then he’d be gone.

What should Billy Ray do? He tried to fight the rising tide of panic, push it to one side so he could think clearly for a second.

Think. Think.

Nothing. All he could hear in his head were Kelly’s recriminations. This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been stoned out of your goddamned gourd, you stupid asshole. What kind of man are you? YOU KILLED YOUR OWN SON. He realised that this wasn’t Kelly’s voice, but the voice of his own conscience, chastising him. This episode would be the final proof that he was a complete failure as a human being. Indeed, everything seemed to be leading up to this point: it was a test – the ultimate test – and he’d failed. He’d killed the only thing in his life he’d every truly loved. He felt himself giving into despair, beginning to feel all the things he’d feel once his son was gone.

‘Dad,’ croaked Billy Ray Jr., his chin beginning to disappear beneath the mud. ‘Help me, Dad.’ Suddenly, he had a brainwave. He snatched the rope up out of the water, wrapped it round his waist half a dozen times, and then tied it up as tightly as he could. He glanced over at his son – only the tip of his nose was visible. He had to act fast. He ran back into the cabin, slammed both engines into reverse, then ran back out and

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leapt over the side. For a second he was in the air, his legs dangling beneath him, then he was in the mud up to his waist. By now, Billy Ray Jr. had vanished completely, and his father tried to feel around in the mud where he thought he’d been. He looked behind him – the boat was going backwards at quite a clip and he could see the rope being gathered up in the water. He only had a couple of seconds.

Then he felt an arm. He plunged forward, fighting as hard as he could to get closer to him, all the while sinking further and further.

He managed to get one arm round the boy’s waist, then another, and then link his fingers behind his back. He shut his eyes and bearhugged him as hard as he could, bracing himself for the sharp tug.

It was way more painful that he’d anticipated – he thought he was going to be sliced in two – but the jolt was enough. He flew out of the mud, clutching his son to his body, like a cork popping out of a champagne bottle. They bounced once and then hit the water, plunging down and then resurfacing. Now Billy Ray had a second problem; how to keep his son’s head above water until the boat came to a halt. Lake Mead was about half a mile wide at this point and it would be a good ten minutes before they reached the other side. Yet he couldn’t simply let Billy Ray Jr. go. The boy couldn’t swim.

He managed to twist round until he was on his back, manoeuvring his son so he was resting on his stomach. By leaning forward as best he could, trying to force his head up, he was able to keep his mouth and nose out of the water. His son had been unconscious

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when he pulled him out of the mud, but the spray of the water against his face brought him round. He looked up at his father and Billy Ray tried to give him a reassuring smile.

‘It’s okay. We’re gonna be okay.’

Just then, the boat’s engines sputtered and stopped. She’d run out of gas! Billy Ray couldn’t help laughing. He’d forgotten to fill her up before they set off and for once his incompetence had worked to his advantage. He swam back to the boat with Billy Ray Jr. still lying on his stomach and then managed to clamber up the little ladder at the stern, hoisting his son up behind him. They both collapsed on the deck, exhausted.

‘Jesus, Billy Ray. For a second there, I thought I’d lost you. I couldn’t think what to do.’

His son scrambled over and hugged him.

‘I knew you’d think of something, Dad.’ Tears welled up in Billy Ray’s eyes.

‘I’m so glad you’re okay,’ he said, squeezing him tightly. ‘I love you so much, you have no idea.’

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