He was waiting in the street for her, looking cold and pinched in the chill September wind.
‘The Capuchin is still open if you want a hot—’ He broke off abruptly. ‘Damn! no money.’
‘It’s all right, I’ll pay.’
As they walked the short distance to the coffee-bar, she realised that though she was wearing flat heels, they were almost exactly the same height. At one time he had been taller than her, but now he was rather on the short side for a man.
Waiting by the steamy counter, she noticed him eyeing the clingfilmed ham sandwiches and asked, ‘Are you hungry by any chance?’
‘Starving. I was intending to get something when I’d shopped. Didn’t have time to eat earlier.’
When they were seated opposite each other, two packs of sandwiches and two mugs of coffee on the ringed and stained, piglet-pink, plastic-topped table, he asked, ‘So how’s the world been treating you? Tell me everything you’ve been doing since you escaped from Colditz.’
As she told him what little there was to tell, he wolfed his pack of sandwiches, and swallowed his mug of coffee.
Though he was as handsome as ever, he looked thinner than she remembered him, as if he hadn’t been taking care of himself.
All her childhood feeling for him returning in a rush, she pushed her own sandwiches and mug across, and asked, ‘Can you manage these?’
‘Don’t you want them?’
‘To tell you the truth I’m not hungry,’ she lied, ‘and it isn’t that long since I had a coffee.’
‘Why do you work in a hotel as well as the supermarket?’ he asked curiously, as he started into the second pack of sandwiches.
‘I’m saving hard. I’d like to be able to set up a little business of my own.’
‘Wouldn’t we all!’
Something about his reaction made her feel uncomfortable.
As though sensing it, he asked more mildly, ‘How close are you?’
‘Another year at the most and I should be able to start looking for somewhere suitable. I was thinking of a second-hand bookshop, or a maybe a tearoom,’ she explained.
Contempt in his voice, he said, ‘Surely that kind of thing is only for old maids?’
Hiding her hurt, she asked, ‘What about you?’
‘The same kind of dream, only keeping up with tomorrow’s world. When I’ve graduated—and I’d like to get a really good degree—I want to start my own business.’
‘Doing what?’
His dark eyes glowed. ‘Setting up and programming computer systems, with the emphasis on communications.’
‘So you’re at college?’
‘Yes. After two or three years of drifting from job to job, I decided to go for it.’
‘You got a grant?’
He shook his head. ‘I didn’t want to mortgage my future, so I’ve been working evenings and weekends to pay my fees and keep body and soul together.’
‘It can’t be easy.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ he admitted bleakly. ‘Though I’m good at the technical side, and getting excellent class marks, I’m finding it a struggle. There’s never enough time.
‘This coming year’s workload looks like being even heavier, but unless I can win the lottery, I have to find another job as soon as possible. A long bout of flu last month lost me my last one.’
She felt moved to protest. ‘But if the workload’s that heavy…’
‘I’ll have to manage somehow. No option. When I leave college and start my own business it will all have been worth it.
‘Pity you’re not into this modern technology lark,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘I could do with a partner. Someone to run the office. You’ve got a nice voice, the sort that sounds educated, though I don’t know how the hell you’ve managed it…’
Eleanor remembered, from when she was quite young, the Matron of Sunnyside remarking, ‘The child speaks well. She’s obviously from a good background… Which ought to make things easier…’
‘So you’d be ideal…’ Dave was going on. ‘Weekends and suchlike, when we had no one coming into the office, you could help with the actual installations. It’s not difficult once you know how.’
All at once her dream of a solitary future was replaced by a warmer, much more exciting prospect. But she knew rather less than nothing about computers and technology.
As though reading her mind, he said, ‘If you were remotely interested, there’s a school nearby that runs the kind of special business courses that would cover pretty well everything you’d need to know.’
‘I am interested,’ she assured him. ‘But I couldn’t afford to leave work.’
‘You wouldn’t have to. The classes are held on weekday evenings, so you could keep your job at the hotel, and still work weekends at the supermarket if you wanted to.’
‘How long are the courses?’
‘They run until next summer. By then I’ll have graduated, so the timing will be spot on. Hopefully you’ll have a good background knowledge of business, and I’ll have all the technical know-how we need. If I’m lucky I might even have made some contacts that could put work our way.’
He was contributing so much… What if she was a drag on him?
Seeing her anxious frown, he said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure that by then you’ll be in a position to pull your weight.
‘To start with money’s bound to be a problem, unless we can manage to get a bank loan. Once we’re underway, of course, we’ll be able to get short-term credit facilities from the suppliers, as well as asking the clients to put some money up front.
‘The trouble is, if we approach a bank they’ll expect us to be in a position to finance at least part of it ourselves.’
‘Well, we should be able to.’ Excitement made her sound breathless. ‘I told you, I’ve been saving.’
He looked unimpressed. ‘I don’t suppose what you’ve managed to save amounts to much. I reckon we’d need a minimum of seven or eight thousand.’
‘I’ve got a bit more than that,’ she told him with quiet triumph.
His jaw dropped. Then, fired with enthusiasm, he cried, ‘In that case we’re as good as in business! If you’re game?’
‘I’m game.’
‘Now
