The Childhood Friends - A glimpse of back-story

When my protagonist, Victoria, in my published novel, A Question of Love, was a child :

(Photo credit www.rtf.com/photo 7956799)

she had a close friend, who lived next door.

(Photo credit www.rtf.com/photo 18988246)

What is important about Grant, who my readers only get to meet as an adult, is that he was not the captain of the school rugby team, the head boy at school, the guy all the girls wanted to be with.  Nor was he the most popular amongst the other guys.  Because of the home circumstances in his childhood and early teens, he had to bear responsibility with the accompanying restrictions, for the well-being of his wheelchair bound mother, who had MS.  He becomes what other young people could regard a nerd, of necessity spending more hours than considered normal at a computer.

Only later in life, when computers become so widely used by everyone, as a result of his vast, mostly self-taught early skills, which provide an entry to a computer world of experts, he becomes a hugely successful businessman, and it is only then my reader meets Grant.