George's New Beginning

'And rewarding?'

'It can be. On a good day.'

'But ...,' George said.

'I studied engineering,' Tilly said. 'I wanted to design systems. Build systems. I'm not sure how I ended up in HR. And now I'm in training. Showing people how to get the best out a system that someone else has designed and built feels like a bit of a cop out, a bit of a side road. It certainly wasn't what I intended.'

'I doubt if the people you are training feel like that,' George said.

'Hopefully they don't. But I still do.'

George raised his glass.

'Cheers,' Tilly said. 'It's just that ... well, you just chucked it all in to do something else.'

George laughed. 'Yeah. And look where that has got me.'

'You're writing a novel.'

'No. I'm considering writing a novel. There's a difference.' Or was there? George wondered. At what point does thinking become writing? It could be argued that thinking about what you are going to write is as much a part of writing as tapping the keys. Thinking was certainly the harder part. If you couldn't get the thinking right, there was little point in the tapping part. What was it that Truman Capote was reputed to have said about Jack Kerouac's prolific output? 'That's not writing, that's just typing'? Something like that.

'So ...,' George said, 'you have a job offer - which I assume is a promotion - but you're wondering if you wouldn't prefer to do something else. You're approaching the crossroads and you are wondering if you might want to turn in a different direction. Is that about it?'

'Pretty much,' Tilly said.

'I've just realised: you're wearing a dress,' George said.

'Yes. Would it help if I took it off?' Tilly asked.

George laughed. 'I don't think I've ever seen you wearing a dress before.'

Tilly frowned slightly. 'Well ... if we're on the customer's site, we tend to wear suits. It's an IT thing. And if we're in the office, it tends to be jeans.'

'It suits you,' George said. 'The dress, I mean.'

'Thank you.'

'So ... the crossroads.'

'Yes. What do you think?'

'What do I think? I think that I'm not really qualified to give career advice,' George said. 'That's what I think.'

'But you decided,' Tilly said. 'And you were famous. I'm just another IT trainer. With a degree in engineering.'

George laughed again. 'Famous? For the past year or so the only thing that I've been famous for is hating what I did. Chucking it in was about preserving my sanity - what little I have left.'

'Well, I don't hate training,' Tilly said. 'But I don't want to do it for the rest of my life. It's not something that sets me on fire.'

'What would set you on fire?'

Tilly took a long sip of her wine, got up, and walked to the open French doors that led out to the patio. How could George not have noticed that she was wearing a dress. She looked fabulous. Sex on a stick.

'In a perfect world?'

'Well, we could start there.'

'I think what I'd really like to do,' Tilly said after a long pause, 'is to design elegant solutions to tricky problems. Customers come to us - and others like us - looking for elegant solutions. But what they tend to get is an off-the-shelf box with lots of bits bolted on. And then, when that doesn't do what the customer needs it to do, we cobble together some more bits and bolt them on too. Not surprisingly, every now and then, the whole thing collapses under its own weight. A lot of what we train the customer's people to do is stuff they shouldn't need to do. The system should do it for them.'

George nodded. From what he understood about IT projects, it all made sense. 'I assume there's a good reason for starting with an off-the-shelf box.'

'Price mainly,' Tilly said. 'But also time. The customer wants the cheapest solution. And they want it tomorrow. So the sales guys quote a price they think the customer will accept - even though they know from experience that the real price will probably be double or triple that. And the development team starts with an off-the-shelf box to save time.'

George nodded again. Yes, Tilly, in a dress, certainly was sex on a stick. 'And do you know anyone who is actually creating elegant solutions from scratch?'

'Not really,' Tilly said. 'Not in the area of enterprise automation anyway. Everyone seems to be caught up in the same game.'

George topped their wine glasses. 'How do your colleagues feel about this?' he asked.

'I think, for most of them, it's just the way things are.'

'But not for you.'

Tilly smiled.

Prior to Tilly's arrival, George had read another chunk of When the Devil Drives. Brandon's session with Dr Minsky had not achieved what Brandon's teachers had hoped it would achieve.

'Indications are that Brandon is probably somewhere on the autistic spectrum,' Dr Minsky told Holly Harper. 'Further observations would be required, but I'd say he probably falls into the Asperger's category. He's certainly talented. And he has an unusually retentive memory. Tell him something once, and that's all it takes.'

'So he's not actually ... umm ... calculating the answers? Following the process?' Mrs Harper said.

Dr Minsky stared at the back of his hand. 'Umm ... hard to say. But it's possible that he's just recycling what he has already seen. What he has already heard. What he already knows.'

'Well, that's not helpful,' Mrs Harper said.

'This is going to require some thought,' George said. 'When do you have to decide?'

'I've got another couple of days,' Tilly said.

'Oh. Not long then. Tell me ... do you like fettucine Bolognese?'

'Yes. I do. Very much.'

'In an ideal world,' George said, glancing at his watch, 'I'd like the ragu to cook for at least three hours. But a couple of hours should do the trick. You're in charge of the wine, Miss Matilda. I need to get chopping.'

George liked cooking. He did some of his best thinking with pan and knife in hand.

He placed a heavy pan on a medium gas flame and then set about mise en place, reducing a small carrot, a couple of half sticks of celery, and a medium-sized onion to a small dice. The mirepoix. He then took a 500 gram pack of ground beef from the fridge and a can of chopped organic plum tomatoes from the pantry. From the spice cupboard he produced a jar of dried oregano, a whole nutmeg, and some salt. Olive oil, butter, a cup of milk, and a cup of beef stock completed the line-up.

'You're very organised,' Tilly said.

