A Pretty Beach Wish

by Polly Babbington

  Juliette stood waiting for the queue to move forward and gazed up at the menu. She kept flitting between all the delicious things written overhead and all the regular stuff, but in the end plumped for the same simple breakfast that most people seemed to have ordered. She got to the top of the queue and the man in the waistcoat just about cracked his face into a smile as she ordered and informed her it came with a cup of tea. The man, who was missing a front tooth, keyed her order into a tablet, and at the same time shouted at the waitress in Italian. He then handed Juliette a knife and fork wrapped in a large paper napkin and pointed to a tiny table for one right at the back squeezed in beside a huge mirror and a fridge.

  Juliette walked over to the table, squeezed the chair out from behind it, and sat down. As she waited for the breakfast to arrive, she took out her tablet and went through the presentation document. She’d kept it simple, to the point, and let her products, and the repeat worldwide customers she’d gathered, do the talking.

  She scrolled the accompanying pictures and now sitting in this cafe and away from the realities of A Christmas Sparkle she could see what everyone had been telling her all along. The pictures from the Orangery looked like they were from a high-end magazine, her Sparkle Up Your Christmas range, some of which had been photographed in front of the fire in Sallie’s cottage in Seapocket Lane, looked fabulous, and to top it all off, and to go with the list of her repeat customers, was the teepee shoot.

  Her breakfast arrived with the tea and she unwrapped her knife and fork and tucked in. She finished the breakfast and washed it down with the tea and nodded to herself. Yes, it was great, and yes, she was absolutely good enough to be in a room full of executives, whoever they were and wherever they came from.

  Chapter 38

  Juliette sat in the reception of the Lellery offices people watching. Luke had been correct. There were a lot of people buzzing around in black. Trendy media types with cropped trousers, brown brogues without socks, quiffs at the front of their hair, earpods in and coffees in their hands, buzzed through the reception on their way to their offices. Young women in heels, their phones up to their ears, and large designer handbags filed through the revolving door and headed toward the lifts. It was quite a long way from the casual atmosphere of Pretty Beach.

  Juliette watched as a woman dressed in black cigarette pants, a black camisole and a bright pink double-breasted blazer came strolling up to her and then broke into a smile, holding out her hand in greeting. ‘Juliette?’ The woman enquired.

  ‘Yes,’ Juliette said as she got up, held out her hand and smiled.

  ‘Hello, I’m Victoria. I thought it was you,’ Victoria said, clasping Juliette’s hand and shaking it firmly.

  ‘How was your journey?’ Victoria enquired.

  ‘A breeze. The fast train is brilliant. Expensive, but brilliant.’

  ‘I’ve heard that, actually. One of my colleagues is thinking of selling her flat here and moving to Pettacombe.’

  ‘Yes. It’s even quicker to get to Pettacombe from here - lovely place to live too.’

  Victoria held out her hand in front of her gesturing for Juliette to walk towards the lifts. ‘Right. I’ll take you upstairs, we’ll grab some tea, and then we’ll go up to the boardroom to set up for the presentation. You’re all ready for us?’

  Juliette nodded her head, trying to smile and look confident as she strode along purposefully next to Victoria as Victoria led Juliette over to the lifts. Juliette did not feel confident and her feelings in the cafe had dissipated as a woman with a laser-cut bob looked down her nose at her as Juliette squeezed herself into the lift.

  Breathe and calm. Breathe and calm. Huge opportunity.

  The lift whisked them up ten floors and they walked out into a wide corridor with timber panelling and huge vases of flower arrangements on tables along the walls. Plush carpet in the Lellery signature blue lined from wall to wall, and thick wallpaper embossed with the Lellery logo screamed out that everything was classy, old-fashioned, elegant. Juliette could feel tiny beads of sweat running down her back and her palms were clammy as the plush, expensive carpet compressed underfoot. Breathe and calm.

  Victoria pushed open a wide mahogany door to a large, long boardroom table. The vast panelled room looked out over London and Juliette calculated that there were many, many more chairs than she had anticipated.

