Eleanor stood and joined Jill in clearing the dinner plates. Caroline made to stand and Eleanor motioned for her to stay, just as Meg piped up. "Caroline. We've managed to learn everything about you that doesn't matter. Tell us what does."

Meg turned her attention from Jill and Eleanor's exit. Caroline judged her an average looking woman in every way, except that the bright spark in her eyes and the silver shine of her short-cropped, curly hair. Both made her delightfully and irresistibly impish. As did her forward personality. Based on her apparel she was also clearly a fan of Harrogate FC - and Manchester. She'd opined at length about Manchester's past performance and speculated about the upcoming season during dinner. Caroline had a sneaking suspicion that Meg and Jane might get on quite well. She'd seen them speak briefly at the fateful Christmas party - perhaps they'd already been plotting outings to football matches.

Eleanor grinned over to Jill on their way through the swinging doorway out of the dining room. Meg and Jill were two friends she actually considered friends. Meg was irascible, and Jill was the sweetest take-no-shit woman she'd met. They were a perfectly complementary pair and had been for almost 30 years now. She'd met Meg at an Oxford happy hour not long after she'd moved to Harrogate to start over after Emma. They were about 10 years older than she, and had taken her in like a lost puppy. She loved them dearly and the feeling was clearly mutual. They'd seen her through more than one girlfriend in the past decade, though they were infrequent and hardly garnered the curiosity they'd managed already about Caroline as soon as they'd met her at the happy hour last year. Seeing Eleanor invite Caroline around again, at the Christmas party, had nearly driven them mad with it.

Caroline shrugged. "Well I'm not sure what more I can tell you. We've covered quite a bit of ground."

"You've managed to capture Eleanor's imagination – so you've got to have more than one trick up your sleeve. I mean, look at her. The woman's smitten. Eleanor doesn't get smitten." Meg crossed her arms.

Point proven, apparently. Caroline smiled and blushed, but seized the opportunity. "I think the better question, Meg, since I have you here, is what Eleanor does do. I've only met the infamous and definitive Emma the once, and that was hardly worth mentioning. You know all know my story, so I'm rather curious what my current girlfriend's been up to these many years. And I think you're just the woman to tell me."

Meg smiled. She raised her voice and it easily carried the short distance into the kitchen. "We've got a live one here, Jilly."

Caroline could hear both women laugh in response, imagined the smirk on Eleanor's face.

"Well there was the hilarious incident of the woman with the dog." Meg stood and refilled both their wine glasses. "Settle in, Caroline. I'm in a sharing kind of mood."

Caroline sat back and crossed her own arms, taking her wine glass with her.


"I like her Eleanor. And Meg likes her." Jill washed and Eleanor dried and stacked.

"Meg likes any woman with blonde hair and long legs." Eleanor rolled her eyes and looked up to Jill, who hardly fit the description. Jill was 5' 2" in heels, second generation Filipino, with sharp dark eyes and stick-straight salt and pepper hair just to her shoulders.

"She does. But I think she likes Caroline particularly." Jill handed the final plate to Eleanor, dried her hands with a kitchen towel.

"Well so do I." Eleanor leaned a hip against the Formica countertop.

"That's also easy to twig. So what's the hold up? And why is this the first time we're meeting her properly?" Jill placed her hands on her hips, looked up at her and stared Eleanor down.

They'd been friends long enough now that Eleanor did not need additional clarity in the question. "She's walking wounded, Jill. A divorcee and then a widow at 47. All within a year of each other. She needs the kid gloves. I've already learned that the hard way. I got excited. I rushed things. It didn't work. And I don't know if - what - I'm ready for."

"Well I think she's old enough and smart enough to recognize a good thing when she sees it. You're a catch. It's been a year. What are her intentions? It's plain to see yours."

Eleanor smiled indulgently at the woman who spoke to her more like a mother than her own. "I taught you my rules, Jill. Not the other way around." She put her own hands on her hips. "But I forgot them myself, for a minute. Look at her and tell me you wouldn't have done the same."

Jill laughed. "Maybe not me. Too posh for my taste. But our Meg - she would have been done in straightaway."

