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Lily sat in her chair, turning slightly to the right to accommodate her growing belly.
“When are you due?” I sat across from her.
“Six more weeks. This pregnancy was so much harder than Henry’s.”
“How old is your son?”
She produced her phone and flashed me a picture. He was a cute, cherubic boy with huge doe-like eyes. “He just turned three.”
“Oh, right. Francesca had mentioned something about that since he’s coming to her dayhome for a few visits.”
“Yeah. It’ll just make it easier on me to run some errands, see the midwife, and maybe catch a nap on occasion.”
I chuckled, remembering how tired I got with Vera near the end of my pregnancy. “Been there, done that.”
She tugged on her long blond braid. “How old are yours?”
“Oh, just the one, and she’ll be seven soon.”
“Ah, a fun age, so I’m told. There’s a wee bit of independence. My niece is nearing that age. A little more precocious, but mainly sweet overall. Three is just plain ole terrible.”
I laughed harder. “I called it thethrottle me threes.”
“Is four any better?”
I shook my head. “I wish I could say yes, but… Well, it did get better, eventually.”
Lily gave me a warm smile. “So there’s hope?”
“Lots of it.” I crossed my legs and leaned into the back of my seat. “However, enjoy every minute when you can, the bad and the good. It goes by so ridiculously fast.”
“I’ll try.” She nodded and gave her belly a solid rub as she shifted. “Well, I’m sure you didn’t want to get together to discuss motherhood, so how can I help you? Francesca said maybe you needed help with your website?” She pulled an iPad from her bag and turned it on, opening a browser.
“Well sort of, although my website is workable, it’s pretty basic. I’d love to add a shop portion and get sales set up that way with whatever I can post.”
“Like an Etsy shop?”
“Yes, but I’d rather not pay the high listing fees, and do it myself.”
“I totally understand.” She tapped the screen and loaded my website address, scrolling through it, although it wasn’t very big. I didn’t have much on there. “You’re right, it’s pretty basic. I can jazz it up quite easily and add in a storefront too. You want people to pay ahead?”
“Yes.”
She listed a few online payment merchants, but only a couple sounded familiar. Being a cash-only business at the markets, I wasn’t familiar with most of what Lily was talking about. She pulled out a pad of paper and jotted down some numbers, circling one, and turning the paper in my direction to make it easier to read.
The price was fair.
“I can work with that to build a proper website.” I inhaled sharply. “But the real reason I wanted to employ your services was to work on removing a few things off the internet.” I rolled my top lip between my teeth.
“Like removing your name and picture from the web?” She leaned closer and rested both her forearms on the table.
I tipped my head from side to side. “Sort of.”
Glancing around the bakery, we were pretty much alone. The only other people in the place were staff, with Libby being one, but she was busy working and putting treats into a box.
“Years ago, I left some negative reviews for a place, and I want to remove them all.” I stared at the screen where a picture of Chloe’s artwork was displayed on my website. “I created various accounts to leave them, something like ten, fifteen, maybe twenty different ones. If I gave you access to the accounts, are you able to go in and reverse search somehow and remove all the postings tied to that name?”
Her eyes widened for a fraction of a second, and then she rubbed her belly. “I should be able to, but they may not all go away. A lot of sites have cached files and even if I did remove your posting, there would still be a footprint there. It’s a little outside my capabilities because you’re talking about sending take-down notices to companies, and where most will likely honour your request for removal, there will be some who will refuse without payment or court order.”
