Not Bad People

by Brandy Scott

  The house lights rose, the signal that Melinda was to start her financial presentation. She slid her shoes back on and walked to a lectern that had appeared in the middle of the stage. ‘I need my notes for this bit,’ she joked. ‘Don’t want anyone to sue me if I get something wrong.’

  The atmosphere in the room changed as women took notebooks out of handbags, slid on geek-chic spectacles. ‘The first thing I want to say is, don’t worry,’ said Melinda. ‘All of these changes are designed to make it easier for you to make money. Quite simply, the better you do, the better we do.’

  Melinda started clicking through slides, explaining the new incentive schemes, the plan to increase rewards for those who sold the most. Click. The fact that they were also changing the way they set their targets, comparing curators to others within their region. ‘Nothing like a bit of healthy competition,’ Melinda said, grinning. Click. The social media training and product kits they’d created, all available at minimal cost. Click. The hefty discounts that would come with bigger orders. Click, click.

  ‘Now, we know a lot of you have brought other curators into the company, whether friends and family or satisfied customers. In the past, we haven’t rewarded you for that.’ Melinda was happy with the direct sales model, hadn’t wanted to stray into anything that smacked of multi-level marketing. ‘Your main source of revenue is still and will always be sales. I don’t want anyone to feel she has to sign up her neighbours in order to make money. But at the same time, if you’re bringing in new curators, you’re adding to our bottom line. So we’re going to reward that.’ There was an excited whisper. Good. This was the area Melinda had been least certain about.

  ‘That’s retroactive by the way. You can claim for any introductions you’ve made in the whole lifetime of LoveLocked.’ A couple of women whooped. Melinda smiled and carried on.

  ‘Finally, we’re going to clamp down on discounting,’ she said. ‘We’ll always give you your money back if you decide to leave LoveLocked, or if there are products you can’t shift. That will never change, IPO or no IPO. You have my word.’ Another cheer, led by the loyal old guard at the front. ‘So there’s no excuse to drop your prices. It only undercuts your fellow curators and devalues their stock. We’re going to start enforcing the small print on that one. But it’s going to be good for all of you. You don’t need to earn pocket money by holding online jumble sales. You’re better than that. We’re better than that. Aren’t we?’

  The ballroom roared in agreement. Yes, they confirmed, with the odd high-five. Yes, they were.

  Ceramic clowns. Lacquered side tables. A freestanding velvet lamp with an actual fringe. By midafternoon, the skip was so full of junk that Tansy had decreed too ugly for eBay, they had to call the guy who’d delivered it to swap it for a new one.

  (‘This stuff doesn’t look very water damaged,’ he’d said, fingering a throw rug.

  ‘The rot’s on the inside,’ Lou had replied.)

  ‘It almost feels like a normal house now,’ said Tansy, spinning around the half-empty living room. The dining table and chairs had been pushed up against the wall, awaiting their new owner; someone had bought them online in less than an hour. That was three hundred dollars, right there. Lou was going to be able to do the house up — well, fill it with IKEA particleboard, at least — and it wasn’t going to cost her a thing.

  ‘I know, right?’ Lou gently manoeuvred a painting off the wall, careful not to put any pressure on her bad fingers. ‘I always found this place so claustrophobic growing up. I couldn’t breathe.’

  Tansy took the painting off her. ‘That’s kind of why I stay out.’

  ‘Really?’ Lou tried not to feel hurt. ‘But I don’t make you feel claustrophobic, surely?’

  It hadn’t just been the heavy curtains and dark wallpaper that had made her feel boxed in. It had been her parents’ whole attitude, the constant judgement and questions. Where were you? Why would you? Who was that?

  ‘It’s just not very . . . comfortable,’ Tansy said, putting the painting in one of their ‘sell’ piles. Horses galloping along a beach. Was there really a market for that kind of kitsch? Lou was truly out of touch.

  ‘Comfortable?’

  ‘At Zarah’s and Chloe’s you can veg out, lie on the sofa and eat toast. The furniture here just seems really . . . upright.’ She looked apologetic. ‘It’s not really a hanging-out sort of house.’

