EVIDENTLY THE young man had survived quite well before he came here but, observed Don, now that he was here, his mother felt it necessary to keep him constantly fed and watered, at least when she wasn't at work. Of course Don appreciated that it was a good thing to be a good and caring mother but he couldn't remember his own mother waiting hand and foot on him when he was Luke's age. And that hadn’t done him any harm. And neither had it obviously done Luke any harm either to be away from his mother's ministrations for two months or so.
In just a week, Don had become well acquainted with Luke’s various culinary likes and dislikes. However a bonus for Don came in the form of cooked breakfasts most mornings which actually he did enjoy a great deal. No-one had ever before served his breakfast egg with fried chunks of Yorkshire pudding. They were just divine.
And mother and son were very obviously very close. They laughed a lot together. They hugged each other sometimes. They played games together. He had watched them through the upstairs window. One of them would spot, say, a tennis ball in the grass and they'd start dribbling and tackling accompanied by peels of laughter. And Luke let his mother win of course. Other times they'd use the ball or some other object and play catch.
Don knew he shouldn't feel so innately automatically irresistibly hostile towards the young man. But it was there inside him, this almost visceral antipathy towards another man's son living here in such close proximity. Especially the son of someone like Greg. He didn’t like himself for it but he couldn't help it. He just couldn't.
So this morning he was making his way down to the summerhouse to try to….what?....he wasn’t sure. Try to make some sort of meaningful contact with Luke? Prove to himself that he wasn’t a complete Neanderthal? Get Brownie points with Luke's mother if Luke bothered to tell her that her grumpy boyfriend had voluntarily entered into social intercourse with him?
Don paused when he was within a foot or so of the open door. He didn't want to stumble upon Luke for example getting dressed….or….something. But he saw that Luke was standing back from his work pinned to a makeshift easel regarding it apparently critically. Don could see that it was a drawing of the old bicycle with one of the old curtains draped over it. In considerable detail. It was possible to see that the material of the curtain was patterned but also mouldy. That it was possible to make out that it was a curtain at all was amazing to Don, but the gatherings at the top were plain to see. Faintly, he could even make out the seams. The backdrop to the tableau was the rough brick and mortar wall against which the actual objects were propped. And it was all incredibly done in just lead pencil.
Luke turned. He must have heard a twig crack under Don's foot. Don smiled guiltily.
"Sorry," he said, "I didn’t want to disturb you. That's rather something." He gestured towards the drawing.
"Oh right well, I prefer oils really and more abstract work but I haven't got any canvas right now. There's some bits of hardboard in here that might do. I'll see. But I wanted to do this first." He turned back to his work and regarded it. "Perhaps it'll do for the exhibition. I don't know."
"Well I'd buy it," said Don without thinking.
"Really? Would you really?"
"Yes. Really."
"Oh. Thanks."
Don looked around the room. It had been transformed so far as he could see. All trace of algae, mould and spiders had been chased away. The walls of the old brick and mortar and the rafters had been washed with some sort of weak pale emulsion, as a result giving the room a light and airy feel. The slatted table and chairs which were on the grass outside had been given the same wash. Luke had been given a couple of bean bags to put together as a bed and they were draped with one of his mother's old hippie throws.
He'd used the wood preservative on the wooden frames of the glass panels and door and Grace had bought and given to him some cheap roll up reed blinds. She had also, getting into the swing of things, moved a few of the neglected and ill-placed potted shrubs near the house to form the corners and sides of a small area at the front of the outhouse within which the table and chairs stood.
Don was aware too that in the corner, behind a screen fashioned by Luke from some of the old wood after being laid in the sun to dry out and then also white-washed, was the aptly named Kampa Khazi which Luke's ever-loving mother had rushed out and bought for him along with the appropriate chemical that he might not suffer the least minor inconvenience! The screen had also had painted on it in a contrasting colour some vague wafting Isadora Duncan type figures. The effect was, Don could see, most pleasing, especially given the accommodation hidden by the screen. Further the old fridge, which wouldn't have worked anyway, had had the seal removed and wood placed on the shelves. The door was open and Don could see that the fridge held Luke's art equipment with some shoes at the bottom and folded up clothes. The word "homemaker" came to mind and Don couldn't help thinking that quite possibly his daughter had nothing to fear from the young man. However this was an unworthy typecasting notion and he should be ashamed of himself. Still it was somewhat reassuring.
