In character, she batted her eyelids at his colleague. ‘Craig,’ she observed, and offered a smile she hoped was serene, but she kept her hand away from him, because touching him would be her undoing. He looked her up and down, raised a bemused eyebrow and then assembled a poker face.
‘What can we do for you, miss?’ Keith hastened, making sure the ‘miss’ was sufficiently condescending. He dropped himself into a chair and gruffly gestured she and Craig should do the same.
She faltered, sat, and then recovered. Perhaps he was level-headed in the face of feminine charm. Was it too late to change tact? No, she could do both: feminine and professional.
‘Thank you for meeting with me, Keith,’ Charlotte oozed, with renewed determination. ‘As you know, I am the spokesperson for the Boundary Street Preservation Group. You would also know our group is developing a formal objection to your development proposal for the site at 165 Boundary Street in West End.’
The Boundary Street Preservation Group had only been formed in the last week, and its membership to date consisted of her and Ben. Charlotte had every intention of drawing in some additional members. Judging by the interest before, during and after the first community meeting there would be no shortage of candidates. But for now, the ‘group’ was nothing more than a useful title to get her past Keith’s gatekeepers.
‘You don’t have a chance, lovey.’
Charlotte bristled and shifted in her seat.
‘On the contrary, Keith, my legal advice suggests we do.' It was a blatant lie.
Keith snorted, but Charlotte pressed on. ‘I’ve come here today to discuss the possibility of a compromise, which I think is in your interest. I can save you a lot of time and money if you're willing to consider my proposal.’
Craig was still silent and intensely unsettling as he watched her. What was he thinking? Was she screwing this up? One thing for sure was she wasn’t going to be receiving any back up from him.
‘Go on then,’ huffed Keith. Okay, maybe not screwing up. First hurdle surpassed.
‘The key issue for the local community is the preservation of the cultural heritage of the neighbourhood. I am sure I don’t need to tell you the cultural diversity in the area is extensive and unique. What you're proposing is a threat to that and we have grounds to object to the current proposal on its failure to blend in with the existing streetscape.’
‘You have grounds to object, love. That doesn’t mean you can stop it.’
Taking a deep, patient breath, Charlotte pressed on. ‘I believe we could, Keith. The building you're currently proposing to develop will not compliment the neighbouring buildings. It makes no attempt to acknowledge its surroundings and could be simply picked up and located anywhere. Not only does this mean you will continue to be met with local resistance to your development, you may even struggle to lease the building if it is considered an eyesore.’
As Keith growled under his breath, Charlotte pressed on. ‘The group I represent is not anti-growth. We can see there's value in certain development. As traders on Boundary Street, we recognise we have the opportunity to benefit from a project like this. All we ask is that you reconsider your current proposal and consult with us on the plans for the site, as you claimed you would at the community forum. I believe with a redesign, this development would actually be perceived in a very different light by the group I represent, and the local community in general.'
Keith glared suspiciously at Craig, who almost indistinguishably shook his head. Charlotte briefly pondered what the exchange meant, but she had no time to pause. This was the hardest bit – where she bared her soul.
‘I have some examples of designs you might consider as alternatives.' She laid her drawings out before them. Craig leaned forward and began moving them around the table to get a better look. Keith continued to lean back in his chair, barely giving them a cursory glance.
Charlotte swallowed and continued. ‘These are examples of a smaller-scale mixed-use development. You can see the ground level retains a retail function and the upper levels are for private accommodation. This is good contemporary design for inner urban areas, and it blends well with the surrounding streetscape. It’s much less confronting than your current proposal, from a both a community and an aesthetic perspective.’
It was impossible not to read Craig’s face now. He was gazing at her with wonder. ‘Did you do these?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Did you put her up to this?’ Keith growled at Craig.
‘No, I didn’t.' There was a warning in Craig’s tone. Charlotte looked between them furtively. There was definitely an avenue here for her to exploit, but she was unable to identify what it was. What was going on?
Keith growled at her. ‘Well, thank you for your time miss, but this is nothing new. These options have been considered and weren't pursued. Perhaps your time would be better spent looking for somewhere to relocate your little gallery, rather than trying to tell me how to run my business.'
And with that Keith stood up and walked out of the conference room.
Charlotte stared after him. Did he really just walk out on her? She looked at Craig, who was also watching Keith disappear. Trying very hard not to panic, she began gathering up her drawings.
Was that it? How could it have gone so wrong so quickly? It was such an obvious win-win solution. Why wouldn’t he want to consider this further? She'd spent hours perfecting the designs and the pitch. It was a good idea. How could he be so dismissive? She wondered if Craig could see she was fighting back tears.
Apparently not, because when he finally spoke, his voice had a cold edge. ‘These are good designs, Charlotte,’ he said, although it sounded like it pissed him off. Watching her gather her things, he added in a dry tone, ‘There’s a lot more to you, isn’t there? Where did you learn to draw like that?’
