Page 38 of The Wedding Proposal
From: Simon.Rose
Subject: A little bit jealous
Elle,
You make me ‘homesick’ for Malta! The weather is boiling here in California, too, but I suppose the difference is that I work in it whereas I’m always on vacation when I’m in Malta. Now I’m longing to be sitting up on the flybridge of the Shady Lady with a Cisk (or five) and a pastizzi.
So, it’s Kayleigh who’s turned up to be with Lucas, is it? Now that’s ver-y in-ter-est-ing. I met her at Geoffrey and Fiona’s place at Christmas. Nice girl.
Glad you’re having a great time.
Made any new friends? Especially of the male variety?
xxx
Deciding not to react to this mention of Lucas’s parents, and still underemployed as her charges worked through their tasks, Elle went straight back:
To: Simon.Rose
From: Elle.Jamieson
Subject: The male variety
Why is it interesting that Kayleigh is Lucas’s gf? She seems nice. I suppose I want to hate her but she’s too easy to like. So I’m being noble and telling myself that I’m happy he’s chosen someone good.
I have two male admirers. Carmelo and Oscar. Carmelo is eight and one of the kids at the drop-in centre. He’s pretty much a fixture here. I don’t think he can have much of a home life. When school finishes for summer at the end of next week I expect that he’ll be here 24/7. He’s followed me to the boat once or twice. He has such sad eyes: I feel bad for him.
Oscar, he’s a fellow volunteer, an incredibly tall guy, about six-and-a-half feet. He does a lot of the active stuff with the kids — table tennis and weights, etc. He’s made it obvious that he’s interested but he’s creepy. Especially as I think he was responsible for the porn I found on the machines when I first got here! Even leaving that little discovery aside, I find it hard to like him. His eyes crawl all over me and he doesn’t bother to try and hide that he’s ogling. Eww.
E xxx
To: Elle.Jamieson
From: Simon.Rose
Subject: The male variety
Watch out for the Oscar dude! Tell him that if he’s a sex pest I’ll come over there and — oh, wait, you said he’s big? Set Lucas on him. ?
x
Elle grinned as she signed out from her e-mail account. A couple of the girls, Kimberley and Giorgina, were fidgeting and whispering from behind adjacent machines.
Elle pushed away from her desk and rolled her chair over to join the girls, interrupting a fit of stifled giggles. ‘So, how are we getting on?’
‘Finished,’ they chorused. Kimberley and Giorgina were fine examples of beautiful blossoming Maltese womanhood. Dark and glossy hair was piled up behind their heads and secured by neon-coloured clips; their sultry brown eyes were made up to look even larger and more dramatic than nature intended. Elle felt insipid beside them.
She ran her eyes over what they’d done. ‘Really great! Kimberley, you might want to make all your headings consistent. Do you remember how to set up a heading style? If you made all these big headings Heading1 and the smaller ones Heading2, it would work well. Giorgina, I’m not sure that employers will be keen on a curly purple font.’
Giorgina giggled behind her hand.
‘Can we do Facebook?’ requested Kimberley, with a sigh. The session was nearly over and, despite open windows and a whirring fan in the corner, it was stultifying enough in the internet cafe to shorten attention spans.
‘Of course. Just make those changes first,’ Elle encouraged.
On the other side of the room, Aileen was ‘encouraging’ Paolo, one of the brasher kids. Paolo treated education of any kind like a joke. But Elle was fast learning that treating something as a joke was a classic defence mechanism of a kid who wasn’t getting enough support.
Aileen had been a great help in showing Elle the trick of getting teens to co-operate by saying yes to their requests without letting them get away with tasks undone. Her genial but authoritative approach was easy for Elle to emulate. Already Elle was prefacing instructions with a few words of positivity, such as ‘This is straightforward’ or ‘You’ll enjoy this’, because that’s how Aileen seemed to get results. The computer room was more classroom-like than the rest of the centre but even when Elle wasn’t running workshop sessions she was helping, encouraging, teaching. She was growing to value the sense of doing something more useful than just making money.
