Chapter Thirty-Nine
The website brainstorming meeting was arranged for the first of May to be held at Simon and Jesper’s flat. Rosie had visited several times over the four years that Simon had been renting there, although not since Jesper had started decorating.
They had met through a mutual friend who knew Jesper was looking for a flatmate, and Simon needed to find somewhere after a relationship break-up.
In some ways they were very much chalk and cheese; where Simon was tall and stocky, Jesper was thin and wiry.
Simon loved reality television and celebrity programmes whereas Jesper preferred science – both fact and fiction.
However, they both agreed on one thing, and that was that beer, wine and snacks would be needed in order to conduct a proper brainstorming meeting.
In Rosie’s honour, decorating had been suspended and the dust sheets carefully removed from the sofa, although she still had to step over or around a number of boxes and paint pots in order to sit down.
The ceiling had had a fresh coat of paint, and some of the skirting boards looked newly painted, but only one wall looked even halfway finished.
The others still had various daubs of colour on them.
‘Sorry about the paint smell,’ said Simon as he opened a window a fraction. ‘We’ve sort of got used to it.’
‘Dare one ask how it’s going?’
‘This is all Jesper’s inspiration.’ Simon gestured with his hands. ‘Nothing to do with me. I just suffer in silence.’
Jesper smiled enigmatically and ran his hands through his white blonde hair. ‘It is what the British call a work in progress. I need to feel inspired, but I haven’t found the right colour scheme yet.’
‘Sounds like some of my projects,’ said Rosie cheerfully.
After a few drinks, they got down to business. Jesper took a photo of Rosie on his phone which she could use for her profile picture on her new Instagram account.
Then Jesper spent the next ten minutes giving Rosie a crash course on privacy settings and other features, before saying, ‘Now let’s have a think about your website.’
‘What do I need to decide?’
‘First things first, you need a domain name, and your website needs to be hosted somewhere.’ He waved a pen around as he spoke.
‘Then you need to think about templates, branding, colour schemes and all that stuff before you start to design your pages. Later on, you can decide how to navigate around the site, and whether you want links to other pages and things like that.’
Rosie’s brain felt overloaded already, but she wanted to understand and use this technology. ‘The problem is I don’t know what I don’t know, if that makes any sense. I think I might need to do an online course or something first.’
‘Or I could do it for you?’ offered Jesper.
Rosie shook her head. ‘That wouldn’t be fair. I can’t expect you to spend hours sorting out my website when I can’t afford to pay you at the moment, and besides’—she waved her hand at the wall—‘I’ll then be delaying your decoration project even further.’
‘Good point,’ conceded Simon. ‘Although there is another option. Maybe it could be a bit of a quid pro quo.’
‘Is that a made-up word?’ asked Jesper.
‘It’s Latin, you Norwegian know-all, and it means something for something.
For example, if you help Rosie with her website, then she could help you with the decorating.
Rosie’s really clever with colours and ideas and she’s very creative.
You should have seen the shop displays she used to do at Easter and Christmas. ’
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, Si.’
Simon cupped his hand to his mouth and said in a stage whisper, ‘To be honest, I’ll try anything to get rid of these tins of paint!’
Jesper threw a peanut at him. ‘Hey, I heard that, you rude Englishman.’
They both laughed, and that, thought Rosie, was why they got on so well even though they had wildly different interests.
Jesper was delighted with Simon’s suggestion, and the remainder of the evening was spent listing out what Rosie wanted for her website and pinning down Jesper’s vision for his living room.
‘I don’t know about you boys, but I have a busy day tomorrow so I think I’ll head home,’ said Rosie stifling a yawn. She pulled out her phone. ‘You don’t mind if I wait here for a cab, do you?’
‘I’ll bring your car back tomorrow,’ said Simon.
Rosie looked at him fondly. ‘You’ve both been very good to me. I don’t deserve such kind friends.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Simon emphatically. ‘You deserve the best of everything, because you are the best.’
‘I doubt that,’ said Rosie with a smile. ‘But right now I might just be the tiredest.’