Page 27 of The Wedding Proposal
‘Tricky.’ Lucas sat back, checking Elle’s legs weren’t in the way before he stretched his out. ‘Could you point out to the centre manager that it could be anyone with access to the computers, including volunteers? Let him see the danger without pointing any fingers. It’s not your responsibility to prove anything.’
She watched him use his fingertip to wipe up a last smear of cream from the edge of the plate and put it to his mouth. ‘You ought to have been in law, like your parents.’ And then, when he didn’t respond, added, ‘How are they? Dad still a magistrate? Mum a lawyer?’
He smiled, guardedly. ‘That’s right. No significant changes.’
She looked over to the boats moored on the Manoel side of the creek, some of them huge, looking worth every one of the millions of pounds on their price tags. The wine reached her head in a slidey little rush. ‘I think law would have suited you and your love of what’s right.’
‘From what I understand,’ he said, slowly, ‘the law isn’t so much about right and wrong as what evidence you have and whether you can prove your case. Not always the same thing.’
He glanced down at the two empty plates as if regretful that his sugarfest was over. ‘Your own parents — I was surprised when you mentioned that they’re not together.’
‘Dad completely reinvented himself. Left his boring job and went into business with his new wife in a B&B in west Wales, where the surfies hang out.’
‘Were you shocked?’
‘Yes,’ she said, simply, ‘Shocked. Astonished. Ambivalent. All the things adults seem to feel when their parents part. Mum took it hard. Really hard. It shook her confidence.’
He lifted his brow. ‘That’s hard to imagine. Is she still in sales? Or has she retired?’
Elle yawned, feeling the soporific effects of the alcohol and the day’s sun creeping up on her. She’d hardly slept out of excitement on her last couple of nights in England and now with the strain of finding Lucas on the boat and starting what amounted to two part-time jobs, her body was beginning to demand sleep. ‘Mum’s in a home.’ She yawned again, behind her hand. ‘Not long after Dad left, she had a stroke. I don’t know if you remember that she’s eight years older than him? But, still, quite young to have a stroke. Now she can’t live independently. She was alone when the stroke hit and so a lot of damage was done.’ She drained the last of her wine and sighed. ‘She doesn’t always know who I am so I don’t suppose she knows who Dad is or that he left her.’
His voice was soft, sympathetic. ‘That’s bad. I had no idea.’
‘Why should you?’ The words hung in the air like the ghost of an accusation.
‘You’re right, why should I?’ His eyes began to glitter in the last of the light. Like the creek, they were black and shining, reflecting the lights in sparks of gold. ‘I didn’t know that much about you when we were together so why should I know anything about you since you left?’
Brushing away the encroaching fug of fatigue, she climbed to her feet and began to stack the plates and the salad bowl. ‘You left.’
She started towards the head of the steps but suddenly his hand was on her arm, hot, hard, as he swung her around. The plates spun from her hands and clattered to the deck, scattering scraps of lettuce and chopped peppers.
‘I left?’ he barked. ‘You were the one who cleared her things—’
She yanked her forearm free from the crackle of his touch. ‘You left the relationship. I left the house because it was yours and once you’d ended things I could hardly stay, could I?’
As he began to speak, she lifted her hands, weariness pinching at her tear ducts until she was frightened that they’d overflow. She was suddenly desperate not to cry in front of him. ‘Let’s not argue, Lucas. We’ve both moved on. Let’s not allow bad memories in. They’ll rock the boat.’ She forced a smile to support her feeble joke. He didn’t smile at all.
Chapter Seven
As soon as she arrived at the centre the next morning, Elle made it her business to find Joseph. He was at his desk, sighing over a haphazard heap of paperwork, and looked pleased to have an excuse to turn away.
‘Everything OK for your first computer room session this morning? Do you need anything? Are you nervous?’
Elle waved the nervousness idea away. She’d run large team meetings and presented in front of hundreds at seminars. Eight or so teenagers shouldn’t hold too many challenges. ‘Just thinking about the issue of anybody being able to download anything they pleased. I’ll make it impossible to use the computers without logging in with an individual user name. I’ll also make it impossible to save to the hard drive of the computer they’re using, only to a common storage area I’ve made. Space will be limited and everyone will be able to see everyone else’s files.’
Joseph frowned. ‘Should the other volunteers be admins, too?’
Elle hesitated. ‘It could have been anyone who misused the computer access.’ She let the thought sink in.
‘I see.’ Joseph tapped on his desk. Rubbing his eyes behind his glasses, he sighed. ‘Proceed as you suggest, please. We need everything here to be correct.’
The morning passed quickly. Twelve turned up for the workshop and Elle issued their usernames. As Joseph had indicated, the kids were liberal with the term ‘drop in’ and she noticed that most of those who showed were male. Curiosity about the blonde Englishwoman might have motivated their attendance.
But as she was there to aid computer literacy and she saw Microsoft Word as fundamental to that, she ignored the nudges and sly grins and plunged into her workshop on the functions of the Styles menu — a feature generally underused, in her view.
‘Losing your way around a long document’s frustrating, can muddle your information and wastes time. Most employers don’t like wasted time.’ Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she began her demonstration. Most of her workshops would be demonstration-based because English might be one of the official languages of Malta but it wasn’t always the first language of the Maltese. It was a lot easier to show than to tell.
She’d prepared a mock document, ten pages of sample text interspersed with headings and subheadings. She got the kids on the machines, attempting to pair those who seemed less confident in their English with someone proficient.
