Kate had fallen quickly into a work routine at The Tea Chest, whose sumptuous surrounds greeted her each morning like a theme song to her life.
‘We’re selling more than just tea here,’ Simone had said. ‘We’re selling a dream. You can’t just drink the tea, you must experience it.’ Simone encouraged Kate to take the time to build a relationship with every tea in stock.
And when Kate wasn’t drinking tea, she was talking to customers and recommending products and gathering data about their preferences and values. She played with the dried leaves and fruits and spices from the huge glass containers of sample stocks in the storeroom, blending and experimenting. She offered tests to customers, recording their responses and making adjustments. She spoke to the staff members at length, taking on board their thoughts and ideas about the future of the business and deliberately fostering good relations, especially with Susan, the manager, who’d seemed to prickle when Kate was first introduced.
In the first week especially, she missed Mark’s company. Whenever she came home from work, bursting with things to talk about, he was rushing out the door to see clients. With no one to talk to, she found it hard to wind down. It was better on the days she worked at home. She could talk to Mark as he entertained Keats while she made teas.
‘Maybe you should ask for an electricity allowance,’ he said, watching her boil yet another jug of water in the tiny chipboard kitchen. She laughed and continued to ramble on about her days at work and the people, while inhaling the smell of frying onion and meat from the Lebanese takeaway nearby.
‘Susan’s clearly threatened. But I’m not there to take her job. I couldn’t care less about managing the place. I just want to make tea. I made her laugh today, though, so I’m sure I’ll win her over eventually.’
She went on. ‘And Simone only comes in once a day. She likes to keep the time of her visit a secret so she can surprise everyone. You should see them all duck for cover when she marches in the door.’
‘Bit of a dragon, is she?’ Mark asked, cajoling Keats into a nappy change.
‘Da-gon?’ Keats repeated.
‘I don’t think so. I think she’s funny. And an amazingly cluey businesswoman.’
Since Simone had mentioned her customers’ star signs during their first meeting at the Emporium, Kate had been thinking. Maybe she could design a range of zodiac teas. She could research all the profiles and match tea characteristics to personalities. More conservative signs, like Virgos and Taureans, would probably like teas with rose and lavender and black teas at their base. More adventurous signs, like Aquarians and Leos, would be more willing to take a risk on spices and herbs and offbeat fusions. Maybe after that she could move on to Chinese birth year blends, like Year of the Ox and so on. But what sort of tea would an ox enjoy? Or a rabbit? A dragon? Perhaps she should pitch the zodiac tea first and see how that went.
She carried a notebook with her everywhere and brimmed with ideas. She often woke in the night and switched on the light to scribble down her thoughts.
Mark would groan and twist the pillow over his eyes.
‘Sorry. Just one more minute.’
‘You’re obsessed,’ he’d say. But then he would roll over and grab her around the waist and bury his head in her breasts. ‘But since you’re awake . . .’
It was their midnight ritual.
Simone’s in-depth knowledge of her customers’ profiles taught Kate to think critically about her markets and taught her more about business than she could have learned from any book. Though, at the end of the day, she was glad to leave the technicalities behind and just feel a new tea blend emerging.
She drank litres of tea from The Tea Chest range, trying every blend every way possible—with sugar, honey, lemon, milk, no milk, soy, black, iced and hot. One night, Mark came home after his appointments to find her rolling on the couch like something bloated and beached.
‘I’ll be peeing for months,’ she said. ‘It’s bad enough peeing for two but now I’m peeing for all of England.’
Mark pinched her arms lightly, as though testing her hydration levels.
‘It’s official,’ he said. ‘You’ve blown ninety-eight on the tea-alyser. Please step away from the tea, ma’am. You’ll have to come along with me.’
‘I don’t think there’s a tea on the market I haven’t tried,’ she groaned.
‘Have you checked the web for teas overseas?’ he said, flopping into the sagging brown chair near the television.
‘No. I hadn’t even thought of that.’
He shrugged. ‘Might be worth a look since Simone’s plans are for overseas development.’
‘Yes. Thanks.’
‘I’m here to help,’ he said.
When Kate finally met Judy, it was without warning.
She was at The Tea Chest, handing out glasses of a tea she called Asian Delight. It was late in the afternoon and she’d just been hit with a nap attack, all the long hours and pregnancy taking their toll on her energy. She squinted against the afternoon light as it breezed through the doorway and thought the shadowed figure moving towards her must be a customer. As she got closer, Kate took in her fawn suit, pearl necklace and matronly shoes. The woman stopped in front of her.
‘Kate?’
‘Yes?’
‘Judy Masters.’
Judy Masters’ mouth was set in a straight line and she had the same English accent as Simone. She offered no smile, and directed her gaze up and down Kate’s body as though assessing a horse for sale and finding it not worth the price being asked. Kate returned the assessment and concluded that Judy was in her early fifties, a handful of years older than Simone. And Simone was right; she did look like a Scottish terrier.
‘Simone couldn’t make it today,’ Judy said.
‘Oh.’ Kate tried and failed to keep the disappointment out of her voice. ‘Nothing serious, I hope.’
