Watch Kit as he dons the conquering hero cape.

Kit was in a prodigious good mood.

Despite crappy traffic on the motorway and the drudge of the final haul across country roads broken from the wet winter, he felt immense. It had been a long month. Splitting the Italy job over three visits to accommodate the disaster with David had more than trebled the challenge, and work at home was backlogged from the incursions Elsa had made into his schedule. Still it was done, Italy, ticked, David, ticked, the children, ticked, Elsa, never ticked but under control, and Isabelle was back, back three days and back for good, and all was set for a glorious weekend at Riverdell, where he might, just, tick off a fifteen-year itch.

He cruised down the narrow road to Riverdell, cautious of witless pedestrians thinking the road was a footpath. The open gates let him swerve unhindered onto the gravel, savouring the satisfying crunch. Elsa opined that he ought to grow out of it, but knowing it irritated her fuelled the urge.

Kit stepped from the car grateful for the chance to stretch. Moist earth and stone and moss gleaming around him and the pebbles on the driveway glinting. The whole world seemed happy with him. The old magnolia looked fit to bursting and he grinned in sympathy. He felt arousal in his sinews, his bones, his toes, and twisted his neck back and forth to loosen the muscles.

Straightening his car-rumpled shirt, enjoying its thinness over his chest muscles, the fine cotton emphasising his contours without being vulgar, he pulled his pressed trousers into line. He checked the smoothness of his chin, raked a hand through his hair, flicked the peaked strands into place, glanced in the blacked-out glass of the car and admired the careful highlights. His hairdresser was a skilful fucker, worth the extra it had cost him for an appointment at no notice. Grey flecks might be cool these days but they both agreed the sharper blonde emphasised the odd combination of his brown eyes better. You had to count your genetic gifts after all. Six years ago, he’d hurdled the forty barrier without a hiccup. He had to go a tad more often to touch up the encroaching grey, his shampoo now contained every version of ketoconazole legally available and his daily work out had adapted to keep that extra definition whilst pandering to the threat of back pain. But, all in all, he was in peak form. The envy of many his friends battling baldness, greyness, flabbiness, and it felt good, real good, and today, it felt immense.