Perhaps he should use the work connection to contrive a trip down to the salvage yard, but really to see her and sort this ridiculous situation out? But then he’d have to get her alone somehow to broach the subject and, although he hated to admit it to himself, going on previous form, anything could happen in those circumstances.
It didn’t matter what his rational mind told him, as soon as he saw Tessa he seemed to be reduced to a cerebellum on legs. Three legs.
Simon put his head down on his desk and groaned quietly. Just as Rachel walked into his office. Shit.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Of course,’ he said, looking up at her from desk level and feeling like a total idiot, ‘yes, no, I just dropped my pen on the floor.’
He waved the biro around in the air as proof.
‘Is this a good moment?’ asked Rachel.
‘For what?’ asked Simon, much more irritably than he meant to. Why couldn’t he stop himself being snappy with her?
‘I can come back another time,’ said Rachel, wondering yet again why Simon was so bloody rude in the office, when she knew how charming he could be. He’d been great company at the lunch with Tessa and Tom the day before. It had been good to see him loosen up a bit with the drink.
‘No, no, sit down,’ he said, absentmindedly putting the biro back in his mouth. The clear plastic split in two with a loud crunch as his back teeth clamped down on it too hard.
‘Ew,’ said Rachel. ‘Watch out, you’ll get a mouthful of ink.’
‘I know,’ said Simon, picking bits of plastic out from between his teeth. ‘Terrible habit, I must remember not to put random things in my mouth …’
A smirk passed across Rachel’s face, she couldn’t help it. That would be a good line for the Arthur/Martha brigade to giggle about. She wouldn’t tell them though. Simon might be a rude git at times, but she had more respect for him than that.
‘So what gives?’ he asked, dropping the bits of pen in his waste paper bin and sitting up straight. Sort yourself out, Rathbone, he told himself. This is the workplace. Business. The stuff that matters.
‘I’ve got all the costs here for the first Lawn & Stone press trip with the editors,’ said Rachel. ‘I’d like you to have a look at them before I send them to the client. I’ve printed them out, so you can write comments straight onto them.’
‘Great,’ said Simon, reaching out to take the folder Rachel was proffering to him. ‘I look forward to perusing them.’
Perusing? When did he ever use a word like that? What was happening to his brain?
‘Goodo,’ said Rachel, getting up from the chair. Simon’s stomach turned over a little.
‘And well done, for getting this together so quickly, Rachel,’ he added, smiling at her.
She nodded in recognition and as he looked at her properly – her face, that was, his X-ray specs pervert eyes had already scanned the rest of her – Simon noticed that she was looking rather strained.
‘Are you all right, Rachel?’ he asked. ‘You don’t look quite yourself.’
Rachel was so surprised by the kindness in his voice, she felt tears spring into her eyes. Her hand flew up to her forehead to try and hide them, but then she gave in and sank back down into the chair.
‘It’s my mum,’ she croaked out, tears escaping and spilling down her cheeks. ‘She had a fall last night and she’s in hospital. She’s broken her hip and she’s having surgery right now.’
‘Oh no,’ said Simon, ‘that’s awful. Poor Joy. But you must go, Rachel. Go straight down there, now. Don’t worry about work, take the rest of the week off, that’s much more important.’
Rachel stared at him in amazement. ‘Really?’ she said, wiping her wet cheeks.
‘Of course,’ said Simon, getting up from his chair and coming round to her side. Taking care not to bring his torso too close to hers, he put his arm lightly round her shoulders and gave her a freshly pressed white handkerchief, which he’d just pulled out of his pocket. ‘Take this and go.’
‘That’s so kind of you,’ she said, dabbing the edges of her eyes with his hankie and noting it had the letters ‘SR’ embroidered on it. ‘But I’ll have to come back later, because of the girls, their nanny is on holiday … but it would be really great if I could go to the hospital right away, to be there when she comes round.’
‘Go,’ said Simon, ‘and take off as much time as you need.’