  ‘Okay. The water is all here. I’ll get you a cup of tea to start with, shall I?’

  ‘Yes, please. I’d love one,’ Juliette replied. ‘I just need to pop to the ladies first too.’

  ‘Out the door, down the corridor until you get to the fork and they are straight in front of you,’ Victoria said smiling.

  Juliette followed Victoria’s instructions, pushed open the heavy door to the loos, walked into a cubicle, locked the door behind her, and let out a huge breath. She’d been kidding herself that she was fine and prepared, but when she’d seen the huge table and all the chairs she’d baulked. She wanted to run. Fast.

  Breathe and calm. Breathe and calm. Huge opportunity.

  Juliette washed her hands, curled her hair round to the front, dabbed on some perfume and tried to pull herself together. As she walked back towards the boardroom some of the trendy, all in black hipsters with brogues she’d seen earlier in reception were now filing in chatting away as they did so.

  Ten minutes later and Victoria had hooked Juliette’s tablet and presentation up to the screen, circa twenty of Lellery’s executives were sitting around the table all facing in Juliette’s direction, and Juliette began her presentation with the navy-blue blouse sticking to her now clammy sides.

  Juliette ran through everything nicely, and when she got to the first pictures of the Orangery there were a few oohs and ahhs and some whispers from the people sitting around the table. As she progressed through her presentation the nerves began to dissipate, and she relaxed her grip from the edge of the thick mahogany table.

  Fifteen minutes later, she’d finished the presentation, culminating it with the teepee shots and then a short video which she’d put together on her phone - just as Michael had told her about weeks before.

  Juliette smiled and sat down as Victoria began her own brief presentation with her projections on the brand and its position within Lellery. Victoria then invited Juliette to stand up for questions from the floor.

  Juliette got up and smiled. Inside, her heart was thumping like crazy, her hands were trembling, and she clasped onto the side of the table to steady herself. Ten minutes into the questions she relaxed; there had been a question about how she got the idea for Sparkle Up Your Christmas, a question about the reliability of suppliers for the classic range and a question about how often she updated the vintage assortment - nothing particularly taxing and nothing she couldn't answer.

  Just as Victoria was looking around to wrap things up, a tall, gangly, red-haired man in a green bow tie stood up. Juliette smiled down the table at him. He did not smile back.

  ‘Sorry, but can I get something straight?’ the man said with what appeared to be his whole face working together to look as contentious as he possibly could.

  ‘Of course, what would you like to know?’ Juliette smiled warmly.

  ‘You claim that you do all the styling and photos for content etcetera on your own, that’s right, isn’t it? Is that actually true?’ the red-haired man questioned not delivering the query with a smile.

  ‘That’s correct. I take most of them on my phone now as the camera is so good. But up until last year I had a good camera and a great lense... and I forced myself to read the manual to actually work out how to use it,’ Juliette joked and a few people smiled. The man’s face did not move. He just stared down the table at her aggressively.

  ‘Really? So, for example, the pictures in the conservatory with the huge Christmas tree - you did that all on your own?’

  ‘Not quite alone, no.’ Juliette’s mind was racing - she didn’t want to sound like some hokey-cokey, country bumpkin who worke
d on her own the whole time, but she wanted to be honest. How did she answer this?

  ‘Right, I thought as much. So, you weren’t quite honest earlier there then about that shoot, were you?’

  ‘For that one I had an assistant,’ Juliette knew that technically that wasn’t quite true. The assistant had been Sallie, who had, in actual fact, facilitated the whole thing with the use of the Orangery and the Christmas tree.

  ‘Hmm. So, you just had a place like that spectacular conservatory and the huge Christmas tree, what, at your disposal? All to yourself? You didn’t have stylists and a photographer? You're that good at taking photos, are you?’

  Juliette started to get annoyed by this pugnacious, gangly man whose big watery eyes were staring at her furiously as he barked out his questions over the green bowtie sitting at the base of his neck. Juliette leant forward onto the dining table and stared straight back at him.

