A Perfect Heritage

by Penny Vincenzi

  ‘Like – like what?’

  ‘Like your future.’

  ‘Dad, have you read the statistics lately? Half the graduates in the country can’t get decent jobs. They’re working in coffee shops. And that’s the lucky ones. I honestly don’t think a degree’s going to do me any good at all. Unless I wanted to be a teacher and I don’t. It’s different for Rob, he’s doing medicine and there’s a cast-iron job at the end of it. Not for me there isn’t. Honestly, I’ve thought about it really hard, and I know I don’t want to stay here. Some days I feel so bored and – and disillusioned I could cry. Oh, Daddy, I’d like to come home and explain properly. Try and make you understand.’

  ‘Well, of course I – we – will listen very carefully to what you have to say. But Lucy, it’s not even the end of term. Surely it would be better to see that out at the very least?’

  ‘Daddy, what would be the point?’

  ‘The point,’ said Bertie, ‘is that it might look just a little better on your CV. You have to think of these things, Lucinda. You’re not a child any more.’

  He hardly ever called her Lucinda. It meant he was serious. If not actually cross.

  ‘Well, all right. I’ll – think about it. But – well, when can you come? I so want to see you.’

  ‘I’ll come on Saturday morning. As early as I can.’

  Bertie put the phone down. He had a sense of frustration at the thought of what she was so wantonly throwing away, but she was touchingly interested in him. It was soothing, set against Priscilla’s uber-involvement in her charities and her slightly disdainful disinterest in him.

  And Lucy would provide a most useful tool in the battle over the house – the valuation of it at two and a half million had sent Priscilla into overdrive. For a time at least Lucy would need her room, and besides she loved the house, would be horrified at her mother’s plan. And it would be lovely to have her at home, very lovely indeed. Apart from adoring and admiring his children, Bertie loved their company, they interested him and made him laugh and, perhaps most important of all, restored his faith in himself.

  They were his greatest accomplishment, without a doubt: and actually, as he thought increasingly these days, his only one.

  Chapter 9

  ‘Could I have a word?’

  Bianca looked up; the person she most liked to see in the office – one of the very few people she ever wanted to see in the office – Susie Harding, stood in the doorway. So pretty, with her long blond hair, her rather remarkable grey eyes, so well-dressed, mostly in wrap dresses or shifts, her long, tanned legs – God, these girls must spend a lot on tanning products – her wonderful collection of high, high heels; so cheerful always, smiling that amazing smile of hers. She was a life enhancer of the very highest degree. Only right now she wasn’t smiling.

  ‘Susie, of course. Sit down. Glass of juice, water?’

  ‘No, no I’m fine. Sorry to barge in but your secretary wasn’t there—’

  ‘She wasn’t there because I’ve returned her to the agency,’ said Bianca. ‘She was depressing me. You don’t have a friend do you who’d like a very nice job as PA?’

  ‘I’ll put my mind to it, if you’re serious.’

  ‘Utterly. I want someone bright and calm and, above all, cheerful. And who doesn’t mind working late sometimes. And who finds the same things funny as I do. I mean, you’d do perfectly, but you’re overqualified and anyway, you’re already taken.’ She smiled at Susie.

  ‘Well – thanks. But it’s actually my job I’ve come about. I’m sure you’re going to brief me in due course and I know you’re terribly busy and—’

  ‘Don’t let’s worry about that.’

  ‘It’s just that I’m completely kicking my heels at the moment. The press aren’t interested in us at all, the way we are, and – well, it would be great to get some idea if there was anything I could do now. Instead of irritating all the journos and bloggers trying to interest them in – well, diddly squat.’

  Bianca laughed. ‘I love that expression.’

  ‘You see, I just can’t wait to get to work. Relaunches are the toughest things of all, of course, but they’re also a huge challenge.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Bianca, with a sigh. ‘We’re talking about taking something old and stale and difficult and untidy and making it vibrant and desirable and accessible all at the same time. On a fairly tight budget, I might add. Walking on water, easy by comparison.’

