“Well if it is, it’s certainly taken hold pretty firmly.” Geoff passed a sheet of paper across the table from the pile in front of him. “These are the projected quarterly profits for the big cosmetics firms.”
In one column he had put figures for last year next to the names of the biggest players in the industry and, in the next, those for this year. Most, if not all, showed a slight but noticeable dip.
“What does this mean?” asked Izzie, confused.
“It could mean nothing—the economy isn’t brilliant and the FTSE is far from buoyant—but the message seems to be that women are turning away from conventional brands and looking instead for a more wholesome image. Similar earthy brands to yours are showing good sales, but mainstream makeup brands are struggling. Look at this.” Geoff handed over another sheet, showing sales figures for each product, again compared to last year.
“It can’t be anything to do with us, can it?” Maddy found it hard to believe that their measly little pots could have made such an impact in precipitating mascara and eyeshadow wars, and for a moment she had a vision of lip gloss wands and eyeliner pencils doing battle in the aisles at Boots.
“Well, I’ll be blowed.” Izzie was still staring at the figures. “I never imagined when I left university that my contribution to the world would be putting a dent in national hand-cream sales.”
“So, ladies, what do you think?” Geoff as ever was keen to get back to business the minute he thought they were getting glib. “If you are keen, I can put together a proposal for potential shareholders, and we could dip our toe in the waters, so to speak.” He was starting to pull out more papers, sorting them in an efficient sort of way that was beginning to get right up Maddy’s nose. “As a matter of fact I have started to jot down some ideas, not really worked up yet but just the bare bones of an idea. Take a look.”
Geoff’s bare bones looked pretty fleshed out to Maddy’s inexpert eye. He had done a fairly thorough job of forecasts, sector trends, company profile, all laid out in a neat little document with bold headings and footnotes.
Suddenly she felt pushed around. Who the hell had asked him to do this? Things were getting rapidly out of control. If they weren’t careful, Geoff would have them PLCed before you could say Dow Jones Index.
“Just a minute, Geoff.” She smiled as sweetly as she could at him. “This all sounds very interesting and has possibilities, but I think I speak for Izzie when I say we’d like to talk this through a bit more. You know, just see where we want to go from here.” A look of disappointment flitted across his face, and she saw for the first time a steely determination.
“Sure,” he said magnanimously. “I just wouldn’t advise you to take too long. There are lots of people out there who want to invest in an exciting new company with huge potential, and we need to strike while the iron’s hot. My research shows—”
He was stopped mid-flow by Maddy’s mobile phone ringing on her desk. Lillian picked it up, said, “Yes, certainly I understand, I’ll tell her it’s urgent,” and came over to where the four of them were sitting. “Sorry to interrupt, everyone.” Lillian leaned down to mutter in Maddy’s ear. “It’s school. Florence is in floods and inconsolable. They wondered if you would mind going over as soon as possible?”
Panicky, Maddy pushed back her chair. “Sorry, folks, I’m going to have to leave you,” and she grabbed her bag and her phone off her desk, bolted down the stairs, and out to the car.
About a mile down the road toward school, her mobile began to ring again in her bag. By the time she’d pulled it out, she had missed it, and there was a voice message. Keeping her foot down, she pressed the buttons to listen, then slowed right down, a smile spreading on her face.
“Well, the sly old bird,” said Izzie, stirring her coffee in Costa’s half an hour later. “How did she get hold of my mobile?”
“We must have left them on our desks and, when she heard the way the conversation was going, Lillian picked yours up and dialed my number, had a conversation with, well no one really, then came over to pretend the school had phoned. I was halfway there when she sent me a rather frantic voice message—not sure mobiles are quite her thing—saying sorry, but she thought we might want rescuing. She was terribly apologetic, but God bless her. I thought we’d never shut Geoff up.”