‘Thank you so much,’ she said, smiling at him in a way that made Simon move hastily back to his chair, safely on the other side of the desk.
‘Just tell me one thing before you go,’ he said, taking another biro out of his pot. ‘Which hospital is she in?’
‘The Royal Tunbridge Wells,’ Rachel replied, surprised, as he scribbled it down on his notepad.
‘Please give her my very best regards for a speedy recovery,’ he said, ‘I was very taken with your mother when I met her that, er, time.’
‘I will,’ said Rachel. ‘Thanks, Simon. You’ve been a brick. See you tomorrow.’
She left his office, slightly amazed at this new compassionate side of him, but still glad she’d resisted the temptation to tell him her mother had felt much the same about him.
Simon might have his nice side, when he chose to show it, but he was still the boss.
Friday, 20 June
Cranbrook
Rachel, Natasha and Tessa were all sitting round Joy’s bed, drinking tea made with fresh mint leaves from the garden, the French windows wide open to let in the gorgeous sunny afternoon. Rachel had just arrived, much sooner than she’d been expected, because Simon had let her leave the office early again.
As soon as he’d heard Joy had come home from hospital on the Tuesday, he’d tried to get Rachel to take the whole week off, but she hadn’t been able to take him up on it, because Branko was still away. Simon had also sent a bouquet of flowers to the hospital, with a very nice card, which Rachel had to admit was a very nice gesture. Joy had been thrilled and had already written him a note of copious thanks.
He’d been affectionately amused by her ‘love and light’ sign-off and had shown it to Rachel, who’d been slightly alarmed that he might suggest coming down to visit Joy himself, but so far he’d stayed just on the acceptably intrusive side of kindness. Generous time off was good, getting too personally involved in her family dramas was not.
Joy took a contented sip of tea and sent up a prayer of thanks that once again she was in Tessa’s house, surrounded by her beloved daughters. She hadn’t enjoyed what she’d had to go through to be in that situation, but it was worth it, to see them all up close and connected, as they needed to be.
And it was so wonderful to see Natasha for the second time in just over a week. She’d come over to visit Joy in hospital right after the accident, but she’d had to rush back to New York the next day for work, coming back again now Joy had been discharged, to stay longer and help Tessa out.
Despite having arrived on the red-eye only that morning, Natasha seemed to be in the best spirits of the three of them, which probably wasn’t surprising considering what she was telling them.
‘So, I finally had the big meeting with OM yesterday – you know the American cosmetics empire?’ she was saying. ‘And it’s now all confirmed, signed and sealed, that they are going ahead with a whole range of make-up called “Younger by Natasha”. How exciting is that? The name was my idea.’
They all congratulated her warmly and Natasha carried on talking, pink with excitement.
‘The really amazing thing is that Ava Capel – she’s the marketing genius who finds all the cult beauty ranges and gets OM to buy them and take them global, she’s an absolute legend – heard I was planning to do my own line and came straight to me, saying they wanted to do it jointly with me from the outset.’
Joy lifted her mug to her face to take a drink, but really to hide her expression. Natasha looked so beatific with happiness, it made her feel quite teary.
‘Normally
,’ she was saying, ‘they wait until the small company has done all the hard work and the range is a success and then they swoop in, but for my range they’re paying for all the R and D and everything.’
Seeing Tessa’s and Joy’s blank faces, she added: ‘Research and development? Most start-up ranges don’t even get past that stage, so it’s a really really big deal.’
‘That’s fantastic,’ said Rachel, ‘are they going to go global with it right from the launch?’
‘It’s going to be exclusive to Barneys for the first six months,’ said Natasha, ‘because they want to position it firmly as a fashion forward high-end range, but then they’re confident it will go straight into all the major upscale US department store chains and flight side, which is just amazing and they’re planning the European launch one year on. I’d always planned to launch independently and do a slow grow, but to go right in with their economies of scale and that many doors is just amazing … Then they mentioned stand-alones, so they’re thinking in Mac terms right from the outset, it really is mega.’