  ‘I know. And then there’s risking losing all the old customers, and finding enough new ones to make that worthwhile. But – goodness, you can do it if anyone can. And it would be huge fun.’

  ‘Tell me, Susie, if you were me, what would be your first line of attack? The first thing you did?’

  ‘The products. They’re ghastly, most of them. Too many bad, not enough good. Have you been down to the lab yet?’

  ‘No, I’m going on Thursday.’

  ‘Honestly, everyone is at least fifty. All hired by the Farrells decades ago, mostly briefed by Lady Farrell. Ghastly. No use repackaging, or re-advertising anything they make. Might as well try and tell people baked beans are strawberries. That’s not a very good analogy,’ she added. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. What products do seem right to you?’

  ‘The Cream,’ said Susie without hesitation.

  ‘Really? Even to someone as young as you?’

  ‘Yes. It’s just the best skincare product in the world.’

  ‘But it’s not very scientifically based. Surely in these days of free radicals and superdepth vitamin balance . . .’ She made a face at Susie.

  Susie laughed. ‘No. But I think it just might be time for a bit less of all that stuff. The Cream is just a yummy, incredibly absorbent night cream. You can wear it to bed with your boyfriend without smelling like an old lady.’

  Bianca grinned. ‘Oh, I wish we could say that! What wouldn’t that do for the brand!’

  ‘Well, you could sort of imply it I suppose,’ said Susie. ‘You couldn’t actually say it, because all the ladies who love it would be shocked, stop buying it and buy Estée Lauder or Clarins instead.’

  ‘They might not,’ said Bianca, ‘if it was done cleverly enough. But you’ll have to tread water a bit longer, I’m afraid, Susie. I’m still so much thinking, getting the feel of everything – but any ideas you have, let me have them. I need all the help I can get.’

  ‘OK, thanks. I just didn’t want you to think I was a complete waste of space.’

  ‘I certainly didn’t.’ Susie would make a brilliant member of a new team, Bianca thought. Also a key one. PR and the social networks were so clearly the way to tell people about the new House of Farrell. The advertising budget she had agreed with Mike was tiny, a guttering candle set against the huge arc lights of Lauder and Chanel. She was going to have to box clever; use brains rather than brawn. Well, that was what she was about. That was what the whole thing was about. Meanwhile, she had an appointment with Caro; a rather less promising team member . . .

  Caro was clearly highly intelligent and hugely confident, but as far as Bianca could see, had entirely failed to make any kind of proper career for herself. Unless you counted being personnel director of Farrell’s, at which she was spectacularly bad. Of course she did have a very successful, high-flying husband, but they had no children. She could have been anything, Bianca thought, a lawyer, a banker, gone into commercial life . . . why settle for a job in a business with which she seemed to have no sympathy? Well, the obvious answer was that she was Athina Farrell’s daughter and did what was expected of her.

  Bianca wondered, as she waited for Caro, what Cornelius had been like; obviously charming and good-looking to judge by the various photographs of him that still adorned the boardroom, and everyone seemed to have loved him, but there any real sense of him ended. Intriguing.

  ‘Ah, Caro,’ she said, standing up as her door opened. ‘Do come in. How are you? Coffee, tea?’

  ‘I am well, thank
you. These are difficult times of course, everyone is in a state of slight anxiety—’

  ‘Really? I’m sorry. I can understand it, of course. Is there anyone in particular I should know about? Talk to them, perhaps?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Caro, looking rather edgy. ‘I can deal with it perfectly well. Thank you.’ In other words, I don’t need you to tell me what to do.

  ‘OK. Well, if anything changes let me know. Now, what I really need your help with is getting a handle on the report lines and I thought you, as personnel director, could help me.’

  ‘Report lines?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bianca, smiling at her sweetly. ‘You know, who reports to whom. I’m finding it a bit baffling. The consultants, for instance, seem to be part of marketing. I don’t quite get that. Why not sales? Particularly as we don’t have a marketing director to report to.’

  ‘Well,’ said Caro, ‘we did. Until last year.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, he clashed increasingly with my mother.’