  The man coughed a little bit, somewhat taken aback - he was clearly used, as a senior member of Lellery’s team, to speaking to people in this manner. In a split second, Juliette decided that she was having none of it. She didn’t need to be spoken to rudely nor to have the time of day for the belligerent manner of this man. If one of her children had addressed anyone in this manner they would have been pulled up and right away. She might want Lellery, but frankly, she didn’t actually need it, and her life was far too short for someone like this jumped-up executive to speak to her as if she was an idiot.

  ‘Sorry, what was your name? You didn’t introduce yourself.’

  The gangly, red-haired man coughed and replied, ‘The name is Adrian Liellcock.’

  Juliette couldn’t hold back a smirk at the name. ‘Okay, Mr Liellcock, as I said, let me put this to you straight. It might make it a tad clearer for you - I work mostly on A Christmas Sparkle alone. I have people to help for the busy periods and I have no reason to tell you otherwise.’

  Adrian Liellcock wasn’t quite ready yet to back down and continued, ‘It’s just quite unbelievable that you came up with this all on your own, and that you work on it alone - the branding, the social media. I mean the podcast alone. I know that the rate card to advertise on there is more than a full page in a broadsheet - that’s indeed if one can get on the show in the first place.’

  ‘Apologies Mr Liellcock,’ Juliette continued emphasising the ‘k’ at the end. ‘Are you intimating that I am not telling the truth in some way?’

  The whole room had gone silent, Victoria stood up and started to gather papers together, but Juliette continued, ‘Only if you are, I am not sure if Lellery is the sort of company A Christmas Sparkle might want to be associated with. And also, just so that you know for future reference, I do not like to be spoken to in that tone. Perhaps you get away with it with other suppliers, but you won’t get away with it with me. I am extremely choosy about who I work with, which is precisely why A Christmas Sparkle and all of the above that I’ve been talking about is doing so well. I treat people as I expect to be treated and believe it to be the core value of my brand.’

  And with that Juliette sat down. And so did Adrian Liellcock.

  Chapter 39

  Victoria ushered Juliette out of the boardroom. ‘Let me just run back and get my handbag. Pop yourself there by the lift and I'll see you in a second.’

  Five minutes later, Juliette and Victoria walked out of the big revolving door of the Lellery offices and into the street packed with Londoners on their way out for lunch.

  ‘Goodness, Juliette. I am so very sorry for that display in there. I didn’t see that coming, otherwise I would have forewarned him. I can only apologise.’

  ‘It’s fine. Sorry, but I wasn't going to put up with that for a second longer.’

  ‘Totally fine by me,’ Victoria replied with a wink.

  ‘I thought you said that you were the head of department with all the buying decisions? Or did I ascertain that incorrectly?’ Juliette asked.

  ‘I am. Unfortunately, Adrian Liellcock is the grandson of one of the new partners at Lellery. Between you and I, he wouldn't get a job in the real world. He went to some stuffy private school, and his connections got him into university, but he wouldn't have a chance on the street. He’d been eaten alive in the dog-eat-dog of real retail. I’m not sure why I agreed to it, but I got to take him under my wing and unfortunately he’s still around.’

  ‘That makes sense then. I know we’ve only chatted on the phone and online a few times, but I thought it was all very strange that you worked with someone like him after what I’ve got to know of you,’ Juliette said as they strolled along.

  ‘He’s not behaved like that for ages, to be fair.’

  ‘He clearly didn’t like me, then.’

  ‘Clearly not. You must have pushed some imaginary buttons of his. Come to think of it, he doesn’t like to see anyone doing well,’ Victoria replied with a chuckle.

  ‘I wasn’t going to let him talk to me like that. I may have pushed his buttons, but he positively hit mine with a mallet.’

  ‘I was just about to step in when you asked him his name, and so I kept quiet and thought to myself this is going to be interesting. I nearly burst out laughing when you smirked on hearing the surname.’

  ‘I know. That was a golden moment. A moment to remember, in fact,’ Juliette said as they stepped off the pavement and walked across the road.