Izzie scooped the foam from the top of her mug with her spoon and put it in her mouth. With her unruly hair, pink T-shirt, and army green combats, she looked about twelve. “What do you think about this flotation business? I mean”—she scooped up some more—“I can see his point, I suppose. It would give us some cash to spend, and the figures do look good. And there are lots more recipes still we could do, and Elements are gagging for more stuff, but”—she paused and looked right at Maddy—“it all sounds a bit scary, don’t you think?”
“Bloody terrifying, and what’s more I’m not even sure I want to go there, do you?”
Izzie leaned back in her seat and put down her spoon. “God, I’m so glad you said that. I thought you might be all for it.”
Maddy laughed. “Calm down! I’m not with Geoff on this. Actually, Lillian’s choice of excuse was shrewder than she thought. My first reaction when she said about Florence crying was, ‘I want to get to my daughter.’ Will has said a couple of things over the last few days about me not being at home and Pasco even called Colette Mama. God, that hurt. I don’t want to be some high-flying company director who has to shoot off to meetings and kowtow to shareholders.” She thought what Simon would think and laughed drily. “It’s a joke really, me in that world. I think my sanity depends on being normal and at home.”
“I think my marriage depends on it,” Izzie muttered quietly, looking into her coffee.
“It’s still bad, isn’t it?”
Izzie sighed despondently and scanned vaguely around the room. “Well, oddly enough, he’s been brilliant—ever since the party—but something isn’t right. It seems forced, as if he’s under some tremendous strain. And I’m missing out on family life. He’s having all the fun with the kids—they did Warwick Castle on Saturday and ever since have had lots of in-jokes about what a good time they’d had.” The tears welled up in her eyes. “It’s rubbing salt in the wound of my guilt. As if I didn’t feel bad enough about all this already.”
Maddy felt uneasy. “Have you had a chance to talk to him properly?”
“Not really. He keeps it all very shallow. And when the hell have I got time to talk anyway?”
Maddy picked up her bag. “If this company gets much bigger, we can wave good-bye to parenting altogether. Come on, let’s stall. I’ll ring Peter and get him to tell Geoff to back off a bit.”
As it turned out, Florence hadn’t had a good day at all, and a very miserable little girl greeted Maddy at half past three. “She’s just taking a little longer to settle in,” said Mrs. Rose, her teacher, over Florence’s head. “But it happens sometimes. She’ll be fine,” and she ruffled her hair. “See you tomorrow, dear.”
“I’m not going back,” whinged Florence in the car, and sobbed all the way home.
The following morning Maddy woke to heavy rain lashing against the windows, urged on by a strong autumnal wind. Feeling as lousy as the weather, she used every vestige of her persuasive powers to chivvy Florence along through breakfast and into her uniform, and eventually compromised on a Barbie hair band and pink socks.
“Her teacher wasn’t too chuffed. Silly bag,” she said to Izzie when she got to the barns and shook the rain off her coat. “She looked really disapproving—oh, what the hell, I’m obviously a crap mother anyway.”
“Take a look at this.” Izzie slid the business section of the paper across the table toward her. “Looks like Geoff was right.”
Maddy scanned the story, as she hung her coat over the chair.
Cosmetics giant Falcini Corp. announced today that chairman George Sayer, 52, would be stepping down. Sayer’s resignation comes just as the company announced serious losses for the second quarter in
succession. Commentators say the company’s faltering performance comes as a result of being too slow to pick up on the end of the nation’s love affair with mainstream cosmetics and the soaring growth in natural brands. Companies like Elements and the American empire Back to Basics have shown healthy quarterly figures in comparison. “Sayer has been pivotal to Falcini’s success over the last ten years,” said a company spokesperson, “but it is time to move on and grasp the challenges of the new mood on the high street.”
Izzie came and leaned against the desk, her coffee cradled in her hands. “Gripping stuff, hey?”
“Well,” said Maddy, “if the mood really is a swing back to some collagen-free existence somewhere between Queen Victoria and Fanny Craddock, then that can only be good news for us, can’t it?”
