Secret Keeping for Beginners

by Maggie Alderson

  She nodded. ‘I’m feeling better than I have for a while.’

  They stood up and Rachel reluctantly unshrugged his jacket from her shoulders, breathing in one last lungful of its comforting smell, before handing it to him.

  ‘You better have this back,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t do much for your image walking around the office in shirt sleeves.’

  And it would look very odd to your colleagues for you to be wearing my jacket, thought Simon, slipping it back on. It was still warm from her skin, he could feel it even through his shirt. He felt that flutter in his heart again.

  Glancing out of the café window, he saw the sky had turned a darker grey and the wind had got up. A bit of newspaper was being gusted along the street.

  ‘Looks like it might rain,’ he said, ‘I’m going to put you in a taxi, or you’ll get hypothermia.’

  As they walked out of the café, he pulled a £20 note out of his wallet and handed it to her, raising his hand to hail an approaching cab.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Rachel, opening the taxi door, as Simon told the driver the address through the front window, ‘but aren’t you going to come with me?’

  ‘I’ll walk back,’ he said. ‘I want to look at something I saw in a shop window on our way past.’

  And I can’t arrive back at the office with you, because I know the collective female mind in there will immediately pick up the new closeness between us.

  Rachel paused with one foot in the taxi. Then she stepped out again, went over to Simon and gave him a quick hug.

  ‘Thank you, Simon,’ she said, pulling away, but leaving one hand on his shoulder for a moment. ‘You’ve been so kind. I’ll see you back at the ranch, and I’ll get a receipt for the taxi.’

  Simon smiled and said nothing, stepping back onto the kerb and watching as the cab pulled off. He could still smell the scent of her hair.

  Riding home on the Tube that night, Rachel still felt buoyed up by her lunch and coffee with Simon. His calm, quiet advice had really helped her to put it all into perspective and she was going to ring her mum as soon as she had a free moment after dinner.

  With everything else going on in her life, she couldn’t afford to be at war with her family as well. She needed their support. She might take a little longer to make it up with Natasha, but she wanted to smooth things over with Joy and Tessa as soon as possible. She felt really bad about ignoring all her mother’s phone messages asking her to call.

  She could see now she’d been unreasonable about the Hunter Gatherer thing, impulsively suggesting it, then backing off and then expecting to take it over again, when that suited her better. Tessa hadn’t really done anything wrong. Rachel had just been ready to be hurt again, which was a bad frame of mind to be in.

  She was putting the girls’ dinner on the table and thinking to make the call to her mum the moment they’d finished, when the phone rang.

  For a happy moment, she thought it might be her mum ringing her again, but when she pressed the button to answer the call, it was an unknown man’s voice.

  ‘Is this Rachel Lambton?’ he asked.

  Rachel was going to hang up straight away, thinking it was one of those call centres trying to get her to buy double glazing, or make an insurance claim for bogus whiplash. But something made her hesitate. There hadn’t been that tell-tale pause before the person started speaking and his voice was quite harsh, not the overly familiar tone of the cold caller.

  But he didn’t sound like one of the people who rang her from the credit card companies or her mortgage lender, either. They always started out sounding very civil and she’d had to learn how to spot them, so she could put the phone down without admitting it was her they were speaking to.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ she asked cautiously, turning to the girls and miming a fork going up to the mouth, while she took the phone into the sitting room and closed the door.

  ‘I work for BND Financial Services,’ said the man, ‘and I’m calling about the outstanding debt on your Vartora credit card.’

  Rachel felt sick.

  ‘What about it?’ she asked, stupidly, playing for time.

  ‘Our clients have instructed us to request an immediate payment from you. You are six months in arrears with a balance of over £7000 and we need a £700 payment from you today, or we will take further action.’

  Seven hundred pounds? Where the hell was she supposed to get that from? She had put some of the stuff she was going to sell on various websites, but it would be a while before any of the money dribbled in.

