Helena fastened the new laces of brand new trainers fetched by her assistant earlier in the day.  Alexa was waiting for her outside the hotel, ready to pick her up.  Helena had wanted to use her chaffeur driven car for them of course but Alexa insisted a limo wasn’t exactly suited to the narrow roads of the terrain.

Helena made her way downstairs and saw Alexa waving at her from within a small red car.  She flipped open the door for her and Helena climbed in.  ‘Hey,’ she said and they grinned at each other like nervous school girls.  ‘So is this the tiniest car you’ve ever been in or what?’ asked Alexa cheekily.  ‘Because she may not be chaffeur driven but she has never let me down yet.’

 ‘For your information I have been in plenty of small cars thankyou, in fact I used to own one.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, my mother cut me off for a few while, for my own good she said to teach me the value of money.’

‘Wow, that’s rough, my parents aren’t in the same financial situations as yours but without their support I don’t know how I’d have gotten through university.’

‘Actually it’s the best thing she ever did for me.  I hated it at first but I got this great group of friends in West Hollywood, really grounded and found myself, so when I went back to the company it was to do a real job on my terms.’

Alexa changed the cd and took the opportunity to take a sneaky lingering look at Helena.  Seeing her dressed in her casual jeans and jumper, hair tied back in a swinging ponytail made her seem years younger.  A passer by would never pick out the ten year age difference without the cover of business attire and Alexa found herself able to relax more around this informal Helena than she had last night.

Later after a short hike they laid out the food and made themselves comfortable on the mat.  They talked freely with no-one around, about the easy subjects: their childhoods, their ambitions, places they’d been, the people they knew and some of the hard subjects too; why Alexa was still in the closet, Helena’s ex-girlfriend who’d cheated and used her for her connections.  The sorts of things that were sometimes easier shared with new friends then those you’d known for years.