There was of course also lighting when needed provided by the extension lead from the house.
The whole thing had attractively about it now the feel of a South Sea Island retreat, especially with the heat-wave as it was still. Luke saw Don’s eyes roaming around.
"Thanks a lot for this," he said. "I can't remember the last time I felt so happy or contented. It's like peace personified."
Don was extremely surprised at this admission, delivered so matter-of-factly and in so poetic a fashion. But of course, Don recognised, the young man had a passion, a vocation, something which few people were lucky enough to even comprehend let alone actually experience. He knew but suppressed now the fact that he'd felt similarly at one time about the law and the practice of advocacy, a vocation torn from him by circumstance. Had he been a little further forward in his career, he might even have been earning enough by the time Carol became ill to have paid people to look after her. However he hadn’t been, so he'd had to give up. And then Emma had come along, late and unexpected in the circumstances and he got to look after her himself too most of the time but he regretted that part of it not one little bit.
Luke however could see nothing of Don's thoughts.
"If you want to carry on using this building in the winter, it could do with a bit of damp proofing I'd say. Probably nothing very much. Breathable membrane. And it could do with insulating to use it in the winter. Probably a layer of insulation inside with membrane and some wood cladding or something similar. This wash wasn't the best thing really but it was all I had. Old-fashioned distemper would have been a lot better. These modern paints include plastics. They set hard and they're impervious to moisture. I mean they keep moisture in."
Don's lack of understanding was clear on his face. "People," said Luke, "create a great deal of water vapour. It isn't good for wood and other building materials. It can make wood and other natural materials go rotten. It, the moisture, needs to have a route out of a building."
Don looked uncomprehending. Luke continued: "I've been interested in drawing buildings for years and consequently I've become interested in architecture including the preservation of old buildings."
Don still wasn't understanding.
"And I won't be here in the winter," said Luke.
"Oh."
"Well, I can't stay here indefinitely can I?"
"Well I hadn’t actually thought."
"Well I can't. I expect my dad'll come round at some point. Emma'll go back to university. This is a nice interlude but it's not permanent. I won't be able to stay here."
"Oh," said Don again. He tried not to let the relief show on his face. Luke appeared to have it all worked out already. He'd thought it all through. He was miles ahead of Don. It did occur to Don to wonder fleetingly what Emma going back to university had to do with the whole thing, but he dismissed it. They'd have been bound to have met already; they were living in the same house or just about. If Luke felt that he'd be uncomfortable or even unwelcome once Emma had gone back to university, that was hardly surprising.
"Anyway, it's very nice what you've done here and your drawing. Didn’t you think of going to art college or something?"
Luke laughed. "Didn't my mum tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
Luke sighed. "My dad's got loads of cash but he thinks art is somehow inferior. Or at least it isn't what he wants me to do. So if I go to art college, I wouldn't get any grant or loan or anything." Don frowned. "He wouldn't even fill in the forms! I could have completed an application form myself for the tuition fees loan and the basic maintenance loan but my dad refused to let me live at home if I went to art college locally and I couldn't afford to live away from home on the basic maintenance loan. He bullied my mum into promising not to send me any money herself on the quiet.
And also,” Luke started to look furious, “some of my best works mysteriously got destroyed when a water pipe burst in the house and the room I kept my paintings in with some other stuff was flooded out.
“And if you think it’s far-fetched that he had anything to do with that, then as a last resort, he threatened to make it more difficult for me to get into a university by reporting me to the police for something or other or to the examining board for cheating at my A` levels. Whether either would have been believed or come to anything or not, my dad said it would create enough of a stink to affect my chances. I’m pretty dubious now about that, but at the time I was only seventeen and I believed it.” Luke sighed and shook his head.
Privately Don thought that the man had to be barking but he didn’t say this to Luke.
"Oh. And I don’t think my mum knows anything about those threats or what I think about the flood so if you wouldn't mind not mentioning it to her….?"
"No. No of course not. I'm sorry it's been like that for you," said Don. "But you're a good artist anyway. Couldn't you progress without going through a formal course?"
"Maybe, but there's things I don’t know. Things I could be taught. And without a formal degree, lots of people just wouldn't look at my work. And I wouldn't get openings to exhibit."
"But you've got the gift shop to let you put on an exhibition."