  ‘So, can I have your debit card number?’ the man said.

  ‘I don’t have any money in my current account at the moment,’ said Rachel, ‘so that’s not going to be much help.’

  ‘How do you propose to make the payment then?’ the man persisted.

  Rachel didn’t see what she had to lose. Any dignity she might have had was already gone.

  ‘I’ve just put a lot of stuff on eBay and other sites,’ she said, ‘and I’ve got more ready to go. It should bring me in about that much, but not for a couple of weeks.’

  ‘That’s not acceptable,’ said the man. ‘We are under strict instructions from our clients to act now, because you haven’t responded to any of their phone calls or letters. What assets do you have with a value of £700?’

  Rachel’s first reaction was to ask him: Are you kidding me? But then she had to remind herself: who was she to get hoity toity? She was horribly in debt, with several credit cards maxed out, in arrears on her mortgage, and it would be months before she’d actually see any kind of bonus, even once she’d secured the business from any of the companies she was working on.

  She decided to try a different tactic.

  ‘What will happen if I can’t pay you immediately?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll come to your home and seize goods to the value of the debt owed to our client,’ he said.

  ‘The whole debt?’ asked Rachel, feeling a chill pass over her.

  ‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘it would usually be a car, or if that wasn’t of sufficient value, we’d take electrical goods, antiques, jewellery, subject to valuation.’

  ‘You’d just come and take them?’ Rachel asked, incredulous.

  ‘In July 2010, you signed a credit agreement with our client, agreeing to pay back what you borrow within the specified time frame. You haven’t maintained your payments, so it is their legal right to seek compensation.’

  ‘But what if I don’t let you in?’ she asked.

  ‘Then you would be served with a court summons. You’d be liable for costs, as well as what you owe – and you have no chance of winning, so it could easily lead to bankruptcy.’

  Rachel sat down heavily on the sofa. A £4000 sofa, she’d bought on that very credit card. It had seemed imperative at that moment, for her professional image and future prospects, that she had an elephant grey velvet sofa. But she’d be lucky to get £500 if she sold it now.

  ‘So what’s your plan? I need to know,’ said the man, in a distinctly firmer voice.

  Rachel felt tears prick her eyes.

  ‘I have a diamond ring,’ she said, a slight catch in her voice. Her engagement ring. Michael had suggested she should give it back to him when they got divorced, but she’d managed to hold on to it. She’d been planning to sell it to pay for the girls’ university tuition fees when the time came.

  ‘Have you had it valued recently?’ he asked.

  No, she hadn’t, because she’d let the contents insurance lapse, when she couldn’t pay the bill any more.

  ‘The last time was two years ago and then I was told it had a replacement value of £15,000,’ she said. ‘But I’d probably only get £5000 if I sold it.’

  ‘That will be acceptable as a first down payment,’ said the man.

  ‘But you said I only had to pay £700 now,’ said Rachel.

  ‘You owe our client £7000 and it’s our duty to collect as much of it as we can. The ring will be a start and then we wil
l pursue the other £2000. I’ll just check I have the correct email address and I’ll send you details of where to take the ring. But if you don’t take it in tomorrow, we will come and get it from your house. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rachel, very quietly. His tone was now openly threatening and she was afraid. What if he came round when the girls were there? It was too awful to contemplate.

  She confirmed that the email address he had for her was correct and he finally rang off. Rachel let the hand holding the phone fall down by her side and slumped back on the sofa, looking around her elegant charcoal drawing room, which had been featured on several prominent blogs.

  She had some serious decisions to make. But first she was going to speak to her mother.

  Tuesday, 8 July

  Manhattan

  As her cab pulled up outside the OM building on Fifth Avenue and the uniformed porter came over to open the door for her, Natasha felt excited to be going back into their offices again so soon. She was starting to feel part of the giant machine that was the global corporation.

  The designs for her products that Blythe had shown her the day before were even better than she’d dared to hope, sophisticated and elegant with an urban edge, absolutely spot on for how she envisioned her brand.

