Second Chance at the Belfast Guesthouse

She put down her pen again and paused, overwhelmed by the memory of the vulnerable girl she had been, suddenly bereft of the love that had sustained her since the death of her grandfather. With no home to go back to in Ireland and no job awaiting her in France, she arrived in the lovely apartment in the Bois de Boulogne not knowing she was about to get a First, that Marie-Claude and Gerard would support and care for her and that Robert would take her on as his interpreter and personal assistant at a salary far in excess of anything she could ever have earned in Belfast.

Travelling with him and translating what he had to say to the businessmen who came to him for loans taught her about banking, about money, about risk and the problems of running a business. Now it was these very skills she deployed day and daily to make Drumsollen a viable proposition, its hoped-for success the basis for all their future hopes and plans.

Running a guest house in Ireland might seem far removed from the problems Charles Langley had faced importing fruit from France and Italy, even more so from those of the good-natured Texan entrepreneur who had decided to add some vineyards to his European investments, but she had grasped very quickly that business had its own logic, its own repeating patterns, and a whole set of variables to be considered and balanced against each other. Sometimes she thought the problems were like a difficult jigsaw. You searched for missing pieces and kept finding nothing would fit. At other times the difficulties she regularly translated for Robert’s benefit seemed to her more like a route march, a long, hard struggle over rough ground, littered with unforeseen obstacles to a distant goal which was just as likely to recede before you as be reached by your efforts.

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