My Story

by Jo Malone

  ‘That would be great. I’d love a cup of tea.’

  Five minutes later, she returned with a cuppa in one hand and, with the other, she wheeled in a Perspex, portable crib containing Josh, leaving it up against my bed.

  ‘No, wait,’ I said, ‘I don’t—’

  Before I could say a thing, she was dashing out of the room. ‘A call has come in. I’ll be right back to collect him!’

  The door clicked shut and I tried to ignore the presence of the day-old life beside me, but then Josh murmured. I looked to my right and there, swaddled in a white blanket, surrounded by Perspex, this tiny body wriggled and screwed up his face, all tired and sleepy. The most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I didn’t know if I was capable of finding the love that such perfection deserved, but my instincts overrode my thoughts and I leaned in and picked up this almost weightless soul . . . and smelled him for the first time. The most wonderful scent in the world, and the one smell that I cannot describe: the blanket, the top of his head, his cheeks, his neck. In that instant, the insanity ended and reality took hold of me. I held him to my chest and breathed him in, and I cannot begin to describe the love that engulfed me, pure waves of love, one after the other. And I wept.

  I looked up to find Gary peering through the window of the door, tears streaming down his face. The nurse was alongside him, smiling – she knew exactly what she’d been doing, leaving Josh with me.

  Come in, I gestured. God, come in, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.

  Gary rushed over and huddled into a group hug, which Josh managed to sleep through. The nurse stood at the foot of the bed. ‘You can’t hold him all day, you know!’ she said.

  ‘You watch me!’ I said. ‘I’m never going to let him go!’

  Josh was worth every second of the sickness during pregnancy, and I would go through it again tomorrow, tenfold, because he is the dream son; a gift that I cannot imagine being without. As for those hormone-induced thoughts, I know my experience is not uncommon. Some women feel the joy at birth, some take a day or so, and, for some, it happens even later. But when that feeling, that attachment, that bond does click in, it feels no less intense or life-changing. Josh will forever be my greatest creation.

  Within six months of being born, he joined us on the road as we opened shops across America. As I carried out personal appearances and signed bottles of fragrance, he was on my hip, stealing the show, never leaving my side.

  We weren’t just a family, we were now a family in business – and he would ride with us every step of the way.

  TWENTY

  Somebody once asked me to sum up the happy balance when motherhood meets entrepreneurship. ‘Roots and wings,’ I replied. ‘I love the roots of family – they need to be strong, nurtured and treasured – but I also like having the wings to fly as a businesswoman and be creative.’

  The arrival of Josh rooted me like nothing else. No longer could I give the business one hundred per cent of my time and attention, and no longer did I wish to. In those early days of parenthood, I read many articles about how women bosses and entrepreneurs need to ‘juggle’ if they are to succeed and be all things to all people: the company, the employees, the spouse, the partner, the children, the friends. I’ve never subscribed to that kind of thinking because I don’t believe it’s about ‘juggling’. Only robots can be all things to all people.

  Building a business had actually prepared me for motherhood more than I imagined: the long hours and fatigue, the ability to think on my feet, the disciplined time management, the need to become super-efficient, and the reality that when things go wrong, there is no room to sit and cry; you just handle it. I didn’t feel the impact on the business or my creativity that I had once worried about. What actually happened was that a parallel lane opened up alongside the day job, often running at a similar pace! All I had to do was keep switching between the two.

  That’s why, for me, it’s never been about juggling but more about a disciplined dividing of time that ensures you stay in the moment, and focused, within each lane. From day one, I accepted that there would be hours when I needed to knuckle down and concentrate on business, and there’d be more times when I needed to be ‘Mum’. When making a fragrance, my focus has to be total, thought by thought, drop by drop. When with Josh, my focus is equally fierce, absorbed in every small detail and moment he provides. But I didn’t try to cover both roles at the same time. When you’re an untrained juggler, distractions happen and things tend to slip and go awry.