  To see the name ‘Younger by Natasha’ on the computer-generated images and mock-ups of shiny silver compacts, lipstick tubes and mascaras for the first time, had made her eyes well up with tears.

  Blythe had put an arm around her shoulder and given her a squeeze.

  ‘Starting to feel real, huh?’ she’d said. ‘It’s going to be huge.’

  So Natasha had been pleased when Blythe’s PA had called that morning asking if she could pop over again in the afternoon to discuss the ‘outline marketing strategy’. Last minute wasn’t OM’s usual style, but Natasha didn’t hesitate before saying yes.

  As it turned out it had meant leaving a job early, which was unheard of for her, but the meeting was with Blythe and her legendary boss, Ava Capel, so it was virtually a royal summons.

  It had been a major coup when ‘Miss Capel’, as everyone in the company called her, had contacted Natasha as soon as she’d heard about her plans for a range on the beauty-industry grapevine. They’d lunched at the Four Seasons, and Natasha had been almost too surprised to speak when Ava – as she’d immediately insisted Natasha call her – had said she wanted to offer her a deal, for OM to fund the range from development through to launch.

  Natasha had found all the contact she’d had with Ava since really inspiring. Her understanding of the international cosmetics market was so beyond that of anyone else she’d ever spoken to, it made Natasha feel as though she had been initiated into some kind of elite inner circle.

  The meeting that afternoon was being held in Ava’s office, a sanctum Natasha had only been privileged to visit once before. On the corner of the twenty-fourth floor, with picture windows looking right over Central Park, it was a pinnacle statement of New York success and despite all her years working with the most famous names in fashion and film – and holidaying and partying with them too – Natasha was impressed.

  ‘Here she is,’ said Ava, coming out from behind her desk to greet her. ‘The next shining star of the beauty counter. Great to see you, Natasha. Take a seat. Would you like some green tea?’

  Natasha said she would and Ava’s PA poured the pale liquid into a tiny porcelain cup, from an antique Japanese teapot, and then offered her a plate of gloriously coloured macarons. Natasha chose a deep pink one and the impeccably groomed young woman put it on a plate for her, using silver tongs.

  This ritual was repeated with Ava and Blythe, then they all ooh-ed and ah-ed and mmm-ed, taking tiny little bites from the macarons before putting them daintily back on their plates. Natasha knew none of the carbohydrate-laden treats would be touched again. It was all part of the dance.

  The PA left the room and after pressing a button which made the windows darken, Ava opened a PowerPoint presentation, projected on the wall opposite her desk, showing an outline of what she called ‘first ideas’ for the advertising and promotion strategy.

  The launch was still nine months away, but Natasha had already learned that OM left nothing to chance. Blythe had emailed her agent weeks before with the dates she would need to block out of Natasha’s schedule the following year for personal appearances and television shows.

  Her excitement growing, as she watched Ava’s presentation, Natasha asked questions and made suggestions, then it was her turn to get out her iPad and show them some mood boards she’d put together for the print advertising campaign. She was very glad she’d already started working on them, before they’d formally asked her to.

  ‘I love the feel of all that, Natasha,’ said Ava. ‘I think your ideas for print are fabulous, just as I would expect from you, and the next stage will be discussing them with our ad agency. I’ll set up that meeting for us.’

  She made a note on the pad on the desk in front of her and took a sip of her tea, before continuing.

  ‘And now we need to think about your personality strategy, which is what I really asked you in here to talk over today.’

  Steepling her fingers in front of her chest, she gazed off into the middle distance, clearly thinking it through as she spoke.

  ‘The product is going to be amazing, no question about that, so the issue here is, what is the most effective way for us to put over to your customers the story of Natasha Younger, the person?

  ‘Not just the famous make-up artist they’ve read so much about in print and online, who creates the amazing looks for fashion shows and magazine covers, we need them to feel they know the real woman behind the reputation and the fabulous products.’