Luke laughed mirthlessly. "A small village gift shop exhibition is nothing. If I sell some stuff then great. But no-one of any importance is going to come here and see my work. I might sell enough to buy some more oils and canvas but that'd be it."
"But they're really good!" said Don.
"Thanks Don, but people of any sophistication want to buy semi-at-least-impressionist paintings. Not accurate representations. I have a lot to learn still. It'd be naive in the extreme to think that I knew everything about art. Anyway, I'll sort this place out for you if you want before I go."
Don felt chastened. He had been wishing Luke wasn't here, and now here was Luke fully accepting that he was going to have to leave sooner rather than later.
"Well," said Don, "you must stay as long as you like." In view of what Luke had said, he felt that it was safe to say that.
I bet you wouldn't say that, thought Luke, if you knew I was screwing your daughter!
GRACE HAD BEEN disappointed when Don had told her later as they were preparing the Saturday evening meal together that Luke didn’t plan to stay all that long, probably not beyond the end of the summer. She had looked so glum in fact that he wished he hadn't mentioned it.
"Well I expect he could come back and stay here sometimes," Don had said. To take her mind off the subject of Luke leaving, he decided to break something else to her that had to be addressed at some point. Talking to Luke about educational grants and loans had reminded him.
"With our combined incomes, it's likely that Emma won't get the full grant and loan when she goes back to uni and she'll probably lose her bursary based on parental income."
"But I'm not her mother."
"Doesn't matter I don’t think if we're living together as a household."
"Does she know?"
"Not yet. Unless she's thought of it herself. So the upshot is that I'll have to sub her several thousand a year. I hope you don’t mind."
"Of course I don’t. You have to do it." She was silent for a time as she washed some new potatoes and Don wondered if she did in fact mind. But then she said, "Actually if our being a couple makes a difference to Emma, then surely it'd make a difference for Luke too."
"Sorry?" said Don.
Grace put the scourer down and turned towards him. "It's making me think that Luke could go to college too then for that matter. I ought to be able to find a few thousand a year myself for him without us becoming paupers. And if he was treated as our dependant too, we'd surely get some sort of allowance for him so maybe there would be room still for some grant and extra loan for both of them."
"Well. I suppose it bears consideration."
"Don. It's the ideal solution. I mean now he's here. And it means he'll go off somewhere in September too. Unless of course he takes a course at the local uni."
"Hmm," said Don.
"I'll go and look up on the internet about student finance then. He'll have to get a move on if he's to start a course in a month or so. I hope it’s not too late. If it looks all right from the point of view of finance, can we speak to him about it later? Soon?"
Don looked at her excited, happy face. He could never have refused her anything it was within his power to give her, let alone something that mattered to her so very much.
"Definitely we should," he said.
LUKE WAS QUITE quiet about the whole thing when told about it. He'd looked very thoughtful.
"Er….before we make any plans I'd better see if I can get on a course at all. I'll check the clearing house. But actually Northampton University has a good fine art degree course of the type that I’d like to do. Specifically painting and drawing.” Northampton was of course the university Emma was attending.
“Isn't art the same the whole world over?” asked Grace.
“No. Many of the courses are a lot wider taking in all sorts of materials and media. I really want to concentrate as far as possible on painting and drawing.”
"Oh, well, if it were to turn out that way, that you were in the same place, it would be quite nice. As you're sort of step-brother and sister," Don said brightly.
Luke coughed. "I'll….er….check anyway. Well," he brightened himself. "Thanks!"
And suddenly he had picked his mother up, taken her outside onto the lawn and swung her around as she squealed.
"I wish I could do that," said Don ruefully.
Luke put his mother down. "I suppose I'd better go and see dad sometime soon though. Perhaps I'll pop round one evening next week. If I can get on a course, I'll try not to rub his nose in it too much." Then he looked worried. "Actually, I'd better not mention it on second thoughts. You never know what he might do."
Grace didn’t seem surprised.
Good heavens, thought Don, what else is that man capable of? I'd better hope he can't find some way to sabotage my business! Obviously though he couldn't really do that. It was just an idle cogitation.
"EMMA, WOULD YOU mind too much if I came to Northampton and took an art degree?"
"Well no. But how likely is that?"
