‘Don’t worry about it,’ Sergio told him gently. ‘I will know immediately.’
Not least because he was playing a highly innovative opponent, ready to use a game to attract his attention. The culprit could only be an ambitious member of his executive staff, keen to impress him with his strategic skills.
The young man was so busy staring at Kathy that he almost tripped over a chair on his way out of the café.
‘You’re seriously good for business.’ Bridget Kirk’s round, good-natured face shone with amusement. A bustling brunette of forty-one, she was the manager. ‘All the men want you to serve them. When are you going to pick one of them to go out with?’
Her green eyes veiled to conceal her awkwardness at the question, Kathy forced a laugh. ‘I haven’t got time for a boyfriend.’
Watching the youthful redhead pull on her jacket to go home, Bridget suppressed a sigh. Kathy Galvin was drop-dead gorgeous and only twenty-three years old, but she lived like a hermit. ‘You could always squeeze one in somewhere. You’re only young once. All you seem to do is work and study. I hope you’re not worrying about old history and how to explain it. That’s all behind you now.’
Kathy resisted the urge to respond that the past was still with her all the time, physically in the shape of a livid scar on her back, haunting her in nightmares and shadowing and threatening her even during daylight hours with a sense of insecurity. She knew now that if you were unlucky you didn’t even need to do anything bad to have everything taken away from you. Her life had gone badly wrong when she was nineteen years old. As far as she knew nothing she had done had contributed to that situation. Indeed, when she had been least expecting it, calamity had come out of nowhere and almost destroyed her. Although she had survived the experience it had changed her. Once she had been confident, outgoing and trusting. She had also had complete faith in the integrity of the justice system and an even deeper belief in the essential kindness of other human beings. Four years on, those convictions had taken a savage beating and now she preferred to keep herself to herself, rather than invite rejection and hurt.
Bridget squeezed the younger woman’s slight shoulder. It was a stretch for her because Kathy was a good bit taller than she was. ‘It is behind you now,’ the brunette murmured gently. ‘Stop brooding about it.’
Walking home, Kathy reflected how lucky she was to work for someone like Bridget, who accepted her in spite of her past. Unhappily, Kathy had discovered that if she wanted to work that kind of honesty was a rare luxury, and she had learnt to be inventive with her CV to explain the gap in her employment record. To survive she had two jobs: evenings as an office cleaner, day shifts as a waitress. She needed every penny to pay the bills and there was nothing left over at the end. Even so, long, frustrating months of soul-destroying unemployment had taught Kathy to be grateful for what she had. Few people were as generous and open-minded as Bridget. Although Kathy had qualifications, she’d still had to settle for unskilled and poorly paid work.
As always, it was a relief to get the door of her bedsit safely shut behind her. She loved her privacy and relished the fact that she had no noisy neighbours. She had painted the bedsit’s walls pale colours to reflect the light that flooded through the window. Tigger was curled up on the sill outside awaiting her return. She let the elderly tortoiseshell cat in and fed him. He was a stray and half-wild and it had taken months for her to win his trust. Even now he would panic if she closed the window, so no matter how cold it was it stayed open for the duration of his visits. She understood exactly how he felt and his health had improved greatly since she had begun caring for him. His coat had acquired a gloss and his thin lanky frame a decent covering of flesh.
Tigger reminded her of the pet cat that her family had once cherished. An only child, Kathy had had a chequered early history. Abandoned by her birth mother in a park when she was a year old, Kathy had been adopted as a toddler. But by the time she was ten tragedy had struck again when her adoptive mother had died in a train crash, and soon afterwards a debilitating illness had begun to claim her father’s health. Kathy had become a carer in her teens, struggling to cope with looking after the older man while at the same time running a home on a tight budget and keeping up with her schoolwork. Her love for her surviving parent had strengthened her and if she had any consolation now it was that her father had died before the bright academic future he had foreseen for his daughter had been destroyed.
A couple of hours later, Kathy entered the office block where she worked five nights a week. She had got to quite like cleaning. It was peaceful. As long as she got through her work on time, nobody bossed her about and there were very few men around to harass her. She had soon discovered that hardly anyone paid much heed to the maintenance staff: it was if their very lowliness made them invisible and unworthy of notice, which suited Kathy right down to the ground. She had never been comfortable with the way her looks tended to attract male attention.