‘What do you mean by “doors” and “flight side”?’ asked Tessa.
Natasha looked nonplussed for a moment, as if she couldn’t understand how anyone would ask such a question.
‘Doors means how many shops will stock the range,’ answered Rachel, ‘and flight side is another term for duty free isn’t it, Tash?’
A particularly irritating bit of American retail jargon.
‘Oh yes,’ Natasha replied. ‘Sorry about all the industry terms, but I’ve been thinking like this for months now, while we’ve been negotiating the deal, so it’s all normal for me.’
‘And presumably “stand-alones” are your own boutiques?’ added Rachel. ‘And “Mac”, as in Mac the make-up brand?’
Natasha nodded enthusiastically and carried on, expanding on how she was going to make the range unique at ‘point of sale’ and ‘tour the product’, with ‘customer face to face’ and ‘media local’.
Rachel groaned inwardly. Why not ‘local media’? She’d like to see Natasha take on Simon in a marketing geek-speak clash of the titans.
To Joy’s great relief – she hated talking about money more than almost anything – Natasha hadn’t mentioned any specific figures, but it was clearly going to be a very lucrative deal. What a clever girl her youngest daughter was. Not that Joy understood half of what she was saying about it all, and at that moment she was more occupied with studying Rachel’s reaction to the news.
A dark look had crossed Rachel’s face when Natasha had first told them about it. Very fleeting, but clear to Joy who usually read her daughters’ expressions like they were Reuters screens. It wasn’t jealousy, that wasn’t Rachel’s style – or of the other two for that matter. Joy took comfort that she had raised her girls to be genuinely happy for other people’s good fortune. Like her, they understood it wasn’t a finite commodity.
But there was something about Natasha’s wonderful news that had made Rachel, just for a moment, very uncomfortable in her skin. Joy immediately felt concerned for her, wondering what it could be.
Tessa’s reaction was less complicated; her face broke into a beaming smile of happiness and pride in her baby sister, before quickly settling back into the distracted air that was her current permanent state. It was like a second shadow that followed her around. What could that be?
Rachel was on her feet now, hugging Natasha.
‘Wow, Tashie,’ she was saying, ‘this is all so amazing. I’m so proud of you. Can we get free samples?’
Natasha laughed. ‘You lot can have the full range – but only if you promise to show it to all your friends. I’ve still got to decide whether to give the UK launch exclusively to Liberty or Selfridges, what do you all think?’
Tessa looked like a frightened rabbit. She hated this-or-that, black-or-white questions, they sent her brain into overload.
‘Selfridges,’ said Rachel, without missing a beat. ‘Bigger foot fall, more glamorous beauty hall … and now I’m going to get us some proper drinks to celebrate this amazing news. Lucky I brought something special down with me. Must have had a premonition, eh, Mum?’
Rachel managed to keep her composure as she left the library and then practically ran to the kitchen and out through the door at the back of it, to where there was a big pantry with a second fridge in it.
She closed the larder door and leaned against it, trying to slow her breathing, feeling the same sense of panic that had overtaken her when she’d done the debt spreadsheet the week before.
Most of the time she managed to keep her financial anxiety under control, propping up the matchstick tower her life had turned into, moving bits of borrowed money from place to place, and assuring her various debtors that she would have an extra solid sum of money coming in sometime in the next three months.
Surely Simon would pay her the bonus by then? She felt fear nearly overwhelm her for a moment at the thought of what could happen if it took longer than that, but forced herself to shut the thought out.
Meanwhile, her really lovely 1960s Danish light fitting was finishing its eBay auction that Sunday night and bidding was already up to nearly £300 and likely to go higher, which would leave her a reasonable sum. She’d also put the Lanvin handbag on Vestiare and that should bring in a bit. Enough to pay for petrol, her commute to work and feed the girls for a couple of weeks at least.
For the first time ever, she realised she was genuinely glad they were with their dad that weekend, so she could save some money on groceries and they wouldn’t be constantly pestering her for 99p iPad apps. Michael could buy them a few for once, the tightwad. And although she’d had to pay the train fare down to Tessa’s, she’d save on power, water and food, staying there for a couple of days.
