COMING TO TERMS
aka Dishonourable Discharge
Conceived and written by Phutty
Script extracts from Too Little, Too Late
by David 'I'm not gay, can you tell?' Hoskins
"Juicy giant peach" reference courtesy Grant/Naylor
 (c)1998/99 Thames Television Ltd all rights reserved etc


Being a bit of a dick, Rodney Skase sauntered down the
hospital corridor feeling  like he ought to say something
emasculating. He had, after all, just interviewed  an
assault victim who wasn't exactly straight; such a
situation, threatening to  his sense of heterosexual self,
demanded that he defend his own sexuality with  an
opprobrious remark. The fact that the man he was about to
slight was not  actually the man he and Geoff Daly had
spoken to was not important. It served to  reinforce his
own rectitude in the sexual stakes, and that was the whole
point.  At least, that was the point so long as there was
someone else to hear it.

     'Closet gay,' he pronounced as though denouncing it as
two sins instead of  one. 'He has to be a closet.'
Daly was walking slightly ahead of him, so  Rod couldn't
see his reaction to this revelation. If he had, he might
have  described it as neutrality bordering on bemusement,
but at what he probably  wouldn't have been able to
comprehend. So he decided that he would say it again,  to
be sure that he was giving the right impression.

     'The one decent chance we have of a witness, and he
turns out to be a  closet.' That has sounded all right
hadn't it? He'd better not say too much in  case Daly
started wondering. He settled on shaking his head and
sighing somewhat  melodramatically through his nose, the
warm air brushing the bristles on his  unshaven top lip. He
quite liked this new look he'd found in that men's magazine
- which no one would ever find out he had even thought of
touching, let alone  reading. Well, looking at the
pictures.

     Daly meanwhile hadn't been taking a lot of notice of
what Rod was saying,  or how he said it, or how often. Rod
would have noticed this himself if he  hadn't been
concentrating so much on saying it in the first place, but
that was  Rod for you. He didn't even realise that his
senior officer had misgivings about  where the case was
going, which was pretty much nowhere, when Daly replied
with  a little shake of the head.

     'There's no way he'll come forward.'

     'He can stay in the closet as far as I'm concerned.'
Once more couldn't  hurt. 'All he has to do is give a
name.'

     Daly wore a good-natured smile which Rod did see this
time, because Daly  had turned slightly to address him.
That is, he assumed it was good-natured. It  was that nice
sort of smile that creased his face up into wrinkles and
planted  crow's feet by his steel blue eyes.

     'Oh yeah, and what are you gonna say?' Daly began.
'"Excuse me, are you the  closet homosexual who witnessed
the assault outside the Watershed last night?"'

     Rod beamed, although he wouldn't admit to himself why.
It wasn't the funny  nasal voice Daly had put on, since if
he'd thought about it he might have  perceived the
inconspicuous mockery. Rather he adopted a sort of
vainglorious  haughtiness, preening his tie with the palm
of his hand in the same way he did  every time he thought
he was about to score a point. More often than not he just
made a fool of himself.

     'There are ways of doing it, and there are ways of
doing it.' And didn't he  know it.

     Daly laughed.



'What have you got?'

     Rod turned around as Daly entered the CID office, a
frown creasing his  brow. It wouldn't do to be seen like
this for long - he had both his sexuality  and his suave
self-assurance to maintain - so he opted to spill the
beans.  Besides, events since the hospital had actually
taken him by surprise. A gay  policeman?

     'I'm not sure. It's odd.' Queer even. 'I just phoned a
mate of mine at  Barton Street. He reckons that a PC
arrived this morning with bruising to the  face and a split
lip.'

     Daly arched an eyebrow. 'Who is he?'

     'Well that's the funny thing.' Go away frown. 'It's
Paul Connick.'

     But Rod's frown wouldn't go away, as much because
Daly's brow seemed to  arch impossibly further into his
brush-forward hairline as for any other reason.  Like for
instance the fact that their closet homosexual policeman
witness was  turning out to be someone he had known for
quite some time. As it were.

     'Paul Connick? But he's a good mate of yours isn't
he?'

     At least Daly seemed taken aback, Rod thought. That
could work. No, hang  on; he must be thinking to himself,
if Paul's a mate of mine, why wouldn't I  know he was gay?
That's a point: why don't I know? Do I know? No, I don't
think  so. What does he mean by "good" mate? What do I say
now?

