SPOILERS!!!
I knew that something would happen between Liz and Robert. One night at the restaurant Liz serves a very rude man who complains about everything, and at the end of the night when Liz brings him the bill, he is not happy. The man even insults her, calling her stupid. When Robert goes to talk to the man, Liz is disappointed when she tells her that he let him go without a reprimand and even he didn’t charge him for some dishes. Robert claims that the customer is always right. After that, Liz can’t help but feel upset with her boss, and the rest of the summer she treats him civilly but with a certain detachment. For example, she used to leave him some pudding before leaving, and now she doesn’t bother.
The day that Rosie leaves for London with her class, Liz is surprised when Robert comes calling. He tells her that he wants to apologise for the way he dealt with the horrible customer, and he wants to make it up to her by inviting her to dinner. Liz says that everything is forgotten, but he insists on inviting her to dinner, and she accepts the invitation. Liz doesn’t have many clothes to go out, so she just dons a pair of trousers and a top she pimps with some spaghetti straps she makes herself.
Michael takes her to the restaurant in a hotel, and Liz feels overwhelmed and humiliated as she feels she is not wearing the right clothes, and she even thinks she doesn’t deserve to be in such an elegant place. I think sometimes Liz is a bit simple and silly. Robert notices her discomfort, and when he asks her, she feels tears in her eyes, so Robert decides they should leave. In the car Robert laments how he has blundered again, and he confesses that he wanted to see her outside work because he likes her very much. Liz surprises herself by saying that she likes him too. Then they go to a pub where they have a lovely meal. Robert tells him that his parents had a restaurant, and his father was a bit of a bully who ill-treated his mother, his sister and him. He died when Robert was sixteen, and his mother when he was twenty-one. So Robert had to look after his fifteen-year-old sister when he was just twenty. Wanting to flee bad memories, he sold the restaurant in Penzance, where he and his family lived, and bought the new one in Tremarnock. And then Sarah, his sister, started dating and got pregnant when she was just eighteen. She married and had her daughter, Loveday, who works for Robert.
At the end of the night Robert drives her home, and before they part ways, he kisses her, and Liz finds herself liking the kiss and responding to it. And the next day she is over the moon.
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