  ‘I – I see.’

  ‘Perhaps you don’t,’ said Caro, her tone growing cool. ‘Marketing, in the sense we have always understood it here, product development, promotion, advertising, image, always came under the aegis of my mother. And my father, of course, when he was alive. They moulded Farrell’s, after all. And my mother has always felt the consultants, the face of Farrell, as we call them, should be her complete responsibility when my father died. Then, in the nineties, we decided that a marketing specialist in the field should be hired. The person we had, a woman, was extremely good and worked very happily and successfully, was responsible for many innovations and developments, but shortly after my father died she left. After that we had two more, both men, but my mother found them impossible to work with, whereas Lawrence Ford, the marketing manager, works well with her.’

  ‘And that’s why the consultants come under marketing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see,’ said Bianca again. ‘Now, how about IT?’

  ‘Well, each department has its own IT manager. So we have one for marketing, one for sales, one for the finance and admin.’

  ‘You’ve never envisaged having an IT department as such?’

  ‘Well, no. The support we have is perfectly adequate. It’s not as if we have a serious online presence.’ She felt rather proud of that phrase.

  ‘Not at the moment,’ said Bianca.

  ‘You surely wouldn’t contemplate selling Farrell online?’ said Caro, shocked. ‘My mother would never agree to such a thing.’

  ‘Caro, right now I’m contemplating everything and anything. And all the other houses have an online presence, as you call it. It’s an invaluable promotional tool, apart from anything else. Have you looked at the websites recently?’

  ‘Not . . . too recently,’ said Caro.

  ‘You really should. They’re impressive.’

  ‘I’ll try and find the time,’ said Caro. She clearly saw studying rival websites akin to reading glossy magazines. Which of course it was, in a way . . .

  God, this place is a nightmare, Bianca thought, sinking into her chair. The financial meltdown, the falling sales, the disastrous marketing, the frankly lousy products, the incompetent management, the complete lack of morale – they were familiar demons, she had fought them before and won. But the infiltration of this family into every corner of the company, the power it wielded, this was new. She had realised, of course, that they must be taken on and that Lady Farrell was a powerful and difficult force, resistant to her very presence; but she had not reckoned with the breadth and depth of that force, and the unquestioning faith in its tenets. Everybody, at every level in every department, saw Lady Farrell as the unarguable authority on everything and believed that the failure of the company was simply an unfortunate fact that had been forced upon her and thus on them. And anyone who did not share that view must clearly be wrong.

  In order to change the company, and make it work, Bianca was coming to realise, she had to overcome not only Athina Farrell but the faith of her followers and convert them to her.

  Creating world peace looked rather simple by comparison.

  ‘You want to be what?’

  ‘Oh, darling! Waste all that very expensive education!’

  ‘Waste what’s a very good brain, anyway!’

  ‘. . . completely pointless existence . . .’

  ‘. . . find it terribly boring . . .’

  ‘. . . ghastly models . . .’

  ‘. . . training costs what???!!! . . .’

  ‘. . . you can just forget all about it, Lucy . . .’

  ‘. . . really quite worried about money at the moment . . .’

  Lucy faced them down, her green eyes, her grandmother’s eyes, steady in the face of their horror. It was pathetic; anyone would think she’d announced she wanted to go on the streets.

  ‘You know what,’ she said, ‘you’re being ridiculous. It’s a great job, one of the most sought after there is these days, fun, and according to one lovely girl I talked to, being a make-up artist is more than fifty per cent psychiatrist, so whatever brain I do have would actually be used quite a bit. I think you’re dishing out some very old-fashioned prejudice and actually, seeing as the beauty industry is what’s supported all of us, and paid for the very expensive education you’re banging on about, I think you’re being a bit hypocritical. You should be grateful I’ve left uni – it was going to get a lot more expensive by the time I’d got my degree. And I’m sorry you think a course costing nine thousand pounds a year is out of the question. It seemed pretty reasonable to me.’

