“Actually, that would probably suit her. Dominic was too good for her anyway. It was always a bad match. Surprised quite a few people when they got married, or so my mother says. Before my time, obviously.”
“I’m not sure I’ve met him,” Cheyenne added.
“You must. He’s divine.”
“Divine men always come in handy,” Olivia said with a tinkling laugh. “But it will be interesting to see who swoops in and snags him.”
“Dominic’s really not one to be led around.”
“All men should be led around,” Cheyenne said and the girls laughed.
Chapter 4
Opening the cardboard box, Cheryl Waters grabbed the small boxes of dyes and stacked them on the shelves, the printed names on the end, all facing the right way. It was amazing how much dye they went through in the salon each week. Very few of the clients even knew what their natural hair colour was, or so they said—especially when the reality was an unflattering version of grey-speckled.
Samantha, one of the hairdressers, came up and grabbed a couple. “What have you got planned for your day off?”
“I was probably going to take the boys down to the beach.”
“Aah, they would love that. They’re so adorable, your boys,” Samantha said and walked back to her client after taking a mixing bowl.
Cheryl sighed. Yes, they were the most adorable two kids in the world. The only thing good that had come out of her marriage. She lived for those boys. They had settled into their school nicely. It cost her an absolute fortune to pay the fees, but she did manage—just. Everything she’d had, she’d put into this salon and it was starting to build up a strong client base.
Expensive cars were parked outside, their owners having their hair blows, or their highlights done. Dean, the new recruit, had even started doing makeup for events and the word was spreading as he was quite gifted.
“Alright?” Dean asked as Cheryl walked past.
She smiled and considered the cut he was doing. Cheryl checked the length. “Very good, Dean.”
Dean was still so very green, but ambitious. Without a doubt, he would have his own salon one day, but he was just learning the trade. Running a salon was more than cutting hair. There was the whole business side that needed management. That was where salons failed. Well, that and customers not coming back. A loyal customer base was crucial.
Starting the salon had been nerve wracking. She’d bet everything on it and for a while, it had looked like the gamble wasn’t going to pay off. They’d had some meagre months, where Cheryl seriously had to consider going back to Brighton. It would have been devastating, particularly as that was where her arsehole of a husband was, having managed to strongarm her last salon off her. He’d thrown her under the bus and had sold it to pay gambling debts. Not just that, but he’d gotten extremely angry when she’d taken exception to it. Ricky had always had a temper.
So, to cut a long story short: men were out. Cheryl had no use for them in her life. They used and abused—not even giving a damn about having food on their own children’s table. Things had gotten so bad at one point, she’d had to beg her mother to buy her groceries, and a disability pension didn’t stretch far enough to support one person, let alone four.
Whatever money she’d salvaged from her marriage had gone into this salon and it now seemed to be doing okay. She still worried, though—day and night.
As she moved behind the desk, Natalie picked up the ringing phone and pulled up the bookings software on the computer. Cheryl went through the mail that had just been delivered and scanned through the correspondence. Invoices and more invoices. “I have to go pick up the boys,” she said when Natalie had hung up. “Zoa can’t work today.”
“We’ll be fine here,” Natalie said. “We’ve got another four appointments this afternoon and everything should go smoothly.”
“Call me if anything comes up. I’m not far away.”
“We’ll be fine,” Natalie repeated. “Seriously, there’s nothing we can’t handle. Except maybe a blocked toilet.”
“Don’t tempt fate,” Cheryl chided and grabbed her keys.
A convertible Mini had been the one luxury Cheryl had insisted on. It wasn’t nearly new, but it was a convertible and she drove down the street with the wind tugging her hair. She kept her hair light chestnut with ash highlights at the moment. Hair had been the one thing she’d always excelled at and she prided herself on keeping hers in the best shape she could.
Pulling over down the road from the school, she got out and closed the door. There really was no point locking a convertible. In her heels, she stepped down the uneven sidewalk. As glamourous as Marbella was, some of the municipal practices, such as street maintenance away from the very centre, were still quite poor.
The school was in better shape. A new building with large shades over the playground. Her little scoundrels came running, their backpacks jumping around. “Hello, my babies,” she said and hugged them. Tim was six and Dylan was eight. “How was your day?”
“Where’s Zoa?”
“She had to go somewhere, so I’m picking you up today.”
“Can we go for ice-cream?” Dylan asked. “Please?”
“You know you’re not supposed to have ice-cream every day.”
“Yeah, but it’s not every day you pick us up, is it?”
Cheryl couldn’t really fault his logic. He was good at that, arguing his side. It was a battle sometimes, getting him to do things he didn’t want to.
“If you have ice-cream today, you can’t have one tomorrow when we go to the beach.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” they both said excitedly.
“And you’re really going to want one tomorrow.”
“No, now.”
They boys were still of an age where the urge for instant gratification was hard to overcome. Well, there was perhaps only one way to learn. “Fine, but you’ll regret it tomorrow.”
“No, we won’t.”