"Well she's worth waiting for. And I think we've already made significant progress. I'm more than happy to settle in and just let things develop in their own course."

"What's this? Our Eleanor decides to let another woman take the steering wheel? Now I know you're in for it." Jill stepped forward and poked Eleanor in the stomach.


"So she texts both me and Jill, from the café. Says we're to call her in 10 minutes. Says she'll let it ring through the first time, but we're to be sure and call right back, let it ring again, just let her talk when she finally answers." Meg smiled and shook her head in recollection. "Well Jill, she's not up for it. But I think it's a lark and I'm game, so I do it. Wait 10 minutes exactly and call her up. Well it rings through like she says, and I leave a voicemail for good measure. Then I hang up and call right back, let it ring on. She answers, on maybe the 8th ring this time, all hurry and concern in her voice."

"'Yes – Meg – what is it? Everything all right?'" Meg made a telephone gesture, did a bad impression of Eleanor, but Caroline caught on.

"So I just say, 'Hello Eleanor.' And she starts talking, answering questions like I've been asking them - "

"'Oh well are you OK? Is Jill OK? She's with you? Are you – oh – you're stuck, then? Well that's awful. I'm so sorry. I don't know – oh? Really? Well, yes, I suppose. But I'm just – oh. Yes, I see. Of course. That makes sense.'"

"So then she pauses, on the other end of the line." Meg's eyes alight in recollection. "Starts talking to this woman, telling her about how her friends are stuck with a bum ride in Skipton and needing to get home to their sick dog with diabetes. And here's me, sitting right over there in our living room, laughing like all get out at Eleanor's contrite tone, thinking of this poor woman at a café with no clue."

"So Eleanor starts up again. 'Oh sure. Yes. Right. Well I can head out in a few minutes. I understand. I'm terribly sorry Meg. What a situation. OK. OK. No. Just text me the address. I'll be there when I can.'"

"Then she clicks off without another word, and I look over to Jill and we shake our heads, because that's just our Eleanor. Haughty as ever and can't stand to be bothered if it's not her cup of tea. Though I will say it's the only time she's turned that trick. At least with us." Meg leaned over and clinked glasses with Caroline. "So you see, we're already quite impressed with you. No get out of jail free phone calls."

Eleanor and Jill came through, Eleanor having caught the very tail end of the conversation as she and Jill neared the dining room.

"There's nothing wrong with valuing my time highly," retorted Eleanor.

"Oh you're just stuck up, dear. But we love you anyway." Meg pinched Eleanor's hip on the way by, and received a slap on the hand for it.

Caroline sat back, entirely amused and having a wonderful time.

Jill piped up in Eleanor's defense. "Now you tell the whole story Meg, or you let Eleanor."

"Thank you, Jill." Eleanor sat regally and picked up her own wine glass, clearly ready to begin her defense. She turned to Caroline. "Wipe that smirk off your face. You hardly know what it's about."

Caroline smiled wider and laughed, and Meg nodded over to her.

Eleanor came back hot. "You weren't there. Any of you. So you've hardly room to speak. And as I've said before, she made a reservation for a table of three. She sat her dog at the third. She ordered the dog an entrée, for God's sake. I love dogs. I do. But she talked to the dog more during brunch than she did to me."

"Well is that indictment of you or the dog? I mean, what kind of dog was it, anyway?" Caroline intoned sweetly.

"A Pomeranian. And enough from you. Unless you're holding out on me, you did not have to spend years paddling about the rather shallow dating pool in Harrogate. You've no idea what it does to a woman. Why I was positively desperate by the time I gave you a chance." Eleanor finished her wine and set it back on the table with particular force and flourish.


Meg and Jill both laughed at the two women shooting darts across their dining room table. They looked at each other and didn't need to speak their approval. Between her nuclear misfire with Emma, 'that cheating bitch,' as Meg referred to her, and the carnival of mis-queues along the way, most ending at least three years ago, Eleanor seemed to rather have just quit with women not long after the unfortunate dog at brunch incident. They were more than glad to see a woman like Caroline swing Eleanor back up into the saddle.