  I also accepted that there was no such thing as perfection in motherhood. You simply find a way that works for you and your family, whatever the circumstances. When you’ve grown up in an imperfect family, the pressure to compensate can be strong, but all I ever set out to do was give my best. Motherhood isn’t a product or a shop display that has to be flawless.

  What matters to children is that they see your face at sports day, at parents’ evenings, and at the dinner table. As Josh grew up, I didn’t want to be the mum who was lost in my phone, missing moments and memories. I didn’t want to be the mum who couldn’t cancel meetings when he was sick, because none of us are as indispensable, or as busy, as perhaps we like to think we are, even when a company is expanding on an international level. When Josh is my age and looking back, he won’t remember the smart shoes or the smartphones we bought him; he will, I hope, recall how often we were there for him, how hard we loved, and how much we nurtured, included and listened to him.

  Not by any means would I find the demands of motherhood easy, and there would be many times when I’d drop the ball. Like the occasion when he had started school and I read an email on the fly – a request from his headteacher asking that pupils attend class wearing the colours of the Spanish flag. What I failed to see was that this request was for another year. Josh’s year actually had an assembly with a local dignitary. And so there is now a photo in our album of all the children dressed in their blazers while my son is standing there, sticking out like a sore thumb, sporting the colours of Spain.

  I could probably tell a hundred and one stories of how stretched things sometimes became, but I think the time that best illustrates the challenge in those early years was the twenty-four-hour period in Chicago in April 2002, when Josh was one and a bit and I had a lunch date with Oprah Winfrey.

  We were commencing a six-city, two-week tour of America that had involved personal appearances and press interviews in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Houston. Our first forty-eight-hour stop was Chicago, where we had lined up a two-hour meet-and-greet at Saks Fifth Avenue before heading on to a British high tea for thirty select guests at the NAHA restaurant.

  Josh was ready for a sleep by the time we boarded our plane to ‘the windy city’, so I dressed him in pyjamas, which I always dabbed with a dash of cologne because he learned to associate the scent with going to sleep; he’d be out like a light. I don’t know if the use of my fragrances in this way is a handy tip, but it certainly worked for us! The other bonus about Josh was that he never screamed – until this flight, which was how I knew something was wrong.

  His temperature spiked and I stripped him down but he kept burning up, wailing and vomiting. After landing in the evening, we jumped straight in a cab to Chicago’s children’s hospital, where we stayed up through the night as doctors ran tests, concerned that it might be meningitis. In the end, it was nothing but a scare – Josh had suffered a reaction to an inoculation he’d had the morning we left London. By the time we reached our hotel, it was already the next day, about 10 a.m. I looked at my bedraggled self in the mirror: dried vomit on my shoulder, dried vomit in my hair, eyes reddened through tears, and with bags under my eyes that looked sadder than a basset hound. Gary and I were effectively sleepwalking after ten fraught hours at the hospital. I then looked at my dairy: lunch with Oprah in two hours.

  ‘Cancel it,’ I told our American PR Cathy O’Brien on the phone. ‘I’m not leaving Josh.’

  Cathy went everywhere with us and she was
a new mum, too, who brought her daughter on these mini-tours. She understood what I was going through. But, with her professional hat on, she also knew how rare lunches with Oprah were.

  ‘Errr, Jo – you can’t cancel Oprah.’

  ‘Yes, I can.’

  Since first going on her show, I had appeared for a second time, which was how this invitation to lunch at her home had come about. But I had no doubt that someone with Oprah’s heart and compassion would understand the circumstances.

  ‘You won’t be able to rearrange for months; if ever,’ said Cathy.

  ‘And I won’t be able to live with myself if anything happens to Josh and I’m at lunch with Oprah,’ I said. ‘That is why I’m not going.’

  As I dug in my heels, Josh was toddling around the room, as happy as can be, one eye on his Lego, one eye on the television, and hands tucking into a plate of pancakes. There was a general chirpiness to him that might as well have said, ‘Why look so worried?’ His blood tests had come back clear and the doctors said he’d be fine, but I still wanted to wrap him in cotton wool and stay.

  Gary stepped in. ‘Look at him, he’s fine. You go.’

