Faith took the woman her tea and cake, then went back inside to finish as much of the end-of-day tidying up as she could. She signed timesheets for the other waitress and the kitchen assistant and sent them home slightly early because it had been so quiet all day. Even so, that only took ten minutes at the most, so she picked up a cloth and went back onto the terrace. She'd already wiped down the outside tables, but she really didn't have much to do so she thought she might as well spend it pretending to be busy where there was a nice view.

The woman had finished her cake, Faith noticed, and was sitting back – long legs still crossed – reading a book while she drank her tea. Faith tugged the cloth through the drawstring of her apron and made her way over. The woman moved her book off the table to rest it against her thigh, giving Faith room to reach for the empty plate.

"Was that alright?" Faith asked, reaching in.

"Delicious."

"Worth being led astray, then?"

They caught each other's eye for a moment. "Definitely. Thank you." The woman dropped her gaze for a second and fidgeted with the book on her thigh. "I should tell your manager, or someone. How bad an influence you are."

Faith blushed, then grinned. "That would be the Property Manager, but she doesn't work Thursdays. Sorry." She noticed the woman looking at her carefully again. "The buck stops with me today, at least in terms of the catering side of things." She straightened up and ran the back of her hand quickly down her dress, to smooth it.

The woman nodded and openly glanced at Faith's name-badge again. "Oh, right." Just for a moment, the two of them lingered when really there was no reason to. The woman lifted her eyes from Faith's chest and looked away, then at her face. "Please don't take this the wrong way, but you seem rather young to be a supervisor." She blushed visibly. "I'm so sorry, that's very rude of me. Please take it as a compliment." She scratched her head. "It certainly isn't a comment on how you do your job, which seems to be very well, I would say."

Faith blushed too. It was odd how they'd now both made flattering remarks to each other, which would normally be inappropriately personal, but it didn't feel as awkward as it should. A little awkward, certainly, but not very much. "That's OK. Thank you." She shifted her weight again, trapping her free hand under her other elbow to stop herself from fidgeting with her hair or dress. The woman watched her and Faith was fairly certain that she was thinking something similar about the awkward compliments. "I'll be 23 next week, as it happens. But I've been working here for a while now." She fingered her badge quickly. "This promotion is fairly recent, though."

The woman nodded. "Student job?"

"At first. I started when I was 16." The woman nodded and seemed interested, and Faith ended up explaining how she'd not done as well in her A levels as she'd been expected to, so had put off going to university and taken on more hours in the café while she sorted herself out, then had somehow not got round to resitting or reapplying and was still there. Although her employers had put her through various vocational courses to do with catering management, she still felt slightly that she'd missed out when she looked at some of her old schoolfriends, and compared their careers to hers.

The woman crossed her legs in the other direction and put her book on the chair next to her, closing it with a quick glance at the page number. "I can understand what you mean," she said. "On the other hand, although my degree means I've been able to get a reasonable job, I'm still paying off my student debt, almost ten years later." She shrugged.

Faith did a little mental arithmetic, and remembered the woman had struck her as looking younger than the normal customers, even when she'd first seen her. She ran a finger along the edge of the table. "So, if it's not rude to ask, is your birthday tomorrow a significant one?"

The woman met her eye for a moment, then her face split into a grin. Faith thought she looked nice when she was smiling so naturally. "Yes, it is. The Big Thee-Oh." The grin faded slightly. "I'm dreading it."

"Why? You look great." Faith put the empty plate back on the table and stood with her hand on her hip. "You really do." She glanced over the woman again, admiring her figure fairly openly. All Faith's previous partners had been older – one from a couple of years before had been in her late twenties at the time, and hadn't been as fit as this woman.

The woman smiled again, and looked slightly embarrassed. "Thanks. I don't know...I mean, it's a lot older than you." She gestured at Faith vaguely, then ran a hand though her hair. "It's just, it's that particular number. It comes with all that baggage, doesn't it? It even sounds old."

"Rubbish." Faith wondered why the woman had drawn attention to their age gap. It was weird, given she herself had just been thinking about older lovers. "That's it, though, isn't it? It is just a number." She picked up the plate again, conscious of the time and how it maybe wasn't totally appropriate to be flirting with a customer on the terrace. If it was flirting. She made to move off, and decided to test whether flirting might be on the woman's mind, too. She grinned and made sure the woman saw her admire her body again. "Anyway, you're only as old as the woman you feel."

For a second, the woman seemed about to come back with a quick reply, but the moment passed, and she just held Faith's gaze with a faint smile. Faith smiled and raised an eyebrow, then turned and took the plate back to the kitchen.