Crouching down and lowering her voice, even though the radio was blaring downstairs and Lillian had yet to arrive, Izzie had a serious look on her face. “But don’t you think this means that what Geoff said yesterday makes more sense? I mean, if companies like Falcini are struggling because of some pendulum swing away from liposomes and provitamin B5, then isn’t he right that we should be jumping on the bandwagon?”
Maddy looked at the article again. “From a business point of view he is probably right—he does seem to know what he’s talking about and frankly I trust Peter’s guidance implicitly—but does that make it right for us?”
Izzie fiddled absentmindedly with the pens on the desk. “If we could raise the capital through floating—or whatever Geoff suggests—then maybe we would have enough money to get someone else to do the day-to-day stuff, and we could be more sort of development . . . you know, look at new lines and expand some of Luce’s other recipes. Who knows, it could be diaries and tissue box covers next, in our very own design of tasteful sprigged floral print!”
“Have you talked to Jean Luc about all this yet?”
Izzie looked momentarily startled. “Why would I talk to him about it? I don’t speak to him.”
“Yeah yeah!” Maddy laughed, and before Izzie could reply, Lillian staggered up the stairs, wielding her brolly.
Much of the week was spent on the phone to Elements who, buoyed up by their cracking sales figures, were keen to secure promises out of Paysage Enchanté that new ideas were surging down the pipeline, and dealing with an ongoing tiff between Angie and Karen over pallet loading. Crispin flitted in from time to time, which kept them all cheerful, but didn’t seem to stop Angie discussing in minute detail the problems she was having with her coil and the riveting subject of her seriously heavy periods. Izzie sighed loudly at one point and muttered to Maddy under her breath, “That idea about handing over the day-to-day stuff is getting more attractive by the minute.”
Maddy was the last to leave on Friday evening—Izzie and Marcus were going out to dinner with friends—and she was just about to turn out the lights when the phone rang.
“Hi, Maddy, glad I caught you,” Geoff purred smoothly down the phone. “Bit short notice I know, but I wondered if you would be able to have dinner with me tonight?”
For a moment she was flummoxed and she demurred, but it was what he said next that set the alarm bells ringing.
“I thought a nice bottle of wine, and we might have a chance to talk about the business away from the boardroom table.” So that’s your motive, you slimy worm, she thought.
“I’m sorry, Geoff. Nice thought, but I want to see my kids. And, Geoff, I never mix business with pleasure.”
“He what?” shrieked Izzie when she called her next morning. “What a cheek! And why didn’t he ask me? I could have done with being wined and dined!”
Maddy spent the rest of the weekend uncomfortable with the thought that Geoff Haynes was trying, however clumsily, to co-opt her. And his coolness when she turned him down was disconcerting. He was as quick to turn off the charm as to turn it on. She tried briefly to read a Sunday supplement analysis of the changing mood toward celebrity image, but chucking the magazine to one side, she turned, irritated, to the features section of the main paper, and began halfheartedly to read an article by Germaine Greer. The thrust of the piece was maternal role models, par for the course, but then Maddy began to read it more closely—the woman had clearly lost her mind. To Maddy’s mounting horror, she seemed to be expounding the virtues of the mother role and the very beauty of the maternal lap, from where we should be learning the values of life.
“Oh Christ, the world has finally gone mad,” she squealed, threw down the paper, and went to join the kids in front of a video.
All day Monday there wasn’t time to think, let alone talk. It was all hands on deck to get out a mass of orders, and even Lillian had to come down from her eyrie and the payroll to pot up. They didn’t finish until well after eight, the girls having knocked off at five and, stiff with pain from standing up so long, Maddy almost crawled home, with just enough time to kiss a sullen and taciturn Will, stroke Florence and Pasco’s sleeping heads, and crash out in front of the telly with a glass of wine and a plate of cheese biscuits.
She must have dozed off because she almost leaped out of her chair as the phone rang beside her.
It was Geoff. “Have I woken you, Maddy? I’m so sorry.”
“What time is it?” She felt disorientated, her mouth dry and her head aching. God, he wasn’t going to suggest dinner again, was he?
