Return to Sparkhouse

"I don't mind," Lisa assured her, kneeling down beside the dog to stroke her.

The woman looked behind Lisa and spotted John. She gave him the once over, taking in his size, his muscular build and his shaggy haircut. He saw her eyes widen slightly, almost in fear but a moment later she forced a bright smile and stepped around Lisa and the dog.

"You must be John", she held her hand out. "I'm Kate."

John shook her hand.

"Pleasure," he smiled back, trying to look as non threatening as possible. "Thank you for doing this, by the way. I hope Lisa didn't make a pest of herself."

"She can be quite persistent but no, I offered. Why don't you come on in, the kettle's boiled."

Kate ushered them all into her kitchen and set about making tea.

"Can I take Daisy into the garden?" Lisa asked.

Kate's gaze flickered to John, then the kitchen window.

"Of course," Kate smiled, though John thought it was a little too bright. For some reason, this woman didn't feel comfortable around him.

Oblivious, Lisa ran out into the garden with Daisy hot on her heals.

"She's a lovely girl," Kate said, handing him a mug of tea and sitting opposite him.

"Aye." He looked to the window and smiled as he saw her trying to wrestle stick out of Daisy's mouth. "How did you two meet?" he asked.

"At her school. They asked me to give a talk on computers for their careers week."

"You something of a wizz then?"

"Not till fairly recently, actually. I mean I could type and stuff but I only retrained a few years ago."

"How come?" he asked.

"I just needed a change." She smiled tightly. Clearly that wasn't something she wanted to talk about.

"So, you're not from around here, are you?" John asked.

"Yeah, the accent's a bit of a give away, isn't it? I'm from London originally."

"And what brings you to Yorkshire?"

"Like I said, it was time for a change." She stood up. "Shall we get started on your first lesson?"

"Uh, yeah, ready when you are."

He followed her through to what looked like a study and sat down beside her at a computer.

She didn't look disabled, he thought. In fact she looked stunning, way out of his league. She had a bit of makeup on but she wasn't all made up like he thought a London woman would be. She had on a black, long sleeved shirt and blue jeans. A no nonsense kind of outfit. He liked it. And Black definitely suited her dark colouring and olive skin.

"So, how much do you know about computers, John?"

"Nothin'."

"Nothing at all?"

"Nope. Never actually used one meself."

"Okay, then we'll start with the basics. The first thing you need to know is that you don't know nearly enough about computers to do this machine any damage whatsoever and any mistakes you make, I can put right so don't be scared of it. It's the tool, you're the craftsman. Now, this is the tower, where the computers hard drive lives. Think of it as the brain, if you like. This is the on switch. It takes the computer a while to boot up while it loads the various programs, like you and I take a while to completely wake up in the mornings..."