It was a lucky chance she’d had the bottle of champagne at home, left over from her birthday. She’d brought it down so she didn’t have to shell out for a get-well present for Joy. Grabbing the bottle from the fridge, she picked a jar of olives and a bag of Kettle Chips off a shelf and headed back into the kitchen to put flutes on a tray and the snacks into bowls.
Then, finding a lipstick in her pocket, she slicked on a fresh coat, looking at herself in the mirror on the kitchen wall. After another deep breath, she set her shoulders and pasted on her happy face, before picking up the tray and heading back to the others.
The champagne turned the gathering into an instant party, greatly enhanced by the arrival home for the weekend of Finn and Archie, along with Hector. Joy saw how Tessa’s face lit up when she saw them.
Maybe that was the cause of her distractedness, she thought. Tessa must miss the happy family chaos horribly now the older two were boarding at school four nights a week, especially as she’d lost the two of them at once. And it must be hard for Hector, too, suddenly being the only one at home during the week, after growing up always having two big brothers to knock about with.
No wonder the poppet spent so much time in there with her. In the few days she’d been there Hector had taken to doing his homework lying on the rug, next to the bed. He was lonely, poor lamb. Tom was away so much and Tessa might have been there in body, but her spirit seemed to be somewhere else entirely.
With Rachel directing proceedings, the drinks turned into dinner, the boys carrying a table over to the bed, so they could sit and eat there together with Joy. It was all very jolly, with the sense of occasion going up another notch when Tom arrived back from wherever he’d been – Tessa couldn’t keep track – just as they were about to start eating.
‘I can see you’ve been having a good time without me,’ he said, picking up the champagne bottle and squinting down the neck. ‘You’ve worked that one over good and proper … you’ll have to come and stay more often, Joy, but please don’t feel you have to break something nasty first.’
‘I know that, Tom,’ said Joy, ‘you’ve always made me feel completely welcome here, but the champagne was to celebrate Natasha’s marvellous news – tell him, somebo
dy.’
‘Auntie Tash is a total legend,’ said Finn, ‘she’s going to have her own way-cool big-time make-up range on sale in actual shops. I’ll have a black eyeliner please, Auntie, and I’ll be able to use my family discount as a total chick magnet.’
‘Gosh, that’s amazing, Natasha,’ said Tom. ‘Good for you. How exciting.’
Joy wondered if she was the only one who detected a slight note of irritation in his voice.
‘Well, I better raid my secret stash of champers then,’ continued Tom, ‘because I’ve got something to celebrate too … we’ve just inked the deal to do a first series of Tim Chiminey in the US. No pilot, they say they don’t need to, because the UK show is already rating really well there, so we’re going straight to a ten-show series.’
He looked round at them all, grinning expectantly, but was met with a rather stunned silence. It was Archie who broke it.
‘That’s really cool, Dad,’ he said, ‘can I come with you? I can be the key grip, or the best boy.’
Laughter dispelled the tension and the others recovered themselves enough to offer Tom their congratulations, doing their best to sound genuinely pleased for him, while he tried not to let his hurt at their initial lukewarm response show. He was bewildered by it.
How come they were all so puffed up and excited about Natasha’s deal, but so flat about his amazing news? Didn’t they know how unusual it was for a show to go straight to network in the US? Barney said it was almost unheard of …
Another awkward silence had fallen, before Tessa finally spoke.
‘What does “inked” mean?’ she asked.
Tessa and Tom were walking round the salvage yard together in the long summer light after dinner, something that had once been a daily ritual for them. It was a beautiful evening, the night before midsummer, and Tessa was very grateful for every moment that passed without Tom mentioning the TV show.
‘That’s a really nice bathroom suite,’ he said, going over to have a closer look at a 1930s wash basin, loo and bath set in a glorious shade of sugar pink.
Secret Keeping for Beginners Page 19