  ‘So that’s what you’re up to, when you don’t come home,’ said Lou. ‘Eating toast.’ Not wandering the streets with a bottle of Southern Comfort and a pack of Marlboro Lights.

  ‘Usually,’ said Tansy. ‘Watching TV. Messing about online. You know.’

  Lou’s parents hadn’t owned a television. Lou had chosen not to buy one when they moved in, in the hope it might make Tansy more studious. But if that was all it took to keep her daughter in at night, she’d drive over to Meadowcroft right now and pick out the largest flatscreen she could find.

  ‘Plus you’re always so stressed out,’ said Tansy, peeling a price tag off the back of the picture. ‘So wound up.’

  ‘No I’m not!’

  ‘You kind of are,’ said Tansy. ‘And it’s fair enough. I know your job sucks.’ She bit her lip. ‘But it’s just not very . . .’

  ‘Comfortable?’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry.’

  ‘S’all right.’ Lou wandered off down the hallway so Tansy couldn’t see her face. She paused at an open door, collected herself. They hadn’t attacked Tansy’s bedroom yet, formerly the guest room, a mid-eighties nonsense of peach damask and iron bedframes. They hadn’t touched Lou’s old room either. Lou had given it a wide berth in the months since she’d moved back in. She peeked around the door now, breathing in the familiar scent of old wallpaper. Her mother had turned it into a craft room after Lou had gone, her sewing machine taking pride of place under the window where Lou’s bed had once been. Plastic bins of scrapbooking materials lined the walls. Lou took the lid off one: stickers. Another held craft glue, another stamps and mini inkpads. Lou tried to picture her sensible mother gaily stamping multicoloured frogs on fancy cardboard, and failed.

  She opened the blinds; the room had a good view out onto the back garden and a rhododendron her dad had planted to celebrate Lou’s birth. Got good light as well. They could turn this into a nursery, if they needed to. Lou swallowed back the thought. The wardrobe still sported a few faded Bon Jovi stickers on the inside walls. The wardrobe had been a clash of civilisations once: the clothes her mother bought her on one side, the op-shop bargains Lou insisted on wearing on the other. Crushed black velvet and Cure T-shirts versus pure-wool knits and chambray skirts. God, the screaming matches over what she wore, her mother trying to dress her up for church and functions well into high school as though she was a child. ‘If you act like a child, then I’m going to treat you like one.’ While everyone else was in jeans and sweatshirts, their parents past caring what other people thought. None of Lou’s clothes on either side remained. Instead, the cupboard looked like an old-fashioned haberdashery — buttons and wool and trimmings neatly stacked. Her mother had finally imposed control over Lou’s wardrobe.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘In here.’ Lou started pulling bags of fabric down from the wardrobe shelves. She caught her bad fingers under an old pattern book and winced. ‘Can you give me a hand? Last room, promise, then we’ll sort out dinner.’

  Tansy sang to herself as she cleared, a hit Lou vaguely recognised, made famous by an underage singer who was all cleavage and feminism. Something about being the best you ever had, baby. Maybe she should have monitored what Tansy was listening to more closely. But pop music hadn’t got Tansy pregnant. And controlling teenagers just made them rebel; Lou knew that first-hand.

  ‘Do we chuck this stuff or sell it?’ she asked. ‘Would anyone even want it? Some of this fabric is pretty dated.’

  ‘Donate it,’ said Tansy, after a pause. ‘Schools would use it. Kindergartens. I’ll make a special pile, in the hall.�
�

  See, Lou thought. She hadn’t screwed up that badly. Tansy was helping her mum. Thinking of others. But would this kinder, softer version of her daughter stick around, or would they be back to screaming and door-slamming in the morning? Lou was almost afraid to hope.

  ‘Hey, check this out.’ Tansy handed Lou a photo album, saccharine pink with a gingham frill. A familiar toddler stared suspiciously out at her from a padded fabric frame on the front.

