He wondered for a moment if Lizzie ever broke out of her shell these days. She had done when she was younger, when she used to ride like a demon round the grounds of Rottingdean, but perhaps life had knocked that exuberance out of her, because all he could feel from her now was tension. He was instantly alert.
‘Do you have a problem?’ Everyone would have read the test results by now, and he knew Lizzie wouldn’t like them.
‘Yes, I’ve got a problem.’
‘So...?’ Spreading his arms wide, he encouraged her to begin.
‘It’s not me that’s got the problem,’ she began.
‘Let me guess—this is about Danny.’
‘Yes, it is,’ she agreed.
‘There’s no one on that list you should be worrying about, except yourself. You’re here on your own behalf, not to run a nannying service.’
He stared at her keenly. Lizzie had more than a little of her grandmother’s steel in her, but there was more to this than a plea for a fellow student, he suspected.
‘I’ve already given Danny a second chance. She’s repeating the course. Last year she had an excuse. This year? Better I get rid of her now than dash her hopes last minute. You need to let this go, Lizzie. And now I have work to do—’
‘I thought you were someone special,’ she said as he turned away. ‘I thought you gave people a chance, because you had been given a chance by Eduardo—’
‘That would be one chance,’ he snapped in reply, incredulous that she would argue back, and furious she would bring his mentor into this. ‘No one handed me my life on a plate. And in spite of what you think of me, I do know how hard it is—’
‘How hard you make it,’ she countered.
He shrugged. ‘So not everyone’s going to make the grade. That’s something you need to accept, especially if you intend to make a success of a business one day.’
‘I will make a success of my business, but this is different,’ she insisted. ‘This is unjust. All I’m asking is that you reinstate Danny. It will destroy her if you send her away. And she can only improve. She’d not done anything terrible—’
‘Or anything notable, either,’ he pointed out, determined to ignore Lizzie’s plea. ‘Am I supposed to wait around indefinitely in the hope that one day Danny will improve?’
‘She’s heartbroken that you’re letting her go.’
‘And I’m a businessman who can’t afford to have one substandard student graduate from my training course.’
‘Danny isn’t substandard,’ Lizzie argued hotly. ‘She lost her confidence last year, and that’s all.’
‘So, how long is it going to take her to find the confidence she’s lost? She’s had a year to find it.’
‘If you let her stay, she’ll prove herself to you. I’ll vouch for her. All I’m asking is just one more chance.’
‘No,’ he said flatly.
‘So that cosy little nugget in your brochure about wanting to give people the same chance you had is just a cynical piece of self-serving rubbish, put there to make you look good?’