A Folder With Ambition

Nell ran a café and could tell when Ned was listening to a message instead of the person serving him. Thirty-three and dryly funny, she asked whether he wanted coffee or somewhere to rehearse being busy. Their later personal supper was much more enjoyable. Nell took his hand, laughed at his first honest answer and kissed him before he could make the story sound more impressive.

Skye designed clothes and invited him to an exhibition where he had no useful equipment to hide behind. Twenty-six and boldly amused by his new confidence, she straightened his jacket and told him it deserved a less apologetic owner. Their private date ended with Skye kissing him, then refusing his suggestion that the evening had succeeded mainly because of her excellent design.

Liv hosted radio programmes and persuaded him to tell the story of his leaking shoes. Twenty-eight and mischievous, she saved the better joke for their personal coffee afterward. Liv wanted to know whether becoming successful had improved his ability to recognize flirting. Ned held her hand, answered more plainly and discovered she preferred that version to his carefully polished public one.

Ruth wrote fiction and disliked the expression personal brand. Thirty-five and quietly daring, she chose a novel for him and invited him to discuss it over supper. Ned arrived with notes. Ruth laughed, set them aside and kissed him outside after he managed to talk about something he actually felt rather than a lesson he hoped sounded worth learning.

Those attractions had real endings. Tess kept her music, Eve her teaching, May her food work and Beth her boat work. Nell, Skye, Liv and Ruth had careers and private lives that did not remain conveniently unfinished because Ned now wore good shoes. He was learning to enjoy an evening without mistaking it for a reservation he could renew indefinitely.

The disruption in 2020 hurt the event business. Filming calendars emptied, some clients cancelled and the fixed costs did not pause politely. Fay's practical remote library and the editing relationships Ned had already built preserved useful work, but not every invoice. He kept reserves, adapted actual services and refused a grand studio expansion Dean proposed at precisely the wrong moment.

A major client needed a remote presentation assembled from original material across several contributors. Dean offered a large production plan and implied that Ned's little service was mainly a folder with ambition. The client gave both suppliers the same properly authorized sample material and asked for a usable short cut by the following afternoon.

Ned wanted to produce the most spectacular version. Rae asked what the customer needed to show. Fay made the files findable, Joy supplied the agreed original images and the team assembled the relevant story without making everyone wait while the founder admired his own transitions. The client chose their service, then asked about recurring use.

Dean complained that the smaller proposal had won on price. The client said it had won because the right person could find and change an image without calling three people. Ned enjoyed the answer, then took Rae to supper instead of spending the entire evening rehearsing it. She wore silver earrings again and kissed him when he put the telephone away before sitting down.

Joy accepted work that would keep her travelling. She liked him and wanted that movement more than an indefinite promise to return to his studio. Their farewell was tender and clear, with a familiar kiss and no expectation that affection should make her turn down her own future. Ned kept the photograph she had given him and let the romance finish.

Fay wanted a relationship with one shared direction, and his feelings increasingly returned to Rae. They ended their substantial romance after a quiet dinner. She kept her thirty percent, her authority and her independent life; later she chose another partner. Ned did not need to erase the woman who had made the business usable simply because their personal future had changed.

He told Rae about waking in February 2016, the AlphaGo note and the shares. She listened until he finished, then asked how much of her life he had remembered. None exactly, he admitted. Rae smiled at that answer, took his hand and said she was relieved not to have been invited into a part somebody else had already decided she should play.