  ‘He made one of my assistants cry when he first came into the department a few years ago. I was onto him like a shot. His eyes nearly fell out of his head when I said I would take it further. I pretty much wiped the floor with him. He’s been quite well behaved since. Until that little outburst.’

  ‘Hopefully then it will be another five years until the next one.’

  ‘He won’t be getting the chance to do that again. Trust me, this is being documented. I’d like to ram that blooming green bowtie down his throat sometimes.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page, then,’ Juliette said laughing.

  ‘Okay, just down here to the end. The museum is over the road with the best paninis in the area.’

  ‘Great. I need something to eat after that!’

  ‘Follow me.’

  ***

  Juliette walked into the museum with Victoria, they got into the lift and made their way to the cafe. They queued up at the counter and ordered paninis and elderflower cordial, and as Victoria had said the paninis were delicious. They sat there in the museum cafe and chatted about Pretty Beach and then started to talk further about A Christmas Sparkle.

  ‘So, if you’re agreeable to everything, all we’ll need to do is make it official and legal, and then we’ll get the wheels in motion.’

  ‘Yep. All good. I can’t wait.’

  ‘The styling too? Have you thought further about that?’ Victoria asked.

  ‘I have. However, I wanted to note that I don’t have the slightest bit of experience in retail styling or window displays. As Adrian pointed out, I work on my own most of the time. And I haven't done anything on that sort of scale before.’

  ‘I’ve worked with all sorts of window dressers and stylists before, Juliette. You’ll be absolutely fine. I can’t wait to see what you’ll bring to the table. It’s one of the reasons Lellery’s window displays are always the best. Firstly, we always bring in people from different areas with different skills, and secondly, we always think out of the box. Always.’

  Juliette smiled to herself. What a turn up for the books. Working with Lellery for Christmas. Even if she did have to be offended by a gangly, rude specimen going by the name of Liellcock.

  Chapter 40

  Juliette looked up at the heavily embellished columns and the massive arched stained-glass windows. No wonder Victoria popped to the museum for lunch, it was breathtaking. A beautiful, monumental example of Victorian excess. Everywhere she turned, painted ceilings, gilded domes, intricate carvings and ornate tiles stared back at her. It was vast and intense and Pretty Beach couldn’t match anything like it an
d things like this were one of the reasons she loved coming up to London.

  Juliette checked her phone was in her bag, took her blazer from the back of her chair, left the cafe, and started to drift around the museum. Wandering through room after room of gorgeous exhibits she completely lost track of time. As she pottered around peering at things here and there, she realized how nice it was to get away.

  Even though she’d had a full-on morning and then lunch, as she sauntered around it actually felt quite nice to be away from home. Nice to be away from what had been going on for the last few months. It was pleasant to just be a woman sauntering around a museum with no one needing her for anything, no one asking her any questions and no one wanting her to do anything for them.

  She checked the time on her phone, opened her travel app, and started to key in the destination as Pretty Beach. A message pinged from Luke.

  How did you get on with the presentation?

  Great, but eventful.

  Oh? Not sure I like the sound of that. Eventful???

  It was fine. There was just a bit of an idiot when it came to the questions at the end.

  There’s always one.

  Ha! Yes. Exactly.

  What happened then?

  Long story, I’ll fill you in when I get home. I’ll tell you what though it involved a tall, red-haired man named Adrian Liellcock.

  Luke sent three wide-eye emoticons back.

  I know, right! A pertinent name indeed.

  What about the outfit? Did it work?

  It was spot on. You were right!

  I don't know why you are surprised, Juliette. I have my finger on the pulse of London fashion most of the time.

  Funny. I’m just finishing up here at the museum and then I’m heading to the station. I'll let you know what train I'm on.

  Fancy going out for dinner? I thought maybe a curry tonight or tomorrow?

  Juliette contemplated it. Since the accident, she’d been to the market and now she’d been up to London, but unless she forced herself to, she really didn’t want to go out still. She’d said no to Luke’s suggestions so many times and they hadn’t been out for ages. She was surprised he hadn’t given up asking.