‘Flu. She’ll be off all week.’
Kate got the impression Judy didn’t tolerate sickness.
‘I hear you have a proposal for a new tea line. Something to do with star signs. Tell me about it.’
Kate stammered, surprised by such a direct line of questioning and the way Judy punctuated the words ‘star signs’ with a raise of her left eyebrow. Once for each word. She fidgeted with her tray of mostly empty glasses.
‘Well, they’re teas. You know. Based on astrology. Zodiac tea.’ She also punctuated her words with exaggeratedly enthusiastic facial gestures, but even as she did so she could feel the blood trickle down through her limbs like water through leaky pipes.
Judy’s eyes went to the ceiling.
Kate reined in her fleeing courage, got angry with it and tapped her foot to direct the blood back to her face. Anger was better. This woman had no right to come in and judge her. She’d never even set eyes on her before.
‘Perhaps you’d like to sample the teas so far?’ Kate began. ‘We could talk about the ideas behind them. I’m in again tomorrow . . .’
Judy glanced at her silver watch. ‘Meet me in the restaurant next door in fifteen minutes,’ she said, already turning her back.
The sales team was fully engaged in service, tidying and dusting, all eyes downcast, their bodies visibly shrinking away from Judy as she marched around the shop, running her finger across shelves, like a drill sergeant inspecting the barracks with a white glove.
Kate ran the flat of her sweaty hand down the side of her skirt. She forced her feet to move and take her to the alcove that functioned as the storeroom. She gathered her proposal materials and scooped samples of the teas from the first four signs of the zodiac—Aries to Cancer—into gift bags. She squared her shoulders and marched out the door. Her plan was to get to the restaurant first, choose the best location, place her order and be waiting for Judy when she arrived. She needed to get the upper hand and reclaim some power in this situation. She returned to basic body language rules—to be confident, she had to act confident.
It was a good plan.
‘I’ve only got a few minutes,’ Judy said when she at last arrived. She sat down.
Kate signalled the waiter, wanting to appear generous and mindful of Judy’s need to be served quickly. But when the waiter appeared, Judy shook her head.
‘No time,’ she said.
Kate gave him a small, apologetic smile, to which the waiter tipped his head politely.
‘What’s your rationale for this star tea?’ Judy said.
‘Rationale?’
‘Reason. Logic. Why star tea?’
‘Zodiac tea,’ Kate corrected. ‘I felt it was a good idea.’
Too late, the words had left her lips.
Wrong, Kate. Wrong.
Judy leaned back in her chair, pushing Kate’s printed report across the table. ‘Where’s your research?’
Research? Kate’s face went cold as she realised she hadn’t done any of the sort of research Judy was requesting. Kate’s research had involved reading a couple of books on star signs and coming up with a character profile she could match to the characteristics of ingredients. That’s what she did, after all. She was the lead designer. That’s why Simone had hired her. But she hadn’t done any research into why people might actually buy the tea. Judy was a financial partner. All she cared about were the figures and analysis, the sales record and her share of the profits.
‘Everybody has a star sign,’ Kate said weakly. ‘Star signs are very popular. Every woman’s magazine includes them. Everybody reads them.’
‘I don’t. And don’t those star sign pieces predict the future? Will your tea predict the future? Are we reading tea leaves now?’ Judy cackled.
‘Actually, I hadn’t thought about that.’ For a fleeting moment, Kate was excited, considering this aspect of the teas. But when she attempted to engage Judy in the idea it became clear the other woman had been mocking her.
‘I believe—Simone and I believe—that this range has real market potential,’ Kate said.
‘Well, I need more marketing research than a high school girl’s belief that something is a good idea. This—’ she picked up Kate’s report by the corner and dangled it like a dirty dishcloth ‘—is not a marketing plan. This is a good attempt to convince yourself of your own worth.’
Kate couldn’t have been more shocked if Judy had stood on the table and taken off all her clothes. She opened her mouth to correct her on her age (she was twenty-nine, after all) but closed it again in stunned realisation. This woman was nasty. Simple as that. And she was supposed to be a silent partner. Simone ran the business and made the decisions. Simone had hired her. Who was this woman to think she could speak to her this way?
‘Simone liked it,’ she at last managed to say, her heart booming with more than the caffeine.
‘Indeed. But if Simone was as smart as all that, then she would never have needed a financial investor to bail her out of trouble.’
Trouble?
Judy stood. ‘Simone won’t be in for the rest of the week. Do this report again but with solid data to back up your belief.’
Kate had never been so glad to see someone leave. She sat at the table for quite a while longer, wiping away her tears of embarrassment and anger. She felt assaulted. And shaky. And cold. It was shock, she realised. That’s what it was.
At home that night, she put Keats to bed with three books and a song, and sat at the kitchen table with a plate of falafel and salad that Mark had left for her. She opened her laptop, trying to make lists of all the places she could go in order to research her proposal. To her left, a bunch of roses sat in a blue vase. They were browning and floppy, cream petals scattered across the yellow table top. She realised with a start that she had no idea how long those flowers had been there. Mark had obviously picked them for her and arranged them and she hadn’t even noticed them until now. She slammed the lid of her laptop shut and howled. Mark was out again and wouldn’t be home before ten o’clock. She missed him dreadfully and the fear that they were drifting apart made her cry even harder, her sobs echoing in the wooden house.