     'No, no! He's not a good mate.' Pause. 'I mean I know
him, yeah, but I  always thought he was alright.' That
should deal with the euphemisms and the  dodgy connections.
But I'd better make certain. 'He's married with kids and
everything. Obviously it can't be him.'

     Daly just looked at Rod, who was desperately trying to
be off-hand about  the whole thing. 'No?'



'No, I don't believe it.' Rod was stood outside the doors
of the Watershed,  still trying, in a manner of speaking,
to get his head around Paul Connick.  Geoff Daly's open-
mindedness appealed to him in lots of interesting and
sometimes scary ways, but right at the moment the
implications were kicking him  repeatedly in the nuts. Gay
bashing; gay policeman; gay retaliation; Rod Skase.  There
was something not particularly masculine missing from that
equation, so he  had to come up with something very
masculine indeed to back up his argument. 'He  plays Met
Police rugby.'

     Daly gestured towards the club's doors. 'Home from
home.'

     Rod laughed before he figured out what Daly was
getting at.



Later. Paul's confession in the little room at Barton
Street had dented Rod's  usually superb composure. He
hadn't been comfortable going up to someone he'd  been
friends with for ages and asking him whether he was in fact
a closet  homosexual in the first place; having it
confirmed was a double blow, something  he hadn't
experienced in a long time. (Not that sort, anyway.) But he
hadn't  even suspected. Then again, why should he? Fair
enough, the couple of times they  had gone to the gym
together Paul had looked at him in what he would otherwise
have considered disturbingly furtive ways, but he had done
the same. Guys did  that, didn't they? How big someone
else's knob was, and the way it sort of sat  there, on top
of his... well, that was just human nature. Nothing wrong
with  that. Nothing more to it, naturally.

     And so now Paul had given him a name, and everything
had changed, and Rod  knitted his brows in a frustration
born of not knowing how to deal with the  situation. It was
not something he'd had a lot of practice at. Well, not the
not-knowing-how-to-deal part. More the fact that a man he'd
thought was straight  up and down was standing before him
having just come out in the most ignominious  of fashions.
A man for whom parts of him stirred in alarming ways. His
violently  green shirt in his hands. His face a breath away
from his own. Eyes, right  there, swimming with emotions
his addled brain was struggling to identify. Then
something shifted below his waistline, and Rod determined
that a bit of distance  was required. Preferably more than
a couple of inches. He let Paul go and  summoned up some
practiced heterosexual disdain.

     'However you want to lead your life is entirely your
affair. If you wanna  go around...' Doing what you do, Rod
thought, endeavouring to avoid visualising  what that was
for fear of what it might arouse in himself. Images of
steam- filled change rooms and naked men entered his mind
regardless. 'Whatever. I'm  really not interested.' Much,
he might have added, although he wasn't sure why.  Really
he wasn't.

     'Hang on! You don't understand, Rod.'

     No, Rod didn't understand Rod. He wasn't understanding
much at all at the  moment. Which was probably the reason
he found the whole thing so unsettling.  Paul had a look on
his face that said "I need to tell you everything". Rod
didn't want to hear it, but he knew he was going to anyway.
Even so.       'Please, please, spare me this.'

     Paul was looking at him with longing in his eyes.
'Please, Rod!'

     Rod noticed and felt his heart melt.



As Daly walked back into the CID office for the second time
that day with Rod  Skase frowning after him, John Boulton
decided that his own incisive input into  the case was
warranted. He was of course insensitively heterosexual, and
felt  therefore that resorting to cliché in derision was
the thing to do. He didn't do  it because he needed to
affirm his own robust sexual identity; he was just a
little ginger-haired short arse.

     'Gay vigilantes? What did they do? Beat them into
submission with their  handbags?'

     Boulton evidently found this amusing, since he was
sniggering, and Rod was  certain that he would be
congratulating himself on its pithiness. But for some
reason it left Rod feeling strangely affronted. He didn't
understand why his  conversation with Paul Connick had made
him think... things. He couldn't figure  out why he wanted
to defend him, protect him. And yet seeing him, delicate
but  determined, brought out an affection in Rod which
Boulton's neanderthal outlook  simply offended. Daly at
least had the respect to keep his opinions to himself,
whatever they might truly be. No wonder Rod liked him.