***

The cook had gone, leaving her a note asking her to set the dishwasher off when she was ready, so Faith added the plate and fork to the load then tidied away her paperwork into the small desk she had in the corner. When she went back out to make sure the windows were all shut, the woman appeared in the doors to the terrace.

"I should be leaving you to close up," she said, holding out the hand with her purse in it.

"No problem," said Faith, leading her over to the till. She picked the order off the clip and handed it to the woman, liking the way their fingers brushed. "Cash or card?"

The woman glanced at the amount. "Oh, I think I can manage cash for that." She opened her purse and pulled out a tenner, again brushing Faith's fingers as she handed it over. "That's fine, thanks."

Faith gasped softly. It was quite a generous tip. "Are you sure? Thank you very much." She rang it through the till, taking the change out and hesitating before adding it to the tips jar.

"Quite sure." The woman smiled with genuine warmth. "It's been nice, thank you. And fun talking to you."

Faith smiled back. She still had to cash up, and only had about ten minutes before they'd be coming round to lock the place up for the night, but she wasn't ready to let the woman go just yet. She dropped the tip into the jar. "So, have you got plans for the rest of your stay?"

"Oh, a bit of wandering about, sightseeing or shopping maybe, tomorrow and Saturday. I'm playing it by ear, really. The only set thing I've arranged is for tonight: I've got a meal booked in a restaurant a colleague was raving about."

"Oh really? Whereabouts?"

"It's just called the Ivy Garden? A bland name, if you ask me, but it's supposed to be good."

Faith smiled. "It is, excellent. A friend from one of my catering courses is the chef there. Whatever the fish is, have that, would be my suggestion. It's his speciality." She started closing down the till while she was talking, taking the cash drawer out and hefting it against her hip. "And if there's space, ask to be seated in the garden. It really is lovely. They won't be very busy tonight, I'd have thought."

"Right, I'll do that. Your suggestions so far have all been spot on. And I like fish, so that's good, too." The woman put her purse away and moved towards the door hesitatingly. "Well, it's been nice to meet you. Thanks."

"You too. And happy birthday for tomorrow." The smiled at each other, and for a moment their having to part felt slightly awkward and wrong. As if they were leaving something unresolved.

The woman nodded. "Thanks, yes." She raised a hand. "Bye, then."

Faith waved her fingers. "Bye."

***

When Faith went out to collect the woman's tea things and tidy the table, she found the woman had left her book on the other chair. She knew it would be too late to catch her now, but picked the book up to take it back inside. It was an old hardback, slim with a pale green cover. The title meant nothing to Faith, it seemed to be a slightly obscure novel, but in the front cover was a message written in attractive handwriting – obviously newer than the book: "Darling Gwen, On your twenty-eighth birthday (and our second-and-three-quarters anniversary, almost!!), With all my love, Claudia xxx". It was dated two years previously.

Faith felt a little skip in her pulse. The woman was going to be thirty tomorrow, so two years ago would have been celebrating her twenty-eighth birthday; as well as almost three years of a relationship with another woman, apparently. Now she possibly knew the woman's name, and also that it was entirely possible that she might, theoretically, be inclined to flirt with another woman. Even a waitress seven years her junior, maybe. Faith shut the book with a little smile, and decided she should make an effort to return it to its owner. Because if she could manage that, maybe she could arrange another meeting with her, outside work, and try flirting with her again. Which would be fun.

She dumped the tea things in the dishwasher quickly and set it going, then made sure the rest of the café and terrace were ready for closing. Then she made her way to the office near the front door, praying the computer there was still on. Faith was relying on the woman being a member of the national scheme that allowed free entry to such properties with an annual membership card, and was hoping to find her membership details on the system. She needed a surname, at the very least.

She felt a bit guilty about using the computer for this purpose, not least because she had a personal interest in seeing the woman again, so it wasn't purely selfless. But the house staff were upstairs locking up and no-one disturbed her while she was there. Pulse racing, she found the last member to gain entry that day: a Miss Guinevere Pryce-Williams. Gwen = Guinevere? Maybe. Nice name, anyway. The date of birth recorded was the next day's date, thirty years ago.

Faith smiled to herself and took a breath to calm the excitement beginning to twist inside her. She logged back out of the membership system and crept back to the kitchen, where she gathered her stuff up and pushed the book into her bag. Making sure for one last time that everything was shut down for the night, she made her way back out to the entrance and hung around innocently in the hall, waiting for her colleagues to finish closing up.