  She paused to drink some more tea before continuing, still staring into space, somewhere above Natasha’s and Blythe’s heads.

  ‘We want them to understand just what it is about this make-up artist that makes all the supermodels love and trust her. The consumer needs to feel she knows you as they do, that you are her friend too, and that you’re looking out for her just the way you do for Kate, Gisele, Alessandra, Karlie, etc. …’

  Natasha took a sip from her tiny tea cup to cover her excitement. She knew she was privy to something special here. The beauty branding guru in full creative flow. Crikey. She glanced over at Blythe who smiled and gave her an encouraging thumbs-up at hip level.

  Ava turned her gaze to Natasha, looking at her very intently, as if she was trying to memorise her face. It was slightly unsettling.

  ‘Obviously,’ she continued, ‘the media team will be pitching for major profiles and lifestyle pieces and we’d love to hear your ideas for that. Blythe and I were just saying before you got here that we’d love to offer your beach house to Vogue as a ten-page package for an early summer issue next year, how do you feel about that?’

  ‘That would be great,’ said Natasha, ‘I just spent the long weekend out there and it was glorious. The garden is looking gorgeous and we could do some shots on the beach.’

  ‘That sounds perfect,’ said Ava. ‘I’ve seen some really cute pictures of it you’ve put on your Instagram feed – actually could you bundle all that up on a private Pinterest board for us, so we can use them to prepare the pitch for Vogue?’

  Natasha nodded.

  ‘And talking about Instagram,’ continued Ava, ‘we love what you do on there, so keep that going and all the other social media, which you’re also strong on. How many Twitter followers do you have now?’

  Natasha picked up her phone and checked.

  ‘138,789 right now,’ she said, ‘and I’ve got over 200,000 on Instagram.’

  Ava beamed. ‘That’s terrific. We’ll aim to double them both. Then there’s online … We thought we could do webchats with a video link, so you can answer questions, while showing techniques live on a model.’

  ‘That would be fantastic,’ said Natasha.

  ‘I’ll ask my team to put some ideas to
gether,’ said Blythe, making notes into her phone. ‘It would probably be best as a YouTube portal on the brand website.’

  It was Natasha’s turn to do a thumbs-up to her.

  ‘And then,’ Ava continued, ‘we have to get across the street-style pics. We have good relationships with several of the key players and we can create opportunities for them to “run into you” wearing a casual look you’ve “thrown together”.’

  She laughed and Natasha joined in, feeling quite naive that she hadn’t thought about how that all worked before, and making a mental note to go through her wardrobe forensically.

  ‘We’ll also need to work your major-league celebrity association angle,’ Ava was saying. ‘Your close working friendships with Gisele and other supers is a really strong story and it would be great to get some social pages shots of you with them and your designer friends. You’re close to Tom Ford, aren’t you?’

  Natasha nodded.

  ‘Great, we’d love pap shots of you with him, coming out of restaurants, that kind of thing. Who else would be good for that, do you think? Which actors are you closest to? We don’t want it to be all fashion.’

  Natasha hesitated. Her discretion with regard to her famous friends and associates was one of the bedrocks of her success, she wasn’t going to start cynically using those connections to promote her own business, without asking them first. That would short-circuit everything. She’d have to think who might be glad of some exposure.

  ‘I’ll make some calls,’ she said.

  ‘Get back to us on that,’ said Ava, ‘meanwhile we can get the paparazzi strategy framework ready. From a certain point nearer the launch – can you work out the timing, Blythe? – we’ll need access to your daily schedule, so we’ll know where you will be when and with whom, and we can manage that.’

  Natasha kept nodding and smiling, still excited, but starting to feel a little overwhelmed by the broad scope of their publicity plans. She’d expected press interviews, photo shoots, television, videos and in-store launches, but she hadn’t realised she was going to be vaulted into the level of daily intrusion that people like her friends and neighbours Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick lived with.