  Lou moved over to the window. The ring-bound album was a good forty pages, each carefully themed with sticker slogans and matching cut-outs. A DAY AT THE BEACH! FUN WITH COUSINS! And marching across the coloured pages was Lou: toddler Lou, sleeping Lou, first-day-of-kindy Lou, sandy Lou, candle-blowing Lou, up through primary and into high school. It finished with an awkward family photo, the type taken in a studio in front of a pull-down background: Lou scowling, her parents smiling proudly.

  When had her mother even made this?

  ‘It was in here.’ Tansy placed a cardboard box on the sewing table. Lou sucked her breath in as her daughter rifled through faded baby clothes, opened a balding velvet box to reveal the tiniest christening bracelet.

  ‘Guess they didn’t get rid of everything then,’ said Tansy. She pulled out a corn-haired doll with a plastic face. ‘And look. Jean whatsit.’

  She must have put the album together after Lou had gone. Lou had never seen her mother scrapbooking; it was a post-daughter hobby. ‘Put the box back in the cupboard,’ she said.

  ‘But —’

  ‘I don’t want to look at it just now. Too tired.’

  ‘Riiight.’ Tansy folded the cardboard flaps back in, but left Jean Wilma propped dejectedly up against the sewing machine. ‘You know, if they kept all your baby stuff, then they must have —’

  ‘What say we go out and get something to eat,’ said Lou. ‘A reward for all our hard work.’ She marched out of the sewing room, grabbed her keys. ‘Come on. Last one in the car’s a rotten egg.’

  Why had she run? Why the hell had she run? Aimee walked back and forth across the living room, watched by a suspicious Oscar. Running would only make her look guilty. Make the investigator remember her. Why had she even spoken to him at all?

  Think, Aimee, think. There must be something she could do to make her behaviour seem more rational. Go back maybe, explain she was a friend of the family. That if she was acting a little odd, it was only because she was so upset. Or would that just make it worse? Give him more reason to remember her? Maybe she was overthinking. Maybe he’d forget she’d even been there. Maybe dozens of people visited the site every day. The good folk of Hensley were a nosy lot. But if she didn’t explain, and one of his superiors asked if anyone had been acting suspiciously, then —

  ‘Aimee, what are you doing?’

  Nick stuck his head through the open window, dirty arms resting on the sill.

  ‘Just thinking.’ And thinking, and thinking, and thinking. ‘About Byron’s birthday. Whether we should do something, or if he’ll get all embarrassed if we make a fuss.’

  ‘But that’s not till September.’ He frowned. ‘Are you all right?’

  No. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Only you seem preoccupied. Like your head’s somewhere else.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She bent down and kissed him, hard and slow, to show how fine she was.

  Nick grinned. ‘Should I come in? Wash some of this crap off? You could help.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I need to do the books. You’ll only distract me.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ But he was smiling as he pulled his head back through the window.

  Aimee narrowed her eyes at Oscar, who wasn’t falling for any of it. Maybe she should start taking her medication again, just in case. But she didn’t like the weight gain. Nick didn’t either, even though he claimed it didn’t bother him. That he liked her ‘cuddly’. And sane. He especially liked her sane. Aimee collapsed on the sofa, provoking a warning hiss from Oscar. What she really needed was to talk to someone, but Nick would only worry and Lou wasn’t picking up and Melinda was at her conference. Not that Melinda would listen anyway. Which was a shame; Melinda was the best at helping Aimee to see things clearly, at calming her right down. Aimee looked longingly at Nick’s twenty-year-old Scotch, remembered how calm she’d felt at Lou’s picnic with a stomach full of champagne.

  ‘We could buy him a car.’

  ‘What?’

  Nick’s disembodied head squinted at her. ‘Byron. For his sixteenth. We could buy him a car.’

  ‘Oh. Okay. Sure.’

  ‘Aimee, are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Of course. Everything’s fine. Why wouldn’t it be?’

  ‘If we can’t sell items we’ve bought at a bulk discount, can we still return them?’

  Melinda swallowed a yawn. The question-and-answer session was entering its second hour. ‘Of course. There’s always a refund on undamaged stock.’

  ‘Even if it’s out of season?’