There hadn't been time to explain the situation to Emma, and Don and Grace had now gone off to church. Luke had laid on his makeshift bed that morning after hearing his mother and Don walk off past the hedge talking and laughing and hoped he might receive a summons. Not long after, he got a text, hopped from one foot to another into his jeans and went and let himself in by the second back door. He'd already cleaned his teeth and scraped a flannel over his armpits and then more gently around his nether regions though he hadn't applied any aftershave or similar. He hated it himself when girls smelled like perfume counters. It seemed to kill all desire. And he didn’t want to leave tell-tale aromas in the house.
Therefore Luke had the job of explaining his mother's and Don's idea to Emma. He had looked and registered on the clearing house and actually applied for the Fine Art course at Northampton. He could hardly believe it. He still didn’t want to get too excited but it seemed to be happening.
"Oh well then. Why should I? You know if we're still seeing each other, all well and good. If we're not then….whatever."
"Oh good. I wasn’t meaning to crowd you. It's just that it’s the course I want to do and that's where I'd like to go if possible. I’ve researched it inside out in the past."
They had already made love once. He'd meant to tell her straightaway but somehow that hadn’t happened. But now he had told her.
"I suppose you'd better let your dad tell you about me and the course and whatever so he doesn’t think I told you," said Luke.
"I don’t see why. Just because you talk to me about your education, doesn’t mean to say we discussed it in bed does it!"
"No you're right. But," Luke laughed, "when I mentioned Northampton, your dad said that it would be nice for us as sister and brother to be at the same university. Or words to that effect. Honestly, I nearly choked when he said that."
Emma laughed too. It was funny of course. But also pretty uncomfortable. She wondered how Luke would feel if the boot was on the other foot, thinking of his father in her father's position. Probably not so cool about it then.
But the morning was yet young. She snuggled up to him and they made the best of the time they had together.
DON BOWED HIS HEAD and prayed. Or at least he put his head down and let his thoughts roam. This was his time of peace for the week, free from those pesky Solicitors, from the need to explain to Emma that Luke might soon be attending the same university as her and why, including the changes that would take place to her income and the way it was paid because he was now resident with Grace. Free from the vague worry that Greg was a loose cannon who might try to interfere with their lives in ways he couldn't quite grasp, nor really why the man might want to at all but it appeared it was what he did.
So he rested his head in his hands and gave thanks for the good fortune he had found with Grace, for his simple life, for his ability to earn a living reasonably easily, even given his travails with the Solicitors. For the fact that he had no mortgage having paid it off over the years and not having re-mortgaged and spent unwisely on things that would now be worthless - expensive cars, holidays, etc.
His life with Grace.
Things could have been so different. After the Christmas night mass he hadn't been able to go back to the church. Carol wouldn't go into the hospice and he wouldn't make her. Thankfully Emma had gone back to university fairly early for New Year's Eve celebrations, Don telling her that he would let her know when and if things got too bad. He had simply soldiered on with the help of MacMillan nurses and those from private agencies but they weren't there all the time. No-one though wanted to be responsible for someone's death. He had people he could call on at any time apparently and some palliative care available to him but it hadn't been enough.
He was alone with Carol the night she had died and he had had no effective means to make it any better for her. She had screamed at him to end it. Her muscular wasting meant she didn't talk at all clearly any more but he understood her all too well. He should cut her wrists, put a pillow over her head; bring a bowl of water and a toaster into the room, put her hand into the water and plug in the toaster. In desperation, he'd done just that but the trip switch had gone and the house had been plunged into darkness. Feeling his way, he'd had to unplug the toaster, take her hand out of the water, move the bowl, and go downstairs while she screamed at him to end it as he turned the trip and light flooded the house again. "Please," she had said in her distorted voice when he got back up to the room. "Please!"
THEY WERE WALKING home slowly hand in hand. Don was trying to get Carol’s passing out of his head.
“Could we sit down for a few minutes,” Grace said unexpectedly. They passed the bench by the roadside every week but had never loitered there. Admittedly, facing away from the road and across the fields as it did, the view from the seat was spectacular.
“Are you OK?” Don asked.
“Yes. I’m fine. I just wanted stay here for five minutes.”
“Of course,” he said noting as they bent to sit the brass plaque screwed to the back announcing that the wooden bench had been donated by some past village worthy to rest the sore feet of weary travellers. “What’s up then? Hmm?” he nudged her gently.
“You know I can see in church that you spend a good deal of time thinking.”
Don admitted this was true.
“Well so do I. I wanted to finish off something we didn't finish properly before, after Greg came round.”
