Page 93 - James Caan - The Real Deal

8 · Aisha

twenty-one. Her face was saying, How could he have been at
school with him? The maths don’t add up.
In the car driving her home she asked if I remembered the brother.
‘You know what, I’m not sure.’
‘Come on, you must remember!’ She wasn’t about to let it go.
‘I don’t know. He might have been at my school.’
The next time we saw each other, it soon became clear that she
had done a bit of research. She’d called up the brother and found
some reason to ask him about me, and, unfortunately for me, he
had remembered me very well and confirmed that we’d been in the
same class.
‘It seems you were at school together,’ she said.
‘Really? I still don’t think I remember him.’
‘I don’t care if you remember him, I care how old you are.’
I looked at her and couldn’t stop myself from laughing.
I told her the truth and she was genuinely shocked. I was at least
five years younger than she had expected, and nearly two years
younger than her. My saving grace was that there was a similar
age gap between her parents – her mum is a couple of years older
than her dad – and if it hadn’t been for that, I’m really not sure
how we would have moved on from there.
I was starting to panic about my lack of funds for the boutique,
although I somehow knew that I would find the money. I was
calculating that it would take a lawyer a while to negotiate the
lease, so that would take six weeks or so, then there would be
another delay waiting for stock to come in. In reality, I reckoned
I had a couple of months to find the cash.
The conventional source of funds is a bank, so that was where
I looked first. My conversations with bank managers usually went
like this:
‘Have you got any experience?’
‘No.’
‘Have you got a business plan?’

83