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‘Neither have you.’
As she began to put his goods through, he asked, ‘How long is it since you left Sunnyside?’
‘Over three years.’
‘You must have been glad to get away. God, how I hated that place! So what have you been doing with yourself since?’
‘Working.’
‘Are you shacked up with anyone?’
‘No, I—’
‘I do wish these checkout girls wouldn’t stop to gossip,’ the woman in the queue behind him remarked in a loud voice.
‘And I wish these old biddies wouldn’t be so cantankerous,’ he retorted, equally loudly.
‘I really shouldn’t be talking,’ Eleanor said guiltily.
‘Why not?’ Fishing in his pocket, he added, ‘Surely they don’t own you body and soul?’
‘No, but—’
‘Oh, hell!’ he exclaimed. ‘With coming out in a rush I forgot to pick up my wallet. I’m afraid I can’t take the stuff.’
‘Do you have a credit card?’
‘That’s in my wallet, too.’ He made to hand her the carrier back.
‘Take it. It doesn’t amount to much. I’ll put it in out of my own money.’
‘Sure?’
‘Sure.’
‘Look, what time do you finish?’
‘In about ten minutes.’
‘See you outside.’
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 all I need is a job to see me through till next summer… Of course I’d have a better chance of doing really well if I didn’t have to work, but—’
‘You don’t have to work. If I can boost my earnings with a weekend job at the supermarket, there should be just about enough money coming in for us both to scrape by on.’
‘You’re a jewel, partner.’
‘I won’t be able to save, and there won’t be anything left for luxuries but—’
‘Luxuries? What are luxuries? And with over eight thousand sitting in the bank you don’t need to save.’
He leaned across the small table and, taking her face between his hands, kissed her full on the lips.
Her heart began to pound and her colour rose. She could never remember anyone kissing her before, and certainly not in that way.
‘I can see us really going places, kiddo,’ he told her, jubilantly. ‘And maybe one day, when we’re successful and raking in the cash, we can extend the partnership.’
‘What do you mean…?’
‘Marriage… Why not?’
To be loved. To belong to someone. It was more happiness than she had ever dared dream of, and she wanted to cry.
CHAPTER TWO
OVER the next few months, with both of them working all hours, they hardly saw each other. Once a week they snatched a late-evening coffee together, and on very odd occasions a takeaway pizza.
Instead of living in student accommodation, Dave shared a small self-contained flat with a college friend. Though Eleanor paid his share of the rent for it, she had never been there, and wasn’t even sure where it was.
‘Off Station Road,’ Dave had answered casually, when she’d asked.
More than a dozen streets ran off Station Road, but knowing by now that he hated to be what he called “crowded” she let the matter drop.
As the festive season approached, learning that she had Christmas Day off, they began to make plans to spend it together. At the last minute, however, Dave rang up, sounding hoarse and snuffly, to say he had developed a stinking cold and all he wanted to do was stay in bed.
He rejected her offer of nursing and, when she looked like persisting, pointed out irritably, ‘At the moment you’re the breadwinner, so what’s the point of you catching it and having to stay off work?’
Though bitterly disappointed, she couldn’t deny it made sense, and when one of the kitchen staff failed to turn up, she worked in their place.
Unfortunately, Dave’s cold lasted over New Year, and it was well into January before they arranged to meet again.
That night she left the light and warmth of the supermarket to find a biting wind was driving flurries of snow down the dark street.
They had been planning to have a spot of supper together and, thinking he still looked far from well, she suggested that if they got fish and chips they could take them back to his flat. ‘It’s much too cold to stand eating them in the shop doorway.’
Dave looked horrified. ‘Do you want to get me slung out? My dragon of a landlady has very strict rules. No smoking. No loud music. No wet washing hanging about. No showers after eight. And definitely no visitors. In any case, Tony will be home.
‘Tell you what, if you give me a bit extra spending money, just for once we’ll eat in the cafe.’
‘Of course.’ She fished in her bag and gave him her last ten-pound note.
Completely besotted, she would have given him anything he’d asked for. Herself included. But though he kissed her from time to time, he never tried to take things any further.
When she rather hesitantly made it clear that she would sleep with him if he wanted her to, he said, ‘Don’t think I’m not tempted, kiddo. But for one thing I’m working so hard I’ve no energy left, and for another, I can’t afford to be distracted. There’ll be enough time to have fun when our business is up and running.’
She could only admire his dedication.
In the end it paid off handsomely. He graduated with top marks and, to celebrate, they went out looking for an office to rent.