“You don't have to you know.” Don could reasonably predict what was coming and after almost having driven from his mind the details of Carol’s death, he didn't really want to have to consider the subject that Grace was almost bound to raise.
“Well I want to. Greg will have said something. He’s bound to have. He was always bringing it up when I was living with him. As though it’s not the sort of thing you’d want to just try to completely forget about.”
Don had to be supportive, he felt. They were already holding hands and he took her other hand with his free hand. “Come on then,” he said.
“He’ll have told you I had terminations.”
“He did.”
“Well I need to tell you what actually happened so that you know.”
“I said before that I don't care. I mean I do care if the subject hurts you, but it doesn't change how I feel about you.”
“No, but I want to tell you. The first one happened when I was not quite sixteen. When my parents found out I was probably pregnant because I’d missed a couple of periods and I wasn't feeling very well, they marched me straight to the doctors to get it sorted out as they put it. I didn't really know what was happening. It was just put to me that it was a procedure to bring my period on. There was no internet. I didn't have access to any books about pregnancy or the stages of development of a foetus. I was up and about the next day with no ill effects and it wasn't until quite a few years later that I questioned in my mind what had happened and that it was actually getting rid of a baby.
“But no-one discussed with me anything about there being a baby and keeping the baby. It was just like, say, having your tonsils out though actually much quicker and in fact far less physically traumatic than that, or even than having a tooth out.”
“Well I’m sorry,” said Don. “You can talk to me about that or anything else that troubles you at any time.”
“Thanks. Well Greg always refers to two terminations but the second one wasn't actually a termination at all. I was about twenty three by then. I was with someone I’d probably have stayed with and I did become pregnant but I miscarried. It upset the relationship so after a time we separated and not long after I met Greg. However at the time it seemed as though I hadn't lost all the foetal material as they put it and I had to go into hospital to have a D&C, a dilation and curettage.
“But Greg always insisted on throwing in my face that I’d had two terminations. I wished I’d never told him that or anything else about myself before I met him. He just used the things to taunt me.”
“Poor darling.” He put his arm around her. “I’m not surprised you’d left him before. That’s another of the things he told me.”
“Well I tried to. Not with anyone else. Just to my brother one time and another time to a friend. But people don't want to get involved. They don't want the bother. And with Greg, of course there was a lot of bother. And I had two children. I only spent one night away each time. I had to go back because of the children. Luke doesn't even know about it.”
Don squeezed her and said: “Well you’re all safe now.”
“Telling you makes me feel better,” said Grace. She sighed. “I need to try to forget about it now. It doesn't help to dwell on these things. Shall we go back then.”
AT LUNCHTIME, ALL four of them had a meal together with some wine. Emma was already at the kitchen table and Luke had been invited up from the summerhouse. The young people had seemed reasonably casual and comfortable with each other. Don wasn’t a huge sports fan but he wanted to watch the afternoon's rugby match between the Springboks and Scotland being broadcast live on terrestrial TV. He wouldn't have satellite. It had been mentioned over lunch and Luke, a keen player, had wanted to come and watch too. Emma, having had too much wine and having got completely confused with the things she could say and the things she couldn't say had decided to retire to her room to read for a time.
Later however she had wandered into the sitting room. Grace was asleep on the settee with Don's arm loosely around her. Don watched as Luke, on Emma entering the room, had risen from his chair and stayed standing until she sat down. Well, perhaps that was what they taught you to do at public school. Don knew that Luke had been at a public school until expelled aged fifteen.
The gesture was polite for sure. But the smile on Luke’s face as he regarded Emma was familiar to intimate. Don began to have some sneaking doubts at that point. But Scotland were scoring and his attention went back to the screen as Emma pulled her legs up onto the chair, curled her feet underneath her and looked back at Luke.
"THANK YOU FOR meeting me at such short notice. I'm surprised you remembered me. How's the new job going? You still seeing your boyfriend? That chef who works at Bingley's?"
The questions were a little intrusive. Connie wondered how he knew about the boyfriend who was a chef at Bingley's Restaurant. She had only come here because the man had insinuated that the company might want her back at a considerably enhanced salary and she couldn't see what her boyfriend had to do with that. Though of course it was a rather unorthodox way from the outset to conduct a job interview; to accost her at the bus stop and ask to meet her at a rather grubby out of the way café on a light industrial estate on a Sunday afternoon to discuss it. However she knew quite well that he was a senior sales executive in the company. It must be all above board.