     'No. It was baseball bats, as it happened,' he said,
suppressing the urge  to punctuate his response with the
words 'you pillock'.

     Boulton smirked. 'Oh, very butch.'

     Rod wondered what it would be like to castrate him
with piano wire.



Unnecessary, he concluded. Maybe that was Boulton's
problem: his eggs had no  yolk. Something he probably
discovered when losing his virginity to a cousin.  Yes,
that would be why he had to compensate by being such an
arse all the time.

     But Rod was standing beside the coffee machine now and
Gary McCann was  saying something to him. He reeled his
mind back in from elsewhere, which was  somewhere it had
been wandering to altogether too frequently, to hear what
the  hell he was talking about.

     'So you reckon it's a copper behind all this?'

     'Yeah.' Reckon, know, in it up to here. Whatever.

     'Well if Peters talks, he'll have his back right up
against the wall!'

     Rod had forgotten about the Watershed barman who would
probably drop Paul  in it, but the details of the case had
been slipping past him to some extent.  The whole thing had
escalated exponentially until it had come right back down
again and dumped itself on him, but his mind was focused on
Paul in all sorts of  ways he wasn't entirely comfortable
with. All the same, "shut up, Gary" was on  the top of his
list of important things to say. Instead the defensive
shields he  didn't know he had went slamming upwards.

     'At least he wasn't short of bottle though, was he? He
waded in four onto  one, Gary.'

     Gary was the first to see Paul Connick trudge self-
consciously up the  corridor towards them. Rod was taken
aback to begin with, wondering what Paul  would make of
what he was saying to Gary, but then surprised himself
further by  finding that it didn't bother him that much.
The creases in his brow thinned out  a little at the edges.

     Paul glanced up at him from beneath hooded eyes. 'Can
I have a word, Rod?'

     Something shot through Rod which made him look
directly at Gary; a sense of  having been caught out. The
lull in conversation as Rod's eyes darted backwards  and
forwards between officers made his colleague look at Paul
however, and Gary  chipped in out of embarrassment with the
type of rhetorical question most  inappropriate to the
situation.

     'You alright mate?'

     Paul looked at the scuff marks on the floor. Rod
looked at Paul looking at  the floor. Gary looked at Rod
looking at Paul. No one said anything for a  moment. Rod
felt his chest tighten.

     Gary spoke, ostensibly to Rod. 'I'll, er, see you
later.' Then he  disappeared.

     Paul and Rod's eyes locked.



'Look, Paul...'

     Rod had dragged Paul into the canteen by the arm. He
should have been  reluctant to be anywhere near the man in
the present circumstances, let alone  talk to him. Actual
physical contact with him was what could be described as
inappropriate at best, although "are you a total wanker or
what?" whistled  through his ears alongside
"repercussions". Either way it was electric, and  either
way he still didn't know what to say. The case was running
away with  itself and he was thinking less about it all the
time.

     'You told them?'

     Rod's brain snapped back to reality at the anxiety in
Paul's voice. It was  an accusation, yes, but to him it was
a slap in the face. Unaccountably, it  stung.

     'No, they worked it out for themselves Paul,' he
replied. Abruptly the  depth of the hole Rod had dug
himself into had become apparent. He felt like a  jilted
lover. 'I've been covering for you all afternoon, and I
really should not  be seen to be speaking to you right
now.'

     'Rod, I know I owe you an explanation.'

     'You're telling me!' Perhaps now was the time to
breathe in, take a step  back and look at it all a little
more objectively.

     'I only came to terms... with my... sexuality... over
the last few months.'

     Perhaps not then. Stirrings.

     'Once I accepted it I decided I couldn't go on living
a lie with Jane.'

     I really don't want to hear this. Not the broken home
bits, anyway. Well,  none of it. Do I? Do I? 'That's big of
you. Is there a point to all this?'

     Paul was sitting to the side of him now at one of the
tables. Rod had his  hands on the tabletop, though it was
on Paul's that he centred his attention.  They were
clenched into fists, trembling slightly and so close to his
own that  he could reach out and hold them with the
smallest movement if he wanted to.

     'I agreed to stay in the closet, let it lie. Then all
this happened.'

