To my mild surprise, I found Yasmin and Trev both waiting for me at the usual table. Initially I wondered if this was the inevitable outcome of Trev turning up earlier and earlier each week, meaning that at some point he’d overlap the whole of Yasmin’s session, but I soon discovered otherwise.

‘We thought it would be more efficient,’ Yasmin said, opening up her workbook. ‘Two hours of coaching, even if it’s shared, has to be better than one. It was Trev’s idea,’ she added, eyeing him through lowered lashes.

Trev coughed. ‘Well, yes, we got talking in the café, after the Wednesday Business Builders.’

‘You’d already left by then, but Irene insisted we go once the time was up, even though there was no one else in the library except for her!’ Yasmin tutted.

‘Yes, well, the Frea-K Three-K did keep distracting her, what with all the questions about her fashion choices and wanting to take more photos,’ I added, wincing and laughing at the memory.

‘I think it was only when they forced her to take part in their new Library Lady dance move that she got really annoyed,’ Yasmin said. ‘Anyway, we hadn’t finished discussing the Dog Mother. Ollie, did you know that Trev used to breed bulldogs? So, we decided to carry on at the café, and before we knew it we were talking about how nice it was to feel confident reading a fancy menu, and then we were talking about all the other things that we can do thanks to ReadUp like sort our bills and set up an email account, and then Trev had the idea that if we pooled our sessions, we could progress twice as fast.’

‘It seemed the logical thing to do.’ Trev shrugged.

‘And then we realised that we didn’t need to wait for Fridays; we could meet up and offer support and help during the week, too.’

‘Wow. Great idea.’

Trev was turning the colour of Jaxx’s Nomato.

‘So, you’ve been working on your reading together?’

Yasmin opened to the last page of her latest workbook, and fluently ran through the final paragraph.

‘Yasmin, that’s amazing. Well done!’

‘She’s an amazing woman, all right,’ Trev mumbled.

‘You think that’s amazing? What about Trev?’ Yasmin said eagerly. ‘He had another brilliant idea that we should set up, wait for it… a book club!’

Trev shuffled on his chair. ‘There was one in my last place. Not that I went, of course.’

Yasmin pulled out a copy of a Roald Dahl book. ‘A bad readers’ book club! For people who can’t read very well, so no shame or blame or fancy discussions. Just friendly people, encouraging each other and not being snooty about how we’ve never read Jane Austen or Charles Dickens.’

‘That is a brilliant idea!’ I felt almost embarrassed that I’d not thought of it myself. ‘How many have joined?’