It wasn’t worth it—this job, the stress on her relationship, the stress that Judy must have caused her unborn child today, the tiredness, the hours and days she was missing from Keats’s life. It just wasn’t worth it.
5
The bell chimed above the doorway. Kate looked up from the computer printouts of lists and stocktaking figures she and Susan had been going through. She didn’t normally have to invest so much brainpower in this end of the business as the financial year ended. Normally, she was concerned with launching a new tea blend to sit alongside the products with end-of-year discounts, to take advantage of sale-happy customers.
Normally, Simone did this.
She paused mid-conversation with Susan to smile at the new customer. Except it wasn’t a new customer at all. It was Judy.
Judy strode through the door with her heels clunking on the floor, her face set like stone.
Even today, the day when Judy was going to get everything she wanted, the woman still couldn’t crack a smile.
Kate continued to point out figures on the sheet and circle profit margins with a yellow highlighter, willing Judy to go away.
‘Ahem,’ Judy said. ‘I think we have some paperwork to discuss.’
‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’
Judy paused for an irritated second before heading out the back to the storeroom.
‘Is this really it?’ Susan whispered, her huge doll-like eyes filled with disbelief and sadness. ‘Is it really over?’
Kate and Mark had agreed that she would sign the papers and wind up the business, take the financial payout and start again. She’d nodded reluctantly, pulled herself from under the purple mohair rug draped over her lap, and carried her plate to the kitchen bench. It still had half her snapper and vegetables on it, untouched.
He’d followed her, placing his empty plate beside hers, and put his hands on her shoulders from behind. They both stared out through the wooden louvres to the street, the view expanding over the Paddington hills towards the bright lights of the city. This home had been acquired in large part because of Kate’s successful career so far and the choices they’d made as a family to get here. It was not just finances they were risking.
‘This is what I want,’ he’d said. ‘This is what I think is best. But I want you to know I do trust you. And I do believe you can do anything. If winding up really isn’t what you want . . . if you really feel it’s not the best thing to do for our family . . . I will support whatever you decide.’
‘It’s the best thing to do,’ she’d said, talking herself around to his point of view. They’d been over and over the different options, weighed up the pros and cons, and agreed to take the safer route.
There was no risk involved in winding up the company now, so why would she even consider jeopardising that in favour of the risky option of London?
That was the logic, anyway. Still, her heart hurt.
Now, she took a deep breath and squeezed Susan’s arm. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But I want you to know we’ll look after you. You’ll be okay.’
Susan turned back to the spreadsheet in front of her.
In the storeroom, it was clear Judy was forgoing any niceties. She leaned against the small kitchen sink with her arms crossed and the papers clutched in one hand.
‘What?’ Kate said. ‘No going-away parties, no speeches, no champagne?’
‘Let’s just get this over and done with,’ Judy replied. ‘Then we can both get on with our lives.’ She flicked open the pages and held them towards Kate. ‘You need to sign here, here and here.’
Kate nodded. Her hands moistened. Her heart trotted.
&nbs
p; ‘Judy, there’s something I just still don’t understand.’
Judy’s eyes narrowed.
‘Tell me again, why exactly are you so keen to dissolve this business? Why not look for a buyer?’
Judy tapped her foot in a mini tantrum. ‘I’m ready to retire, Kate. I never wanted to be a part of this company anyway. We’ve been over this. It would take too long to find a buyer and every day we hesitate drains more money from the company. That empty shop Simone leased in London is sucking us dry. We should cut our losses and get out now while we’ve still got profits to share. That’s the sensible thing to do.’
‘So you keep saying. But don’t you think we should at least try? Don’t you think we owe it to Simone?’
Judy snarled, ‘I want this to be over, Kate. Don’t you see that? I’ve spent more years than I’d like to count propping up this business for Simone while she drank herself to death. There wouldn’t even be a business here without me. I think we owe it to me to finish this chapter of my life so I can move on.’
Kate looked away. Simone’s alcoholism was something she still hadn’t come to terms with, something her mentor had managed to keep hidden from her almost until her death. Simone had given her so much—including half a company. She’d been her friend and it seemed disloyal to focus on her failures.
Simone drank to obliterate the pain of losing her mother at just ten years of age, followed by her father’s marriage to Elaine. When her father died a year after that, Simone had been left with Elaine and Elaine’s daughter Judy, and not long after they’d relocated to Australia so Elaine could marry again, this time to a businessman with mining interests.
A couple of times Simone had drunk too much wine and she’d shared with Kate snippets of her Cinderella-like life with Elaine, Judy and her stepfather, Dennis. How Elaine had split her time between their magnificent home on the river at Yeronga during the hot months, and their home in Mount Isa in the middle of Queensland during the colder months. The girls had been sent to boarding school. Simone had been taken away from everything she knew and loved.
The Tea Chest Page 5