     Rod scrutinised the canteen neurotically. There were
about two other people  and they were facing away from him
on the other side of the room, but he was  sure that
somehow they were still watching him. Sitting there talking
to Paul. A  hand's breadth apart. 'You don't have to tell
me all this.'

     'No, Rod, I do. Because I've only just come to terms
with something else as  well.'

     Rod's heart missed a beat. He looked up into Paul's
face and found two  bright eyes reflecting his own. 'Yeah?
What's that then?' He was trying not to  sound
enthusiastic.

     Paul leant in towards him. He answered in a whisper
which told Rod that it  was going to be something he needed
- wanted even - to hear. 'The person I've  been in love
with all along.'

     He wouldn't let himself get too excited. Hang on...
why was he getting  excited at all? I'm not - you know, he
reminded himself. Yeah, Paul's a good- looking guy, I've
always liked him. Not liked him liked him. Just... liked
him.  Why am I getting so wound up?

     'Wait. No. No! You're not saying -'

     Paul grabbed Rod's hands, which, ironically, were now
trembling in the same  way that his own had been. 'Rod, it
could be so good between us! Just you and  me... and the
kids every other weekend. Imagine how happy we could be
together!'

     Rod disentangled himself from Paul's grasp and stood
up so fast that his  chair scraped noisily against the
floor, attracting the attention he had  studiously been
trying to avoid. He was frowning again. This whole thing
was  doing his head in. He stepped around behind Paul,
heading for the door, grabbed  him by the shirtsleeve and
dragged him across the floor. Pushing through the  double
doors out the back way of the canteen, he had no idea what
to say.



One thing stuck in Rod's mind though as he swung Paul
around in the seclusion of  the corridor outside.

     'You've got to be kidding me. Kids?'

     Paul had stooped to a whisper again, despite the fact
that no one else  could hear them. 'Remember those times in
the change rooms when I left my stuff  in your locker? I
did it so I could be near you Rod.'

     He was so close to him that Rod was breathing in the
sweet aroma of his  aftershave, and the honey smell of his
hair. 'Yeah, I remember.' You'd stand  over me naked as I
sat on the bench, he thought, and only realised he's said
it  out loud when Paul leaned in just that little bit
closer, trying to force him to  look at something other
than the floor.

     'And you'd do the same as you reached for your
jocks... there, right in  front of me.'

     Rod didn't understand immediately what the pressure
against his leg was. He  was desperately trying to get
thoughts out of his mind that involved Paul  dangling
before him. Just there. Glistening. Then he looked down and
saw that  Paul was just there, pressed against him. Well,
part of him; part of Paul that  Rod wasn't quite sure what
to do with, or about.

     'Paul. Paul, listen.' Rod forced himself to look the
man in the eyes. They  were the most beautiful things he
had ever seen. 'I'm not gay.'

     Paul grabbed Rod's hand, which was hanging impotently
by his side as though  unsure what to do with itself. 'And
I'm not straight. So what?'

     Rod simply didn't know what to say. He didn't even
know what he wanted to  say. But then he didn't get a
chance to say anything else much, because the door  to the
canteen - only a foot from where he was standing staring at
Paul - opened  unannounced and his heart stopped beating.
Gloria emerged and barely spared him  a glance, but Rod
felt like he was about to wet himself all the same. He
grabbed  Paul by the wrist again and lead him, hurriedly,
into the rec room.



It was empty. Well, of people.

     Let me just stand by this pool table, Rod thought to
himself. It's got  plenty of balls to go around. '"So
what", Paul? Don't you think that it makes a  diff-'

     Rod's tongue was still blabbering by the time Paul had
wrapped it up with  his own. Rod almost bit it off. The
only reason he didn't was because, for some  reason, it
felt right. This. This kiss. And suddenly, before he knew
what he was  doing, he was kissing Paul back.

     'Tell me now that it makes a difference, Rod.'

     Rod wondered why Paul had come up for air until he
kissed him again and  realised that it must have been like
having a giant fish sucking his face.  Still, it proves his
point, thought Rod, and not waiting for his brain to figure
out what his body was doing he dived straight back in.

     As play resumed in their impromptu game of tonsil
hockey, Rod felt Paul's  chin graze against his own like a
thousand jousting soldiers on a small hillock.  At that
touch he remembered that he had a pair of hands, which had
hitherto been  splayed uselessly on the green velvet beside
him in support. He brought them up,  somewhat uncertainly,
and ran them down Paul's shadowed face. He shuddered
inwardly at the five o'clock feel of his skin.

