Can i borrow twenty quid

Daniel, can I borrow your phone? Catherine, can I borrow your micrometer? Actually, can I borrow your phone for a second? Flanders, can I borrow the camcorder? Sweetheart, can I borrow your doll? Jool, can I borrow that pulse pistol? Morgan, can I borrow your T-shirt? So, can I borrow your shoes? Listen, can I borrow your suitcases?

Jerry, can I borrow your car? Mum, can I borrow 20 quid? Janet, can I borrow a pen? Rube, can I borrow your truck? Dude, can I borrow this? Earl, can I borrow your paper? Newsome, can I borrow your phone? She took up a post as teacher and senior housemistress at a school for girls in Bath, which meant a lot more responsibility and longer hours. It was agreed that their father Lawrence, a civil engineer working in London, would stay at the family home in Reading during the week and spend weekends in Bath.

Because Elizabeth had responsibility for 65 girls during the evenings and many weekends, the twins were frequently left to their own devices. By 16, the boys had fallen in with a rough crowd and were smoking increasing amounts of cannabis as well as taking ecstasy and speed.

With hindsight, I realise I was so busy looking after the girls at school that I was neglecting my own sons. Simon got a job as an estate agent, Nick moved into bar management, and both appeared to be doing well. Yet by 18 the twins were smoking cannabis daily and taking ecstasy, acid and cocaine at weekends. I believed I would get him help from some sort of clinic and it would all be fine.

She asked him whether Nick, who by now was living with a girlfriend, was involved with heroin, but Simon denied it. It was three years before she discovered the truth - Nick and his girlfriend were also addicts and all three were injecting.

So began a terrible, destructive cycle lasting six years, during which Elizabeth would frantically try to help Simon and Nick to come off drugs and then end up paying for heroin when they failed to stick with their rehab. Deciding that NHS waiting lists were too long, she found a clinic in Slovakia where addicts could detox. Tony and Elizabeth both cashed in all their savings to pay for treatment in UK rehab units, but the twins were repeatedly drawn back into drugs.

Throughout this time, Elizabeth continued to hold down her job; her school colleagues and friends had no idea of the turmoil in her private life. Her only lifeline was a weekly counselling session organised through her GP, which allowed her to talk about feelings she suppressed the rest of the time.

From the moment Elizabeth told him that the boys were addicted, he broke off all contact with them. I was giving the boys thousands of pounds to pay off dealers who threatened to break their legs. Simon repeatedly tried to come off drugs, but Nick would always break his willpower - once by actually handing him a syringe when his brother had been clean for three months. Then, in the wake of the needle incident in the car, Tony presented his wife with an ultimatum: the boys or him. When Simon called me at work one day, I put the phone down on him.

They fell out because Nick wanted to go out and score some more heroin; he stormed off threatening to kill himself. The next morning Simon found him dead. The coroner concluded that his mind was too addled to think straight and recorded an open verdict.

But Elizabeth believes the loss of one twin, devastating though it was, gave back the gift of life to the other. Now 30, he has a job as an IT consultant, has just bought his first house and is in contact with his father again.

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