Sherry never seemed to have a boyfriend in the normal sense of the word, her relationships that she did have with boys never lasted very long. Maybe this was because of what happened when she was fourteen or maybe it was the result of her illness, the end result was the same. Sherry felt lonely and unloved most of the time.

There was one exception, an older man called Dougie. Dougie was different in that he had endless patience with Sherry, he would not get mad at her when she was unreasonable or upset and I think most important of all, he would never judge or criticise her. This formed the basis of what turned out to be Sherry's longest relationship. The fact that Dougie was nearly seventy years old never worried Sherry or made their relationship any less happy. Dougie was good for Sherry. Dougie was not a selfish man he did his utmost best to make sherry happy, he even took her on a Caribbean cruise to see the eclipse of the sun.

But just like all other aspects of Sherry's life the dark clouds soon started to amass here as well. This time there was no one to blame, it was just a very cruel quirk of nature, what Dougie always thought were the pains of getting old turned out to be cancer! He was in the latter stages of prostate cancer and it was terminal. I don't think Sherry ever knew about the gravity of his condition, he kept things to himself and did not like to worry her.

The latter stages of cancer are painful, no that's not the right word agonising is more correct. Dougie could not get the pain relief he needed from his doctor as he was not in hospital. He had started to use street drugs to control he pain, Dougie had been taking heroin for a number of years. He was not an addict and his pain was well controlled but there was a problem coming that Dougie did not see.

Street drugs vary in purity from day to day this makes dosing difficult, if you don't take enough you still have your pain, take too much and the centres of your brain that control breathing are suppressed. With heroin these two doses are close together.

Dougie's new supply of drugs was of greater purity than he expected and he died just around the time that Sherry was transferred to Guild lodge.