     Paul responded by bringing his own hands up to Rod's
neckline. He broke  free of the kiss and, with a silent
movement of his eyes, made it clear that  what he was
looking for was pink and soft and below the waistline, but
that he  was going to take his time in getting there. Rod
arched his head backwards then  as something warm and wet
licked its way along his frighteningly square chin,  past
his Adam's Apple and down to the point where his tie and
top button had  just been unfastened. Having become
forgetful of cliches by this stage, he let  out a little
moan.

     As more and more buttons on his fashionable and
expensive business shirt  popped open between Paul's
fingers, Rod leant back against the pool table again  and
ran his hands through his hair. His whole body twitched as
Paul centred on  his chest, tweaking his nodes and sopping
the thin brown hairs of his areolae  before snaking his
hands around his waist. And while all this was going on his
groin was pressed against Paul's sternum, affirming itself
in time to his  heartbeat.

     Another little moan escaped Rod's lips as Paul swirled
himself around his  belly button. It produced a rumbling in
his jocks which arrived at the same time  as a shift in the
textile of his trousers, and Rod snapped his head down to
look  at Paul, unaccustomed to the sense of guilt that came
with being premature. Not  that anything had escaped; he
was just getting excited. But the officer on his  knees
before him hadn't missed a beat: with one firm grab of
charcoal microfibre  he had gauged Rod's manhood and was
currently testing the fabric's resolve with  his teeth.

     Chow down on that, thought Rod, although another
thought had crossed his  mind (fleetingly) that having a
man with a split lip attached to his knob was  not entirely
sensible. But then the likelihood at this point of him
pointing  that out to Paul was about as high as him finding
himself naked in a Swedish  sauna with Geoff Daly,
regardless of the fact that this afternoon's events had
made that less of an impossibility than it seemed. Aware of
a fly being unzipped  at the edge of his perception, with
half his brain lost to the PC nuzzling his  nutsack below
and the other half struggling to keep up, Rod went in for a
bit of  self-analysis. He'd never thought of himself as
bowling from the pavilion end.  Yes, he had in all honesty
wondered about it. As an owner operator proficient at  the
five knuckle shuffle he'd thought about it often; tried to
imagine what it  would be like. And now a colleague was
licking his love eggs. Oh well. Back to  the job in hand,
then.

     As Rod's trousers fell about his ankles and he shucked
off his Y-fronts,  Paul started on him. Rod almost fell
over. Instead he laid his hands on Paul's  head to right
himself and, all at once, inadvertently, his firmness had
been  fully enclosed. Ripples erupted across his bare skin
as moist lips worked on him  like a hoover, enveloping his
shaft in an oral vacuum that left him literally  weak at
the knees. A brook of warm saliva ran down the
undercarriage to pool at  the centre of his masculinity,
and as his face screwed up in ecstacy Paul's  hands
abandoned his waist and moved around to his buttocks,
squeezing them  together to make one juicy, giant peach.
Inevitably, Rod moaned. And after a few  minutes of this he
was perilously close to popping his top.

     Paul obviously sensed this, because he pulled himself
clear of Rod's pork  sword with a slow sucking sound and
inched his way back up his chest with his  tongue. Rod had
to hand it to him: for a married closet policeman
homosexual he  certainly knew what to do with another guy's
knob. His own was then caught in a  temporary trouser press
as Paul regained his feet and kissed him again.  Temporary
because, as much as Rod may have been enjoying discovering
what he  tasted like from another man's mouth, another
man's eyes were telling him that  there was a lump in his
pants with his name on it.

     Rod took a deep breath and went down.



Elsewhere there was still an investigation going on, and
absolutely no one in  the station who may have been
picturing Rod Skase, without clothes on, on his  knees, in
the rec room. Rather, Jack Meadows was probing Peters, one
of John  Boulton's clutchbag-wielding warrior queens. In a
purely investigative sense, of  course. And all sorts of
things were coming out.



But back to Rod, who was probing his own fairy with gay
abandon. He wasn't  surprised about that anymore; he was
simply wondering how he had gone on for so  long without a
bag of nuts to satisfy him.