  Gary and Cathy persuaded me to release my fearful grip and jump in the shower in an attempt to make myself look at least half-presentable for the queen of American television. But that was definitely the first time I experienced what it was to be torn between maternal instinct and what the business required. It didn’t help that I also felt as energised as a zombie.

  ‘Just get through these next two hours,’ I told myself; that’s all you have to do. Oprah was even more amazing at lunch in her home than I thought she had been when we met on set. She wasn’t ‘on’; she could relax into her off-camera, private self and I found her to be disarmingly authentic and gracious. But I’ll be honest, I was so dead on my feet that I struggled to be fully present. I am probably the only person in the world who has ever had lunch with Oprah and felt that they needed matchsticks to keep their eyelids open.

  ‘Are you going to have wine?’ she asked.

  Oh my God, no. I’ll be out for the count if I have wine!

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ll stick with water.’

  We had a lovely hour together, though I wish I could do it again properly.

  Afterwards, I met Cathy in the car, where I could have lain down and crashed on the back seat. My first call was to Gary, to check on Josh. ‘Is he all right? . . . Okay, great . . . I’m on my way back now.’

  I looked at Cathy. She was shaking her head and biting her lip in that way that people do before they tell you something you don’t want to hear.

  ‘Jo,’ she said, ‘you have a tea at the British Consulate where you have to give a presentation. There are one hundred and fifty guests already waiting for you.’

  If you were among those guests that afternoon, I apologise now. I don’t know where I was, what I said or how incoherent I sounded, but I was transitioning into motherhood. I hope you can understand.

  If anyone knows the deft balance required between motherhood and the day job, it is women in journalism, whether they work in print or broadcasting. That profession is as relentless and demanding as entrepreneurship, with even more erratic hours. So each time I sat down to give a media interview, there was this mutual empathy – sometimes expressed, sometimes not – for what it took to build a career and be a mother.

  One of my first interviews post-pregnancy was with a magazine journalist from America and we arranged to meet at The Lanesborough in London’s Hyde Park Corner. I was shadowed by my new public relations assistant, Charlotte McCarthy, who had joined the team following the Lauder deal, bringing second-to-none PR expertise. She would become a mainstay in my life, and the shadow I couldn’t be without. I think Josh could probably say the same, because she was brilliant with him, and he absolutely adored her, like a big sister.

  We also have a great symbiosis, so we readily understand where each other is coming from. Charlotte doesn’t feel the need to babysit me through interviews, which was why, as the journalist and I sat down, she took Josh and kept him occupied in the background. Twenty minutes later, I suddenly heard an out-of-tune BOM-POM-BOM-POM-BOM on the piano, and I swivelled around to find Josh in full Mozart mode, bashing away on the ivories, looking at me with a big grin on his face. The journalist thought it was hilarious and, before we knew it, Josh was the star of the Library Bar.

  Moreover, this journalist actually acknowledged how hard it must be to balance motherhood with business. I can’t remember if that was what she printed but she voiced the observation, woman to woman, appreciating what it took to be a mum in a modern-day world. Not every journalist would demonstrate that understanding, but I do think it’s vital that we, as women, understand and acknowledge what each one of us goes through, whether we are a CEO, a shopkeeper, a nine-to-fiver, or a single mum trying to make ends meet. If we are to be truly empowered as a gender, then surely we need to support one another, rather than judge, or criticise, or project our way of doing things on to others. In today’s social media world, where snap judgements seem common, that hope may seem unrealistic, but the more we imagine walking in the shoes of others, the kinder I think we can become.

  Around June 2003, we devised a concept for a magalogue – a cross between a magazine and a catalogue. Magalogues were an emerging trend back then and The World of Jo Malone was to be a content-driven format focused on lifestyle that would place product in situ within themed photo shoots, from ‘at home with Jo’ to ‘Christmas with Jo’.