  ‘Well, if it’s so reasonable why don’t you find the money yourself?’ snapped Priscilla. ‘The London College of Fashion, indeed! It sounds little better than a finishing school to me.’

  ‘Oh stop it!’ said Lucy, her voice growing tearful. ‘You’re being so – so blind. And unkind. Dismissing what I really want to do, making it sound pathetic.’

  ‘Lucy,’ said Bertie, sounding nervous, ‘darling, don’t get upset.’

  ‘I am upset. I think you just showed how little you understand me. Well, I’m going to do it anyway, I’ll find a way, just you see. I’ll talk to Grandy. She won’t think it’s a – a – what did you say? A pointless boring existence. She might even think it’s a bit odd you thinking it would be.’

  ‘Lucy –’ said Bertie nervously. His mother would accept anything Lucy told her, however distorted or far from the truth. ‘Lucy, don’t be silly—’

  ‘It’s you who’s being silly,’ said Lucy witheringly, and walked out of the room.

  That was a lie, Bianca thought, watching and listening. Told with much conviction and an earnest smile.

  ‘This is a very lovely product, madam, and in some new shades for summer . . .’ The consultant’s voice, as she attempted to make a sale, trailed off. The product did have some lovely shades, to be sure, but the product – a new foundation, in colours that were old-fashioned and a texture that belonged twenty years back – was appalling. She had tried them, tried all the products, day after day, growing increasingly dispirited. These products were years out of date, not just months. The consultant was talking again. ‘Let me put it on the back of your hand – there! How does that look? Too heavy? Ah, well we do have a lighter one, let me just see . . .’

  She rummaged in a drawer under the counter and while she was doing it, the customer walked rather self-consciously off, drawn to a rival display across the hall. Bianca had been there for almost an hour now, occasionally moving to a different part of the department, observing the ebb and flow of customers to the Farrell counter. Not that flow exactly described it; in that hour, only three women had stopped for long enough for the consultant to approach them, the rest hurrying past with an apologetic ‘not now thank you’. Of those three, one had bought The Cream, of which she was clearly an aficionado – the consultant had seemed to know her. The other two had bought minor items – lipsticks and eyeshadows, and now this one wa
s being pressed into trying the new summer foundation. Actually more suited to an Arctic winter . . .

  But at least they were potential customers; and that was what Bianca was doing here, standing in a rather quiet corner of this hugely busy department in White & Co Chemists in Birmingham, studying them, doing her own personal survey. Like most of its sisters, the concession in Birmingham was haemorrhaging money.

  The customers, to whom Bianca had just devoted her time – customer knowledge and the harnessing of it being the key to success – were middle-aged, middle-income, middle-class, and definitely not fashionable. Bianca had deduced this rather unscientifically by hanging around cosmetic counters and talking to the consultants – but there was precious little of a more scientific nature available. And as far as she could see, the typical Farrell customer was, for the most part, wedded to the brand by The Cream, moving to the other counters for make up and, more dangerously, in terms of potential desertion, sometimes to other skincare products as well. There was no way the nice, kindly, old-fashioned Farrell ladies serving them were paying their way. Bianca was moving swiftly to the conclusion the consultants would all have to go . . .

  Chapter 10

  Dinner, which Jonjo insisted was to be on him, had been arranged for the following Saturday. The sculptress would be there – it was getting serious, Jonjo had told Patrick, which meant he’d now seen her more than three times – and Saul Finlayson would join them for a drink beforehand.

  ‘He just doesn’t do dinner at the weekends,’ Jonjo explained on the phone to Bianca, ‘insists on spending the time with his son. Who’s with the ex during the week, so weekends are pretty sacred.’

  ‘I approve of that,’ said Bianca.

  ‘You’re lucky they’re in London this weekend because the little chap—’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Dickon.’

  ‘Nice name!’

  ‘Yeah. Anyway, he’s got some birthday party he really wanted to go to. Then Saul’s picking him up, so he’ll only have half an hour. But at least you’ll be able to get some sort of handle on him. Can’t wait to see what you make of him, lot of women find him very sexy.’