Nina told Ella, with a proud smile, that she now had job.
‘You have a job. A job.’
Ella corrected the sentence automatically before she took in its meaning.
‘I have a job in hot bread shop. In a hot bread shop. I think I have enough English for the hot bread shop. You think?’
Ella was more disappointed than was reasonable. Her ambitions for Nina had been vague, but they had involved more glory than was offered by a hot bread shop.
‘Yes. You don’t need any more lessons.’
‘I am very thankful to you, always.’
She paused, looking expectantly at Ella.
I should invite her home.
She saw at that moment how uncertain the future was, how little she could promise.
‘You come to buy bread in my shop. I am sad if I don’t see you again.’
‘I’d be sad, too,’ Ella said truthfully.
She was sad at this moment. She could find another student, but there would never be another Nina.
Nina wrote an address on a page of her English folder and handed the tornout page to Ella.
‘One moment. One moment.’
She had a gift for Ella, a tiny perfume bottle of enamelware suspended from a neck chain.
‘It’s beautiful, Nina. I haven’t anything to give you.’
Nina leaned forward to kiss Ella’s cheek, while she smiled at the absurdity of her remark.
‘What you give me is very big present.’ She smiled the old mischievous smile. ‘A very big present.’
Well, that was something to take home with her, but she went sadly, for all that.