  I flew to New York to do a series of shoots with the incredibly talented photographer Chris Baker over the course of several days. He obsessed about every single detail almost as much as I did, and he was a joy to work with, as was the stylist, Daphna, who made me look the best I’ve ever looked on camera. Together, and through many wardrobe and set changes, they pulled off a photo shoot that did justice to the brand. But I was relieved when those long days were over because this was the first time I had been apart from Josh, who had stayed home with Gary. That’s something else that takes you by surprise as a new mum – the gravitational pull that defies distance and renders you homesick. When we had spoken on the phone the previous day, I don’t think he quite understood why my voice was there but I wasn’t.

  The next morning, on the day of departure, I rose at 8 a.m. and hit the shower to fully wake up. I stood under that blast of hot water for an age, eyes closed, head down, letting the steam fill the room. I imagined how the ‘magalogue’ would turn out. I thought about the long flight and how all I intended to do was read and sleep. And then, just as I was thinking about stepping out of the shower, a curveball came from nowhere to disrupt my perfect life.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Within days of being home, I underwent an examination with our family GP, Dr Guy O’Keeffe. ‘We need to get this looked at, Jo,’ he said. The tone of his voice was one of caution not alarm, but the inevitable thought still arose.

  ‘It’s not cancer, though? Is it?’ I asked.

  Cue a seasoned doctor’s subtle deflection. ‘Let’s find out what it is first,’ he said. ‘It could be a cyst. It could be anything.’

  The haste with which he acted, though, referring me that same afternoon for a scan at the Lister Hospital in Chelsea, perhaps told me something, even if my denial sought to push it away. ‘Will this procedure hurt? Take long?’ I asked. ‘Because we’ve a dinner to attend and it starts at eight.’

  In my head, I was already at the Serpentine Gallery’s annual party. Gary and I had rushed home from the shop to change hurriedly: he, into a dinner jacket; me, into a shocking-pink dress shirt and black Armani dinner suit. That’s how we had arrived at the doctor’s surgery, squeezing in the 5 p.m. appointment before heading to a soirée that attracts names from fashion, art, architecture and music. In my pocket, I had a pair of diamond drop earrings to be worn later.

  Even as he and I headed to the hospital, I kept telling myself that the lump was likely a cyst tha
t would have to be drained. It’s a cyst. That’s all it is – a cyst.

  In the waiting room at the Lister, I picked the earrings from my pocket and started rolling them between my thumb and fingers. Gary sat beside me, looking pensive. Neither of us really said much.

  When my name was called, I headed to the imaging room and stood in front of a machine that looked like it belonged on a factory floor. Throughout the mammogram, I didn’t take my eyes off the nurse, scrutinising her for the slightest reaction as the image flashed up on the screen. And that’s when I spotted it – a subtle flicker of recognition registering on her face.

  ‘I’ll only be a minute,’ she said, before disappearing out of the room.

  Within a minute or so, she returned, explaining that they needed to do a second scan. As I was taken into another room for an ultrasound, my mind still clung to the possibility of a cyst, even throughout the procedure, even when a doctor came to see me.

  ‘So, can you drain it?’ I asked him.

  ‘Drain what?’

  ‘The cyst.’

  ‘No, Jo, this is not a cyst,’ he said, his voice grave, his face sorry.

  ‘I’ve got cancer, haven’t I?’

  ‘It’s a strong possibility, yes.’

  I stepped into the corridor in a daze, and yet, in that daze, my sense of smell seemed more acute than ever: the all-pervading medicinal air; the strong coffee that someone nearby must have been drinking; the soap on the nurse’s hands as she led me to the waiting room where Gary remained oblivious. From behind me, I heard hurried footsteps clipping off the travertine floor. I turned to see Dr Guy rushing towards me – they had called him, presumably before the ultrasound, and he hugged me like a relative, not a doctor.

  He took me to see Gary, who knew as soon as he saw my face. I rested my head on his chest. ‘We’re going to deal with this together,’ he said, putting his arms around me. But it’s amazing how even your husband’s arms don’t feel safe when you’ve just been told you have cancer. It feels like every form of safety has been ripped away; that it’s just you and cancer, stripped bare. And yet, as I stood there, I felt strangely calm within the eye of this storm. Or maybe I was mistaking the numbness for calm.