     He'd found Paul's chest altogether too fascinating.
Except for the fact  that he was no good at sewing buttons
he would have ripped that cheesecloth  right off, but as it
was he had found it more arresting to reveal a little bit
of body hair at a time. The man was covered in it, and
compared to his own  alabaster complexion Rod thought it
much more masculine and, more importantly,  attractive.
Especially an entire torso of it, once the shirt had been
pushed  back over the shoulders and fallen to the floor. He
had begun by merely running  his fingers through it,
circling but never quite touching the nipples. It was  less
of the wiry forest of its appearance and more a soft plaid
of black and  brown and bronze reflected in the half-light
of the room, covering his chest and  abdomen, running along
his collarbone and weaving its way down his arms. The
caressing didn't last long, however. Like a child at a
funfair bobbing for  apples, Rod had hastily immersed
himself in it, drubbing it with his tongue,  kneading it
with his hands. Occasionally he remembered to breathe.

     Eventually the pressure of a heaving pair of trousers
became too much, and  Rod was honour-bound to give as good
as he got. Having removed the obstacles in  his path with
trembling hands, nervous in anticipation, he pulled Paul's
jocks  clean down his hairy legs. The enormity revealed to
him, far from making him  question his disposition, only
cemented it. Gobbling it up was now placed at the  very top
of the agenda.

     Flanking Paul's tool though were two of the furriest
gooseberries Rod had  ever seen. He simply had to have
them. Ignoring the pulsing love sausage that  slapped
against his cheek, he honed in on the hirsute orbs dangling
between  Paul's legs - which he had considerately spread
wider for ease of access. Rod  wasn't quite sure what he
was meant to do with them once he had them, but  whatever
he was doing must have been right because he felt a shiver
run through  Paul that made his own body quake in sympathy.
Kneeling on the floor, legs  akimbo.

     It was basically the same sort of scenario as has
occurred a few minutes  earlier, only this time Rod's hand
was on the pump. Gripping so tightly that he  relinquished
his hold on Paul's vessels, drew a line through their soft
folds  and made his way along the shaft to his bobby
helmet. Pulling back the hood of  the purple-headed love
soldier, he barely paused before devouring it hungrily.  It
was, if anything, bigger than it looked, so he almost
choked on it.  Determined not to make such an embarrassing
sexual faux pas, he went about  things a bit more
reasonably and found that, in fact, he wasn't so bad at it.
Paul might have agreed, but was too busy having his knob
shined.

     Rod's hands moved automatically to the tenderness of
Paul's behind,  arriving at the tradesman's entrance of
their own accord. As he continued to  digest Paul on one
side he investigated him on the other, surveying his love
tunnel with slick digits that thrusted in time to the
movement of his lips. One  poke too many though was all
that it took, and Paul retrieved himself mere  moments
before plastering Rod with his stickyness and an
accompanying,  obligatory moan. He remained there, hands
full, until Rod stood up. At which  point he proceeded to
recover his deposit with long lapping strokes of his
tongue.

     Rod felt somehow cheated by this in spite of the fact
that such an erotic  act was driving him closer to home
anyway. So while his brain was preoccupied  with his own
impending release and wasn't thinking about things like
nasty viral  infections, he launched into a kiss which
might otherwise have been classified  as violent in its
intensity and claimed Paul's produce as his own. Mind you,
Rod  conceded, it was a two-way process. In the midst of
which he himself climaxed  rather spectacularly.

     Drawing breath, Rod looked down at Paul's stomach. It
was like a white  Christmas in the Black Forest; a sticky
mess, but somehow beautiful. Sécrétions  d'amour. Something
clicked in him; it didn't need words. Neither of them had
spoken the whole time they had been entwined, unless
'ohhhhh' and 'ooooh'  counted. No, it was more than that,
and as his and Paul's eyes locked again he  knew, finally,
what it was. He felt like the little boy who had just
vomited all  over the rollercoaster but desperately wanted
to go again; despite himself, he  hadn't wanted something
so much in his whole life.

     'The kids. Every other weekend you said, right?'



It was never going to be quite that simple, though. The
case that both of them  had entirely forgotten about was
about to catch up with them, and their world  was set to
come crashing down around them. Well, that's probably an
overly  melodramatic interpretation of subsequent events;
suffice it to say that the  only discharge Paul Connick
would encounter as a result of the affair would be a
dishonourable one.

     Rodney Skase never did love again.