I think you make some very good points here. What I haven't made clear in my text was that what you may read as the "hints" is just one slice of the picture I didn’t fully present in this narrative to keep story to the point. I am not going to detail the exact conversations we had so my readers would take my word for it that he doesn't pick the seriousness of this stage we're in. It's very easy from the outside to judge and feel you would have done better because there's either black or white. Thanks for your thoughts anyway