‘Your boss is a dinosaur,’ she snapped, ignoring the compliment, for what it was worth, and the question that followed. ‘He’s going to regret not taking this seriously. I can’t believe what you're proposing to develop. It’s hideous.' She paused her paper shuffling and glared at him for emphasis. ‘I thought you believed standards of excellence should be upheld, that mediocrity was a blight on our society. That second-rate building is an obscenity.' Gone was the gracious charmer, the seductive saleswoman.
‘We were talking about films as far as I recall,’ he said slowly. His gaze remained locked with hers. She couldn’t look away.
The tension slowly began to ease. After a pause, he asked after her leg.
‘It’s healing,’ she answered, not offering any detail, trying not to recall him bandaging her. The fight in her faded altogether, leaving her feeling exposed.
‘I have something for you,’ he said, standing up.
‘What?’ she asked nervously, draping her tote bag over her shoulder.
‘It’s in my office. Follow me.’
Charlotte followed him reluctantly through the maze of Morgan Carmichael cubicles, arousing the curiosity of more than a few staff as she went. She had a sneaking suspicion he had something she'd given up for lost, and it made her even more anxious. Had he looked?
She hated feeling this insecure and uncertain, constantly second-guessing herself. He’d said the designs she’d just presented were good. That meant a lot. She needed her work to be valued, and for some ridiculous reason, Craig’s opinion was important. Probably just because he worked in the industry. If he had looked, did he think her rough sketches of his Art Deco apartment block were good, or did he think they were crap?
Urgh. Charlotte almost groaned aloud. Stop brain, stop!
When they reached his office, Craig introduced her to his assistant. Margie gave her a surprisingly warm and genuine smile. The random act of compassion in an otherwise hostile environment almost made her tear up.
Pleasantries out of the way, Craig strode into his office and opened a drawer beneath his rather large mahogany desk. His office was exactly as she'd imagined it. Expans
ive, polished and orderly, yet seemingly much more lived in than his apartment.
‘Here,’ he said, passing her sketchbook.
‘Did you look through this?’ she asked, accepting it.
‘Would I have been as surprised by your secret talent as I was today if I had?’
Charlotte considered him, the furrow of her brow deepening as she did. Answering a question with a question was a sure way to avoid answering a question. Had he found the sketches so abysmal that he was taken aback when he saw her designs today?
Stop brain, stop!
‘Charlotte, I did not look through your sketchbook.'
She nodded, muted with gratitude.
‘You obviously know what you're talking about when it comes to urban design. How is it that you know so much?’ he asked.
Charlotte answered him without thinking. ‘I did three years of an undergrad architecture degree.’
Craig considered her a moment before sitting on the edge of his desk, stretching his long legs out in front of him and crossing his ankles. ‘Why did you stop? You’ve got obvious talent.’
As vulnerable as she was, if he softened her with any more compliments like that, she’d pool.
‘I moved up here and opened the gallery,’ she replied. Somehow he’d turned the conversation personal. He knew that about her, but he didn’t know what it had cost her. She was giving him the back story she’d so far managed to keep to herself; the chapter that harboured a few regrets.
‘So anyway, now you know, I’ve studied architecture. That’s what else there is to me. But tell me, what else is there to you? How can a man with such obvious good taste have submitted a design like that?’
‘You think I have good taste?'
Was he flustered or just being annoying?
‘You clearly have good taste,’ Charlotte huffed. ‘You dress well, your apartment is stylish, and your office is slick.'
For emphasis, she gestured widely. The movement had her taking it all in, noticing things she hadn’t when she’d first walked in. She started.
‘Where did you get that?’ she asked, staring at the painting mounted on the wall directly across from his desk. It was her favourite piece from Emily’s last exhibition. The one with the bicycle and the wildflowers. The one that reminded her life was what you made of it.
He followed her gaze. ‘I bought it,’ he said.
‘How could you? It was sold to someone else.’
‘They changed their mind.’
‘How did you know that?’
His response to her rapid fire questions was slow and considered. ‘You gave me your sister’s card, remember. I called her to see if she was interested in doing some work on commission. It just so happened she was in the middle of cursing the previous buyer after he’d pulled out of the sale, when she answered the phone. When I discovered it was available, I made her an offer.’
‘When? When did you do this? And how can I not know about it?’ Charlotte demanded.
‘A few weeks ago. I don’t know how you don’t know about it, Charlotte. Perhaps you should ask your sister. She handled the transaction and organised to have it dropped off to me on the same day.’
Charlotte stared at the painting some more, wondering just how she might broach that subject with Emily. Then she glared at Craig for good measure and finally recovered her train of thought.
‘Case in point about the good taste. What is with that bloody design?’ she said, casting one final sidelong glance at Emily’s painting.
Craig restored his defences. ‘I can’t discuss the project with you, Charlotte,’ he told her.
‘That’s a shame, Craig,’ she said, her tone serious, her mind back on task. ‘Because I came here looking for a compromise. If you and Keith would consider my proposal some more, you would see you have nothing to lose.’
He opened his mouth to reply but shut it again when a movement outside his office caught his attention. Charlotte followed his gaze to catch Margie and another of Craig’s colleagues hastily lay claim to the pretence of being busy. How long had they had an audience?