Oh yes, they would. And she would have to stand her ground tomorrow and let them live with the decision they had made.
Rising up, Cheryl walked towards the school gate where other mothers waited, dressed in designer clothes. Many of them got dressed for the purpose of picking up their children. There was a bit of an arms race at the school gate—who looked best? Many of these women didn’t work and being seen as leisurely and fashionable picking up their kids counted for something here. A sport Cheryl derided, maybe because she worked and couldn’t plan her outfit for the three o’clock rush.
The kids strapped in the back, she drove away, down towards the shore where their favourite ice-cream parlour was. It served these expensive and organic ice-creams that were made on the property. The chocolate taste of real cocoa and the vanilla had seeds in it. They were costly, but ice-cream was worth doing right.
Grabbing her pot of sour cherry ice-cream, she followed the boys out to the shaded seating area.
Chapter 5
The Thames was grey and sullen. The members of the executive team were talking about Latin America and Dominic Dunbury had tuned out. There was no pressing concern in Latin America; they were just talking business as usual.
Maybe it was time to get out of London, he thought. Ever since his run-in with some detractors—politics more than anything—his regard had diminished. He rarely gave himself to anger in business, or anything else, but he was angry. Small-minded people with reach had flexed their muscles, trying to convince him he was with the losing faction. This was the kind of politics he didn’t give a fuck about. It meant nothing—but saying that, they had managed to make things difficult for him for a while.
“I’m moving our headquarters out of London,” he said to resounding silence around the boardroom.
“Well, the rents are high. It’s harder to keep labour costs down,” Maxwell said carefully. The others remained silent, no doubt trying to think through the implications. They weren’t the only corporation moving out of London, which was stifl
ing with high asset prices and congestion.
“In fact,” Dominic said, “I think I might move headquarters out of the UK.” The silence stretched and the shocked faces of his exec team stared back at him.
“Somewhere like the Cayman Island?”
The tax benefits would be attractive, but really, what tax did they pay when the specialist accountants were done?—the ones paid a fortune and achieved results.
Dominic looked out at the sluggish river, which looked as if the tide was just turning. His stint in prison had made him re-evaluate things—re-assess what was important. His marriage had failed, or rather, had been put out of its misery. His children were grown and he knew little about them. His son was a mess and his daughter was utterly directionless.
Now was not the time to move to the Cayman Island. “No, to Marbella.”
“Marbella is in Spain,” Maxwell said.
“Thank you, Max. I am fully aware.”
“It is not the most company-friendly environment. I am aware it is a place you prefer to reside, but it is an odd decision.”
“I am sure we can make it reasonable with the right tools.”
“We’re going to need a whole new operations department.” Maxwell was close to hyperventilating.
“It’s only headquarters, Max. It’s not the entire operation.”
“So operations stay here?”
“No, let’s move those, too. Norwich perhaps. Find some city with a friendly council. They should be falling over themselves to give us concessions. For all intents and purposes, why not put it up for tender?”
“Legally, I’m not sure you can tender company operations,” Arnie said.
“I was being abstract, Arnie.”
Lightness filled Dominic. This felt good. It felt like change and maybe that was needed. Headquarters were basically only the exec functions anyway. Two hundred staff at the most. They should be fluid by nature.
Yes, being in Spain would probably send some of his people around the bend with its difficult systems, but Spain was also trying hard to attract investment.
Dominic rose and walked out, leaving the exec team abuzz with discussion. Extracting the business out of London would be a huge undertaking, but it had been something that had been on the cards for a while. London was becoming untenable, the political climate was absurd, and they’d already had one successful shot at him. Time to go and to cut loose all the baggage of the past.
“Fennie, call the airfield and tell them I’m coming,” he said to his executive assistant. He wondered if Fennie would relocate. She might not. Her husband drove a cab and might not be ready to give that up. Then again, things were getting tough for them, too.
They would lose a lot of people, but then maybe a shakeup there would be good. Most of the company was young and ambitious, unwilling to forego the opportunities in London.
Dominic stepped down the ladder of his private jet’s fold-down door, greeted by warmth and sun. It felt good to be back. The car was waiting for him and he was driven straight out into the road.
A number of messages waited for him, but he chose not to address them. They could wait.
Setting up his headquarters in Marbella was a highly unusual step, but there was a bit of a message in it as well. No one was untouchable, including the colourless men who ran London. Obviously, one company moving out was a drop in the bucket, but it was the message that counted. This move would be reported in every business journal in the world. It would be talked about, while Dominic slipped out of his protractors’ grip.
Well, that was the fun part, now came the difficult part—actually doing it. The business district in Marbella was small and none of the buildings would appeal to him. It would be better to build his own. But being Spain, it could be tricky. Anywhere near the old town would be too troublesome to be worth it.
“Slow down,” Dominic told the driver as they drove down one of the main arterial routes. The street was wide with a landscaped dividers separating the northern and southern lanes. This area was relatively new. It wouldn’t be hard to get permission to build here, provided enough consideration was given in the right places. “Stop,” he ordered and got out once the car stopped moving.
