Unwanted child - стр. 3

According to the new chronology, the year was 735. Gai was a relatively small settlement, where no more than 20,000 people lived and worked. Mostly people were engaged in agriculture and crafts. There were a couple of schools and a couple of kindergartens for children. Most of the townspeople still couldn't understand why rural children needed an education, as they were taught the craft of farmers and artisans by their own parents based on their years of experience. Despite the small population, the traffic on the country roads was quite busy. Every now and then, there were lorries and trucks travelling around delivering food to other settlements.

After borrowing money from his parents, Lars had moved here with his wife about five years ago, hoping to find peace and escape the hustle and bustle of the city. Although he had lived in Lockfood City before that, where he learnt the trade of a chef. The man was not a bad cook, and also knew most of all about the quality and freshness of the products needed for cooking. So, one day, he caught himself thinking that he would not be engaged in the manufacture of these products. In order to do so, he needed to get his own farm and cattle. He also needed to hire a few workers who knew how to care for and keep the animals.

At first, Inessa (the wife) was strongly against such a step, as it seemed illogical to her – to change a big city for some village. However, Lars managed to persuade her by telling her tales of a profitable business and how it would flourish.

Acquiring a working farm was difficult and prohibitively expensive, even for such a small village. Just like buying an empty plot of land to organise a new one from scratch. So the idea of buying a farm had to be abandoned. He used the borrowed money to buy several rooms in a two-storey house. One of them was on the ground floor, the other one was directly above it. The entrepreneur converted the first room into a small restaurant. It was a novelty for a small settlement, so there were plenty of visitors. The business gradually grew and developed. The second room was renovated and converted into a cosy two-room apartment, where the young family lived. By that time, Lars was 35 years old and Inessa was 27.

Communication with their parents did not work out well, so at some point the relatives stopped coming to Gai. No phone calls, no texts. It was not clear where it all started. It was much more important for the couple to preserve the idyll between them than to struggle to regain the long-lost relationship with their loved ones. Lars was madly in love with Inessa, and this feeling persisted in him even after many years. The couple started their relationship before marriage, and only after two years, they decided to get married.