'My mother was a tutor at a catering college,' George said. 'She spent her days telling would-be chefs to work clean, work tidy, and taste, taste, taste.'

And then it was time to start cooking. Oil and butter into the pan, quickly followed by the mirepoix. Stirring, stirring, stirring. And then George added the beef and let it take on a little colour. Not too much. Salt and a cup of milk followed.

'Milk?' Tilly said.

'A trick I learned from Marcella Hazan.'

'Marcella Hazan?'

'The great Marcella Hazan. If you've ever wanted to know how to cook traditional Italian fare - and you don't have a nonna to learn from - Marcella Hazan is - or at least was - the go-to girl.'

George allowed the milk to almost cook away completely before adding freshly-grated nutmeg. And then he added the dried oregano, the stock and, shortly after that, the chopped tomatoes. And then he brought the whole mixture almost to the boil before turning it down to a slow simmer.

'And now we must be patient,' George said, picking up his wine glass.

'You're having fun, aren't you?' Tilly said.

'Well, a chap's got to eat. And cooking helps me to think.'

'And what are you thinking about?'

'About you,' George said. And then he hastily added: 'Well ... about your crossroads.' But that wasn't strictly true. George was thinking about Tilly. And how ... well ... sexy she was. Why had he not noticed this before?

'Are there any other corners of the information technology game where they don't sell solutions that they know they can't deliver on time and on budget?' George asked.

'There are one or two small consultancies,' Tilly said. 'But government and the big corporates tend not to trust them. I think they worry that the little guys will go broke before they finish the job.'

George stirred the ragu and added a little more boiling water.

'And do they?' George asked. 'Go broke, I mean.'

'Sometimes.'

From his copywriting days, George knew how easy it was for start-ups to crash and burn. Having a handful of talented people was a start, but it was only a start. You also needed capital. And clients - clients who would pay a fair price and pay on time.

George and Tilly chatted on for another half an hour or so, and then Tilly announced that she needed to pee. George went and stirred the ragu again. And then he tasted it. It was coming along, but it needed more salt and a touch of triple-concentrated tomato paste.

'How is it?' Tilly asked when she returned.

'It's going to be all right,' George said with a smile. 'But our wine's looking a bit sad. What say we switch to a red?'

'Gosh. Have we drunk that whole bottle?'

'Not quite. But we have had a lot of talking to do,' George said.

George went to his 'cellar' - under the stairs - and produced a bottle of Montepulciano. 'Continuing the Italian theme ...,' he said, placing the bottle on the kitchen table.

Yes, Tilly certainly looked sexy. Was it just the dress? It was a pretty enough dress, but, no, there was more to it than that. Much more. George just couldn't understand why he hadn't noticed before. 'If it's any consolation,' George said, 'I found deciding what I wasn't going to do was almost as liberating as deciding what I was going to do. I wasn't going to keep on doing what I didn't enjoy doing.'

George drew the cork from the Montepulciano and set the bottle on the table to breathe. 'You really are looking very beautiful today,' he said.

'Thank you,' Tilly said. And she flounced. Was she flirting? Yes, she was flirting. Oh, well ... What was it that Tina had said?

George went and stood in front of Tilly and kissed her neck. Just softly.

Tilly smiled. 'Mmm.' And she reached up, took George's head in her hands, and kissed him full on the lips. And one kiss led to another, which led to another.

George began by holding Tilly by her upper arms. But then he let his hands slide down her body to her waist, and then around to her arse. 'Oh, yes,' Tilly muttered softly, and George inched up the skirt of her dress.

'Commando?' George said.

Tilly smiled again. 'Well ... I thought they were going to have to go at some stage.'

George laughed.

'They're in my bag - if you think that I should put them on again.'

'No, no,' George said. 'But just let me put a bit more water in the ragu - then it can look after itself for a moment or two.' George added more water to the ragu and stirred it. Then he turned the gas flame even lower. 'Right. Now ... where were we?'

George cleared the sturdy kitchen table of the wine bottles and glasses, and then lifted Tilly and sat her on the edge. It was then just a matter of pushing the hem of her skirt up around her waist. 'Beautiful,' George said, and he drew up a chair, spread Tilly's legs, and nuzzled into her fur-covered vulva. 'Yes. Beautiful.' And Tilly took in a sharp breath and then sighed a long sigh.

'George! Are you there?' a voice from the other side of the hedge called out and drifted in through the open French doors.

'No, Elizabeth,' George muttered softly. 'I'm not here. I'm in heaven. I'm in fucking heaven.' And Tilly laughed.

For perhaps ten minutes George kissed and sucked and tongued Tilly's warm, wet cunt as Tilly's breathing got shallower and shallower and more and more ragged. And then Tilly grabbed George's head and shuddered wordlessly. And then she fell back onto the table. 'Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck,' she said. 'That is one very educated tongue you have.'

'Well, it could probably do with a bit of exercise,' George said. 'And you might be the perfect training partner. You being in the training business. For the moment anyway.'

Yes, sex on a stick. George had not been wrong. Although he still wasn't sure how it had taken him so long to realise that Tilly was sex on a stick. And when Tina had said: 'You fancy her, don't you?', yes, he probably had. He had probably fancied her for quite some time - if he was honest. 'I think I need a drink,' George said.

Tilly sat up. 'Perhaps we can play the second half after supper,' she said.

George smiled. 'I like the way you think, young lady.'

George topped up the wine glasses and stirred the ragu. 'This is going to be OK,' he said. 'By the time that I have whipped up a salad and cooked some fettucine, this should be about ready.'

'Can hardly wait,' Tilly said. 'Can hardly wait for supper either.' And she smiled.