The street was shaded with palms. This location would be close to his house, and accessible to the main motorway heading to the airport in Malaga. Actually, now that he saw it, he couldn’t think of a better location. He could see his building, the imposing structure contrasting with the mountains behind him. He could almost see the mountains reflected off the glass of the building. His excitement grew and he wanted to get started immediately.
Drawing out his phone, he dialled. “Arnie, I want you to have a look at a property for me.” He gave the address and looked around again. This felt right. “Acquire it.”
A small structure containing shops stood along the road, the back of it a sizeable vacant lot. The structure would have to go. It looked new, but in the scheme of his plans, it had to be removed. The row of shops contained some kind of manual labour recruitment, some unwelcoming-looking travel agent that actually looked abandoned, and a hair salon. They would all be discreetly bought off. Irrespective of how difficult the local government was, he couldn’t imagine them getting out of the way fast enough to bring a multinational’s headquarters into town. This might all be wrapped up by the end of the week.
Chapter 6
“Hello, Raúl,” Terese Wentford said as she walked out of the arrivals hall to be greeted by her parents’ driver, who smiled at her. Her chestnut brown hair in a ponytail bobbed with every step, her Vivienne Westwood shoes clicked on the tiles as she walked.
“Miss Terese,” Raúl said with a smile. “It has been a long time.”
“That is has,” she said as she seated herself in the back and he closed the door behind her. She draped her camel hair coat on the seat next to her and looked out the window as Raúl started taking a familiar route she hadn’t seen in a decade.
She sighed as she watched the landscape go by. She wasn’t ecstatic about being back. In fact, she’d avoided this place as much as possible. Being back gave her an uneasy feeling. This wasn’t her world anymore. She had forged a new one, a place of excitement, fashion, novelty and utter currency. Working as a brand consultant in Berlin, she saw everything that was cool and stylish.
What the people in Marbella didn’t understand was that luxury didn’t really equate to style. Here, the price tag determined something’s worth. That wasn’t the world she lived in. Style was something else entirely. It could be the hot, young designers right out of design school, selling their wares down in a market, reinterpreting fashion. Their design was cutting edge, not the tried and true design that Chanel, Prada or Burberry went for—design for an unconscious market with nothing but money. Eventually, these artists would be hired by the large houses and their vision toned down to acceptable limits.
Design, and not just clothes, was about a story and a more interesting story than ‘I’m rich’. That is the world she inhabited now, and she loved it. Fashionistas, performance artists, architects, industrial designers, even material scientists. This was her crowd now. A club truly based on merit, where you had to perform in order to be a member of the highest echelons.
She did perform. She was one of the best at what she did. Her clients weren’t necessarily the lofty heights of stylishness all the time, but she interpreted style for a broader audience.
After school, Terese had sought a place at the New York School of Media Design, putting this world behind her, but now she was back. Not that she wanted to be; her parents had finally made her feel guilty enough to get her to concede to a visit. Not to mention the fact that German employment law more or less required her to take some time off. A whole month, in fact. She sighed.
The car pulled into the community she had grown up in, less sparse with houses than the last time she’d been here. Countless new mansions now overlooked astounding views. In her quest to seek her place in the world, she�
�d dismissed the beauty of the Mediterranean coast, as it lay meandering in jewel-tone colours.
“Marbella has changed quite a bit since last you came,” Raul said. “It has grown in every direction. There are new people here now.”
“Good.” Marbella could use some diversity and it was slowly being pried out of the hands of those who used to see this as their playground. At one time, Marbella had been the ultimate exclusive place, sought by anyone who didn’t want to live in a shoebox in Monaco, or put up with the more restrictive and prescriptive culture of St Tropez. Marbella had land, which the other two didn’t, and that made for possibilities, and now those possibilities included people who weren’t of the type who originally came here.
Her mum was waiting outside, wearing white capri pants and a jungle-themed, kimono-type blouse. She looked lovely, even though her fashion hadn’t really evolved since the eighties. But Constance knew what suited her and that was better than being a slave to what ill-suited trends were infecting the coast.
Terese stepped out and rushed to embrace her mum.
“You’re finally here. I’m so glad you’ve finally come. I don’t understand why you’ve stayed away so long.”
“I’ve just been busy, Mum.”
“Jetting all over the world. I can’t keep track of you from one minute to the next. Japan, New York, even Mexico.”
“We have clients everywhere.”
“I worry about you. And you’re so thin. Have you eaten?”
“I ate on the plane.”
“What? A pea?”
“Mum,” Terese chided, but had to concede that perhaps she was a little on the thin side. Her break-up with Joaquim had been more stressful than she’d expected. It had been a while ago now, and it hadn’t exactly been serious. She took her career too seriously to be diverted by boyfriends, but it had still hurt, particularly as he’d left her for a receptionist. That had surprised her, because the girl didn’t seem his type at all—that was, nothing like Terese, at all.
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