The knowledge she was a spectacle was enough to make her want to leave.
‘I’m getting together with the Preservation Group this afternoon, ahead of tomorrow’s forum. I had thought I might be trying to convince them we could get something out of this proposal, but I guess that’s not the case after all. It could have been easy for you, you know? But now it will be anything but.’
She left. As Craig watched Margie take her arm in an overly familiar, almost conspiratorial way and lead her to the lifts, he felt his blood heat. Damn Keith and his fucking games.
Unfathomably, their strongest resistor, their most difficult stakeholder, had, unsolicited, offered them the path of least resistance. A cooperative community. And in exchange for plans that were ridiculously similar and almost as good as the originals. The ones he thought he'd submitted to the council.
Before Keith made his move.
Two weeks earlier, confident the designs he’d arranged for Margie to submit would be online, Craig went to view them on the council’s website. To his horror he discovered the plans weren't there, and in their place was a bland prefabricated ten-storey apartment building that wouldn’t look out of place in the USSR.
Furious, he accused Margie of fucking up and for the first time in their working history, reduced her to tears. Eventually, when he finally gave her the opportunity, she explained Keith had emailed her a package of designs later that same day, saying they were the updated files. With no cause to question why Keith would do so, she simply followed the boss’s instructions.
Subsequently, Craig found himself barging into Keith’s office and unleashing his anger on said boss. Keith puffed himself up in righteous indignation, harrumphed somewhat about the bottom line and finally dared Craig to withdraw them. They glared at each other like gunslingers; each well aware that if there was any delay to the project the financier would back out. Particularly if it appeared that delay was the result of internal squabbling.
Craig eventually backed down, and accepted Keith’s designs as the ones submitted for approval. It was a potential disaster for the company that could go a number of ways, but he doubted approval, based on those designs, was one of them. It would get declined, and the financiers would either extend their deadline or not.
Keith knew it, and judging by the glint in his eye, he was banking on the latter. His opposition to Craig’s division was becoming irrational.
‘You've got to see reason about this bloody project,’ he told Keith as he stormed into his office once more, immediately after Charlotte’s departure. ‘She just handed us an opportunity to get this thing through council without any local resistance and you walked out on her.'
‘I’ve got to see reason?’ thundered Keith. ‘I’ll tell you what I can see. I can see right bloody through you! How dare you bring that little miss in here to tell me how I should run my bloody company? I’ve been in this business for forty years – I think I know a thing or two about bloody development.’
‘Actually, Keith, I don’t think you do. You're still stuck forty years in the past, investing in projects that were bad ideas even then. The world has moved on. But you haven’t. Even a bloody nobody off the street can see that. You should have listened to her.' Not that Craig considered Charlotte a nobody, and she was apparently trained, but Keith didn’t need to know that.
Keith blustered, turning a brilliant shade of red. ‘This is very thin ice you're skating on, son. The only reason you're part of this company is out of respect for your late father and your dear grandmother. I've tolerated a great deal from you, but I won’t for much longer. Keep your lip to yourself, young man. You might own part of this company, but I can still sack your arse and buy you out. Now, get back to proving to me why I shouldn’t!’
‘We’ve got a deal, remember? And I plan to see my end of the bargain through. You can try and sabotage the project all you like, mate. There are many
more avenues I can explore. I’m not giving up on this.' Craig turned on his heel and stalked out.
Halfway back to his office, Mark Andrews popped out from behind a partition.
‘I was about to go and grab a coffee. Do you need one?’ he asked.
‘Depends if the price is more than just the $3.50 the barista charges,’ Craig answered. Although he considered Mark a friend, Craig’s nerves were frayed, and he was short with him. ‘What is it that you want to know?’
Mark chuckled. ‘Not much gets by you, Craig.' He got to the point. ‘The woman in your office. Margie says she has something to do with the Boundary Street development. Is that right?’
‘She’s one of the tenants leasing the current building.’
Mark’s ‘oh’ was long and wary. He was well aware of Craig’s dilemma. He’d seen the designs too.
‘You’re going to need my help, buddy,’ said Mark. ‘Come on, it’s my shout.’
Not for the first time, Craig was grateful Mark was so sharp. And on his side. Relieved to have some support, and support of Mark’s calibre, he followed his favourite spin doctor out of the office.
His tension diffused. If there was a way to convince the financiers to extend the deadline, Mark would be able to find it. And if there was a way to placate the locals through the now convoluted and drawn out approvals process, Mark would figure that out too.
Chapter twelve
The community centre was quiet and empty; a stark contrast to the unruly crowd that had confronted him last time he was there. Craig waited patiently in a circle of faded plastic chairs as a stream of local agitators gradually arrived, one by one. For activists, they were a placid bunch. Their greetings were murmured and uncertain, and they looked at each other with open curiosity.
When Charlotte arrived, blowing into the room like a breath of fresh air, long paisley skirt swirling around her legs, she counted the dozen heads. Then spinning to close the door, she presented him with those hips.
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