  ‘Well, no, it has to be in season. That’s always been the rule.’

  ‘But what if I order too much in order to get a discount and forget to return it in time?’

  Christ on a bike. ‘It’s up to you to manage your inventory. We don’t encourage curators to buy stock they don’t have orders for, or a realistic chance of selling at pop-up shows or events.’ Melinda could see the shadowy forms of women sneaking out into the lobby, where there was — she knew — cold-brew coffee and freshly made Nutella biscuits. Her stomach growled. ‘Is there anyone else?’

  A plump woman, in the second row: ‘What happens if we don’t hit our new targets? I’ve got two kids now, and I don’t have the same amount of free time as I did last year.’

  Melinda smiled. ‘Nothing happens. You might not be eligible for discounts and other rewards, but you’ll still get your normal commission. We’re not going to punish you. The last thing I want for anyone who’s juggling bath times and school runs is to have to worry about LoveLocked as well. I know what it’s like to be overwhelmed. I want LoveLocked to relieve stress, not create it.’

  ‘How do you know what it’s like?’

  The voice came from the middle of the ballroom. Melinda squinted out into the haze beyond the footlights. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘How do you know what it’s like, to struggle? I mean, this is all a bit condescending, isn’t it? You’ve been talking all day about women without qualifications, and women from tough backgrounds, and women struggling to pay the bills, and how you’re the answer to all their problems. But you’re an economics graduate, with a double degree from a good university and a wealthy family. You’ve never had to worry about money. How would you know what they need?’

  There were low rumblings from Melinda’s front-row fans.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody rude,’ one of them called out.

  ‘That’s out of line,’ said another. ‘Who do you think you are?’

  ‘No, it’s okay. Everyone gets to have an opinion.’ Melinda turned to the control booth. ‘Can we have the lights up, please? So I can see?’

  The room blinked into daylight. Standing in the middle was a familiar-looking journalist.

  ‘Stacey’ said Melinda, mentally digging up the woman’s name. ‘Are you stalking me?’

  ‘I live here,’ said Stacey, with a shrug. ‘And I’m not trying to be rude. I’m genuinely interested.’

  Genuinely trying to manufacture a headline. Melinda poured herself a glass of water as she collected her thoughts. The room was two-thirds empty; she could hear a low buzz in the lobby where the majority of her curators had already signed off for the afternoon.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, deciding. ‘Okay. I’m going to tell you a story, about why I started LoveLocked. Why I really started it, not just because I’d been travelling and found this awesome jewellery, yada yada. Which is true, but it’s not the reason I set up as a direct sales company, rather than simply stocking in shops. Which would have been easier and more profitable, by the wa
y.’

  At the back of the room, Clint was making urgent ‘kill’ signs across his throat. But she couldn’t stop now. Melinda sipped at her water, wishing it was something stronger. ‘One of my best friends got pregnant while she was still at school,’ she said, feeling slightly treacherous, but Lou didn’t read Stacey’s paper. She’d never know. And Melinda wouldn’t use her name, just in case. ‘She chose to have the baby. And almost immediately, her life fell apart. The bloke did a runner, her parents disowned her, and she failed her exams as a result of all the stress. Because she didn’t have any qualifications, she couldn’t get a decent job, but even if she’d been able to, there was no childcare, and even if there had been childcare, it would have cancelled out anything she earned. It was a real Catch-22. And I just got so angry.’ At Lou, as well as the situation. There were childcare centres and better jobs in the city; why the hell didn’t she leave?

  ‘But it also got me thinking about what kind of job she could do, with a toddler, and what kind of company would need to exist to provide it. I was already planning to import the jewellery I’d found while I was overseas. So I came up with a structure that could help her, and other mums like her. That would fit in around them, without any ridiculous money-up-front or minimum-order policies. She was my sounding board, as well as my first curator.

  ‘And I’ve kept her front of mind ever since. Obviously all sorts of women, and men, are curators now. We’ve got students, retirees, people with day jobs. But that’s my litmus test, with any initiative. Would this have helped Lou — my friend, I mean? And if the answer is no, we don’t do it.’