Chapter 3

After a fairly sleepless night I wasn't really at my best when Gareth pitched up at some unearthly hour of the morning – about 9:30, to be honest – but I got it together to make him coffee and even some breakfast – he'd left his parents place in North Wales considerably earlier still – and we sat companionably enough in the small kitchen of the flat I'd slept in - Debbie and my flat, according to the plans we'd made in London. Not that he commented on her absence, possibly because the journey had been a bit of a hassle – the by now only-just-passable road up the valley being only the last of the weather related problems – and he was just knackered. Or perhaps he just assumed that she was doing something elsewhere – perhaps up at the building site.

Anyway, he didn't ask and I didn't volunteer the information, so after we'd finished eating we set straight to setting up the office, reassembling most of the furniture that we'd brought with us from London, for a start, with gusto. And, working hard and working well together, we got most of the bigger stuff set up within a couple of hours. I made to make an immediate start on configuring the IT side of things but he stopped me and suggested a coffee instead. Well, man after my own heart and all that, so I agreed and – the office coffee maker being in a cardboard box somewhere in the pile – went off to fill a kettle.

When I got back, I found him sitting on one of the desks, talking good humouredly with Rosie. Who greeted me warmly enough, accepted a coffee and then, pleasantries out of the way, said,

"I came over for a reason, though. First is to give you a message from Debbie – after we talked last night." (I saw Gareth give us both a quizzical look but he didn't make any comment.) "I suggested that she take a break for the day, do some thinking and that sort of thing. In return for which, I said I'd come in and help out in her place, if that's OK?"

We both agreed that it was, though I could tell that Gareth was now retrospectively curious about where Debbie had been – this morning and, I guessed, last night, too. Well, he'd find out – or not – soon enough. I didn't really feel like talking about it. In any case, Rosie wasn't quite finished yet.

"And," she went on, "seeing as how I'm going to be here and the two of you seem to have done most of the heavy lifting already, I think you should bugger off, too, Dave. Kath suggested that you might like to take a walk round the head of the valley with her and that deranged dog of hers – the ghylls should be pretty impressive after all this rain – say meeting at the Old Hotel about lunchtime?

Again, I could see the curiosity on Gareth's face but he must have picked up on something in Rosie's tone – or perhaps from both of our body language – because he rapidly asserted that he felt this was a bloody good idea, how he'd be happy to work with Rosie, etc etc. I did wonder, briefly, if I was being set up, her but actually I did have a couple of counter arguments. First, the next task we had was to set up the network – more my area than Gareth's – and, second, what with the continuing difficulties on the road, there weren't going to be any buses up the valley.

"Dave," said Gareth, with some force, "I can hook up a PC to an ADSL router, for crissakes – which will give us basic functionality – and as for the more involved stuff, well Naz should be here tomorrow and its more his area than yours..."