Page 21 of The Wedding Proposal
To: Simon.Rose
From: Elle.Jamieson
Subject: Forgiven
Simon,
I think me and Lucas have more or less worked things out and we’re getting along, even if not as best friends. I can’t really feel angry any more as I have learned something from the situation — Lucas has moved on.
She paused, trying and failing to formulate some profound words about acceptance and rite of passage. Eventually, she settled on:
So I can move on, too! ? Sometimes it takes the relationships that don’t last to teach us the lessons that will.
The centre is really interesting and I feel as if I’m doing something that matters a lot more than making money for a faceless corporation that dumped me when I didn’t fit with some precious new structure.
I LOVE Malta. Truly, madly, deeply love it.
Love and hugs,
Elle
She pressed ‘Send’ as Joseph arrived, puffing at the climb up the stairs.
Elle spun her chair around. ‘Is there any prospect of getting better broadband? This is slow enough to embarrass snails.’
Joseph dropped into a neighbouring chair. ‘I can try. Our provider gives us a discount, as a charity. It’s normal practice for me to contact all benefactors from time to time to see if I can encourage them to increase their assistance.’
‘Fantastic. Ask them if we can have at least double the current speed. And do you mind if I format all the machines and set up a limited-access user account for each? Then I can make downloading apps an admin-only privilege. These machines are grinding to a halt under the weight of stuff they don’t need.’
Joseph nodded. ‘All sounds good. Keep me in the loop and give me a note of all passwords. Can you keep some machines available while you make the changes?’
‘I’ll work on one at a time,’ she agreed. ‘Are people allowed to save data directly to the machines? The problem with that is nobody clears out outdated stuff.’
He lifted his hands, looking very Maltese. ‘They shouldn’t. They should bring a memory stick or burn to a disk. But . . .’
‘OK. There are a couple of external hard drives in the cupboard and some old towers, too. I could use their hard drives and add a server to the network. I’ll move any data I find to them, and it’ll provide a place for people to save their stuff if they don’t have a stick or a disk. That should prevent the machines from being clogged up.’
Joseph’s pocket began to ring and he nodded as he fished out his phone. ‘Anything else?’
‘How long will it take Carmelo to get here from his school?’
‘Ten minutes if he runs. Fifteen if he walks.’
‘Thanks.’
As Joseph left, speaking Maltese into his phone, Elle began on the first machine, moving data, formatting the hard drive and reinstalling the operating system.
As she worked, two boys and a girl of sixteen or seventeen came into the room. She smiled and introduced herself and they settled themselves at machines, casting their eyes around at the changes to the layout. They gave their names as Alice, Gordon and Antonio.
Once the machine she was working on was safely formatting, Elle scooted her chair closer to Alice. ‘Need any help with anything?’
The girl dimpled shyly and shook her head. ‘I’m just on Facebook.’
The boys were playing computer games. Elle was fine with that: computers were meant to be used and Alice, Gordon and Antonio were all interacting with technology and the cyber world in their preferred ways.
Because she didn’t want to take more than one machine out of commission at a time and neither Alice, Gordon nor Antonio seemed to have ambitions to conquer spreadsheets or lay out a CV, Elle turned to other tasks.
She cleared up the rest of her e-mail and then began poking around the machine on which she was working. It didn’t take her long to discover that the hard drive had been partitioned.
