Chapter 1: Coffee For Two

Allison Terry was on her lunch break but the precious hour before she had to be back at her desk was slipping away. She looked up and waved as Cerys came in to the coffee shop. Cerys looked as disorganised as ever, nodding an acknowledgement to Allison as she tried to juggle her large shoulder bag while she ordered a cappuccino. Fumbling in the bag in search of her purse as she reached the end of the counter, she almost knocked a pile of pastries to the floor while trying to find the money to pay.

Finally, with her bag tucked awkwardly under one arm and her coffee in its tall cup swaying disturbingly on a tray in the other, Cerys crossed the room and sank down in the padded leather armchair at Allison’s table. “Phew. Sorry I’m late.”

Allison smiled. She wasn’t really that worried about the time. She knew that Cerys was a moveable feast - she turned up when she turned up. “Hectic morning?”

Cerys nodded, an outraged expression on her face. “I actually had to do some work!”

“Good heavens! How unreasonable” Allison laughed. Cerys’s disaffection with the idea of working for a living had been a constant joke between the two since school days. “It’s no good, Cerrie, you’ll have to find a way to retire. You’ll never hang on for another 40 years.”

Cerys tossed her head indignantly, her long dark hair flicked back from her pale-skinned, oval, face. “42 if you don’t mind,” she responded. “I’m only 23. And anyway I may have found a way around that. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“You’ve found a man who’ll keep you in the manner to which you wish to become accustomed?” Allison was sceptical. She was pretty certain that Cerys had done no such thing. Over the last two years Cerys had worked her way through a series of unsuccessful relationships where, usually, the money ran the other way. When it came to men, Cerys seemed fated to attract waifs and strays and Allison found it hard to imagine that she could have finally have moved on to finding a real boyfriend. “You know,” she joked “a man that picks up the bill for both of you, when you go out to dinner.”

“Patrick only ran out of a restaurant once.”

“Yes, but then he made off with your credit cards and £1500!”

“Well, yes. No, this one’s different. He’s sweet. He runs his own company; lives in this great place out on the edge of town. Look.” Cerys rummaged in her bag and pulled out her phone. She thumbed through a series of pictures before she passed the phone over to Allison. “See. Gordon.”