Connie reasoned that he was probably busy most of the time and she worked during the week which is why he had offered to meet her on a Sunday. So he had said. He had also hinted at some secrecy which she had assumed was to do with a product or process the company had developed. She didn’t want to appear unfriendly but she didn’t see why she should disclose details of her private life to him.
On the other hand, she was slightly apprehensive about refusing to answer his questions. He had about him something she would have struggled to describe in words if asked to do so. Not exactly menacing, but a kind of insistence, a persistence, an air of heavy concentration on the topic in hand, and she was worried how he'd react if she didn’t answer his questions outright.
"Well," she said, "the new job's OK. Not so much responsibility as at Steins Pharmaceuticals but it's a job and I had to get another job."
"You didn’t have to leave Steins."
"No. I just wanted a break for a time. Now though I'm really looking for a bigger challenge."
"You didn’t answer me about the boyfriend."
"Why do you want to know?"
"Well it's relevant to offering you a job. What your circumstances are. If you filled in a formal application form, you'd have to say whether you were single or married or living with a partner. It's just normal. It's just that this job is….isn't open to everyone. It has to be someone we can trust. Implicitly. You do understand don’t you?"
"I….yes. OK. I do now you put it like that. Yes I'm still with my boyfriend. We'll probably get married soon. But for the time being actually we don’t live together. He lives with his parents and I live with mine. I go and stay at his home some weekends." Connie was thinking that the extra money would help with saving up a deposit for a house so that they could actually get married and live together properly.
"Good. That's just what we're looking for. Stability, but not too much of an involvement for now. OK."
He looked down at his notes and the photocopies of the documents he'd been able to make. He continued:
"I see from your CV that you used to work as a waitress at Bingley's as well when you were still at school. Holidays and weekends and things. Is that where you met your boyfriend?"
Connie frowned. Again the irrelevancy of the question was puzzling.
"It indicates stability," he said by way of explanation. "That your current relationship is of long-standing. That your private life isn't in turmoil like some of these girls."
Connie said shortly that yes she had met her boyfriend at Bingley's. She tried not to let her growing dislike of this man and his probing show too obviously.
"In your company file, against religion you put down "RC". I assume that means Roman Catholic." He looked at Connie enquiringly.
Connie couldn't see what this had to do with a job at a pharmaceutical company, and she said so.
"Actually it is relevant. You may have to be working with human foetuses. The products of abortions. Therefore if you had any strong religious convictions, it might make it difficult for you." He noticed that she'd gone very pale, and she swallowed several times. "Are you actually a practising Roman Catholic?"
Connie's face was stricken. She looked as though she was going to cry. Greg was fascinated. After all the girl had presumably voluntarily subjected herself to a medical termination. To see what would emerge, he continued, regardless of the turmoil he could see his line of questioning was producing. He tried not to smile.
"I know many Catholics strongly object to abortion. I'm sure the girls who had the abortions that produced the foetal material we have to use in the process didn’t really want to do away with their infants. But sometimes it's necessary. Wouldn't you agree?"
He couldn't see Connie's face. It was almost buried in the bowl of icecream he'd bought her.
"I expect the girls' families wouldn't have approved, but most girls wouldn't tell their families probably. Or indeed the fathers of their children. Children." He repeated the word for emphasis. "Little children.
"What do you think then Connie? Interested in the position? Because if not, there's another little job I could put your way. In fact you'd probably be grateful to take it. So that your family and your boyfriend wouldn't find out what you'd done. I've got the report here. It clearly mentions termination of pregnancy as the reason you needed the time off work. Only fifteen weeks into the pregnancy it says. The poor little thing can't have felt anything. Probably. And then a bout of depression. Only natural…."
The cry that escaped Connie's lips was loud and animalistic. Greg looked round in case anyone had noticed. He didn’t want this meeting to be especially remembered by anyone.
"Shut up," he hissed. "Or I will tell your parents. And your bloody boyfriend. All I want is for you to do one small thing for me. It's not much. You must've got to know some of the other holiday girls who worked at Bingley's when you were there. That's of considerable use to me. There'll be no come back on you. You just do this thing I need you to do and then that'll be the end of it. OK?"
Connie's hot tears melted the rest of her icecream as Greg outlined his requirements.