“About eleven thirty, but I thought you ought to know. I’ve had an approach from Tessutini in the States.”
“Tess who?”
“Tessutini, you know the parent company for Face Facts and Agnès Broussard Cosmetics.” Maddy still wasn’t sure who or what he meant, but she struggled to sit up, and the plate of crackers slid from her lap onto the floor.
“And?”
“They have made an offer to buy Paysage Enchanté.” He named a figure. Suddenly Maddy was wide awake.
Chapter 16
Izzie had spent the evening thinking. Seeing the figures, accounts, projections printed out so neatly, had finally brought home to her just how far they had come in under a year. And, boy, it had been a steep learning curve. But since July, thankfully, she felt she’d been on an up. And, incredibly, it was all thanks to Marcus.
Izzie marveled at the way he was taking problems in his stride now. Just a few months ago, any frustrations would have sent him into a tantrum, followed by a prolonged sulk. Now he merely gritted his teeth and put it behind him. It was what Izzie had been hoping for all along. Now she realized—she hadn’t really wanted Jean Luc, she wanted Marcus, only nicer, the way he had been in the early years of their marriage, the way he’d been before losing his job. And now she’d got him back.
The kids were much happier with the new, improved Daddy too. He was being the father to them she had always hoped and known he could be. But his transformation made her feel less needed and less wanted. What was wrong with her? Would she never be satisfied? If someone had asked her to write a wish list for the way she wanted Marcus to be, he would probably now score 80 percent.
Izzie had a few theories about what had brought about this change, but none of them entirely convinced her. Maybe it was the money. But this didn’t explain why it only dated from the party.
Another possibility was that his obvious jealousy of Jean Luc had brought him to his senses. He was being very attentive now, always asking what she and Maddy had discussed during the day, when he’d never shown any interest before. He’d look at her almost anxiously when she came in at night and wait up for her when she had to work late, instead of the “I’m pretending to be asleep so I don’t have to talk to you” approach he’d favored before if she was in any later than ten o’clock. Hmmm—perhaps that was it, but was it really a healthy way to go on?
The third possibility was that there had been some transformation in her. Izzie knew that she bottled up her feelings too much and had often not told Marcus how she felt about things, preferring to suffer in silence rather than have things out. But the whole Jean Luc experience had made
her think differently. So she’d taken to being a bit more assertive in her requests instead of starting off in apologetic mode, and had started telling him how she felt about things. He’d responded well and there had been a couple of quite romantic occasions when he’d told her how much she meant to him, that he’d always wanted to look after her and protect her, and he’d always wanted her to think well of him. It was rather touching just how insecure he was—he’d never said things like that before.
Two things, though, were still bothering her. They hadn’t managed to make love since well before the party, and Marcus had starting drinking more heavily. Could the two in some way be related? The sex thing was not for want of trying on her part. After the horrible row they’d had about her going to France, she hadn’t wanted to go anywhere near him. But his consideration during the kids’ summer holidays had made her feel so affectionate toward him—she wanted to show him just how much. But his interest had been flagging, to say the least.
She buried the thought, made herself a cup of tea, and went to sort out the pile of clean laundry in the sitting room. Marcus was nursing a large Scotch and sitting down, head back against the softly upholstered back of the new sofa, his eyes half closed.
“So what do you think, darling? Should we float or should we go on as we are at the moment?” she asked him, as she unraveled Jess’s socks.
She suddenly realized she’d got her timing wrong. He raised his head and looked at her so bleakly, it shocked her. Then he shook his head helplessly. “I don’t know what to tell you. But I can’t go on like this much longer. It’s eating me up. I just don’t know how much longer I can keep it going.”
With a deep, pained sigh, he let his head crash back against the cushions and shut his eyes again. Shocked, Izzie left the room, trying to work out what he had meant. Feeling unsettled and confused, Izzie put the laundry in the airing cupboard, got ready for bed, and was asleep by the time Marcus joined her.
Goodbye, Jimmy Choo Page 29
