Wonder Women

by Fiore, Rosie

  Suddenly, she was living a very different life. Damon had plenty of money, and he was very generous. He refused her offer to pay rent, and he was happy to splash the cash whenever they went out. They ate in the best restaurants, entertained at his house all the time, partied in the trendiest nightspots and whenever Holly could take time off from the markets at the weekend, went off for luxury weekends in Cape Town or on exclusive game reserves. It was like living in a dream. But that wasn’t true, thought Holly. Because sometimes dreams went all weird, and you almost always woke up just as the good bit started. No, it was like living in a film. She was head-over-heels in love with him. He was handsome, attentive and clever, he adored her, he made every aspect of her life easier and happier and the sex was just fantastic.

  She wasn’t at all used to being a kept woman, and at first it made her uncomfortable, but he was always happy for her to treat him, even if her offerings were more modest than his. He also never discouraged her from working. On the contrary, he was always on at her to work cleverly and more efficiently. He suggested she narrow her range down to the ten most popular designs, and that she should work hard to develop the side of the business selling to stores and retail outlets. Through his connections, he set up a meeting with an exclusive department-store chain, and she got a small concession in their flagship Sandton shop.

  For their first-year anniversary, Damon took her to Venice for thirty-six straight hours and made love to her in a four-poster bed in a palazzo on the Grand Canal. Then they went to London, and he charmed her family and friends completely.

  ‘What a catch!’ giggled Miranda, then heavily pregnant with Martha. ‘I can’t believe how lucky you are!’

  Holly didn’t think she was lucky: she thought she’d been brave and bold. She’d gone to live on the other side of the world, started a business, and as a result had met this amazing man who lit up her life. Miranda’s most dangerous life choice to date was wearing ivory instead of white for her wedding. Nothing ventured … Holly thought to herself as she and Damon sank into their first-class seats for the flight back to Johannesburg.

  While their personal life was insanely happy, Holly was beginning to feel the strain from four years of sewing, earlymorning trips to the markets and working long hours to meet the orders from shops and the department store.

  ‘You need to grow,’ said Damon, one evening as they sat by the pool eating their dinner. ‘At the moment, your business is you. Your designs, most of the time it’s you on the stall at the market, you source the materials … you need to diversify, so your business is making you money even when you’re not actually doing the hard graft.’

  ‘I can’t grow,’ said Holly reasonably. ‘Even with the new work we have, Phumi and I can only sew as many clothes as we can sew in any given week, and I can’t afford to employ someone else or buy more machines.’

  ‘What if you could afford to?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, what if you let me buy shares in Doradolla?’

  ‘Shares? There are no shares,’ said Holly, confused.

  ‘Well, there could be if you decided to make them available,’ said Damon patiently. ‘We’ll do a valuation of the company, work out what it’s all worth, and you can decide how much of it you want to sell.’

  ‘Sell?’ Holly was suddenly unsure.

  ‘It’s just an investment,’ he said soothingly. ‘It’s still your baby, you’re still CEO and you get to make all the decisions, I’ll be totally non-executive.’

  ‘I don’t know …’ said Holly.

  ‘Let me get my guys to do the paperwork and see what you think. You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to. Now, that’s more than enough business talk,’ he said, pushing his plate away. ‘Come here and play with me.’

  They didn’t discuss it again for some time, but a month or so later, Holly had to pull an all-nighter to fulfil an order for ten bridesmaids’ dresses. In the morning, Damon came down to the workshop and found her asleep with her head in a pile of taffeta. When he woke her up, she started to cry because the dresses weren’t finished, and Phumi wasn’t due for another two hours. Holly started shakily pinning up a hem, but her fingers were cracked and bleeding, and she kept getting spots of blood on the pink fabric. Damon gently took the dress out of her hands and said, ‘Let me get you some help.’

  He got Holly, through the tears, to give him the name of a seamstress who had helped her in the past when the workload got heavy. He rang the woman and had a taxi sent to her house to collect her. He managed to persuade Holly into a shower and got her to eat some breakfast. The seamstress arrived about half an hour before Phumi and, under Holly’s guidance, they finished all the dresses with fifteen minutes to spare before the crowd of bridesmaids arrived for their fitting.

  The fitting went like a dream, and once the last bridesmaid had headed off down Northcliff Hill, her dress in one of the trademark shocking-pink Doradolla garment bags, Damon led Holly to the living room and sat her down.

  ‘I can’t sit down,’ she said in a wavering voice. ‘I have to tidy up. Joyce needs to be paid. And Phumi …’

  ‘I gave Joyce cash,’ he said, and named a figure that made Holly gasp.

  ‘I also gave Phumi a bonus,’ he said.

  ‘But … you’ve blown my whole budget for the job!’ Holly said, desperately. ‘The margins were small anyway. It was a favour for a friend of a friend.’

  ‘Okay, firstly, this one’s on me, so don’t worry about it. Secondly, if you’re a premium brand, you can’t be doing favours for friends of friends. Not even favours for friends. And lastly, work should not be doing this to you! Look at you! You’re on the verge of a breakdown, and for what? The few hundred rand you could have squeezed out of this job? Let me help you, Holls. Let me invest, so you can get the people you need, and let your business work for you, not the other way around.’

  Within a week, Damon had a couple of serious speccy blokes crawling all over Holly’s business. They scrutinised her accounts, counted stock, crunched numbers, asked questions, visited outlets, asked more questions, and finally sat Holly and Damon down to talk. She was flummoxed by the spreadsheets and rows of numbers, and the projections they made, based on various scenarios, and finally Damon held up a hand to stop them.

  ‘Basically, Holls, here’s my offer. I put this in your account.’ He wrote a figure with several zeros at the end of it on the notepad on the table between them. ‘And for that, I own twenty-five per cent of Doradolla. The contract we have drawn up shows that I will have no executive input in the running of the business, although I will have the right to examine the figures. That money means you can hire another four seamstresses, as well as someone to manage the money side of things, and the business can grow. What do you say?’

  It seemed an unbelievably generous offer, but Holly still felt uncomfortable taking his money, and losing a chunk of her little empire.

  ‘Let me think about it, okay?’ she said carefully. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

  ‘Of course,’ said Damon. ‘It’s a hard decision to make.’

  They didn’t talk about it for a couple of days, but that Friday evening, he said to her, ‘Who’s running the stalls this weekend?’

  ‘I’ve got students on for both Saturday and Sunday. I need to do some fabric buying, but I thought I’d have a slightly easier weekend.’

  ‘Maybe we should try somewhere new to buy fabric,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘Like where?’ Holly knew every fabric supplier within an hour’s drive of Johannesburg.

  ‘It’s a surprise. Will you trust me? Just go outside and get in the car.’

  ‘What, now? Nothing will be open!’

  ‘Holly …’

  ‘I’m going, I’m going!’

  They got into his Porsche, and he drove straight to the airport.

  ‘What are you doing, you loon?’ said Holly, turning to him, once she realised where they were. ‘We can’t fly anywhere. I haven�
�t got a bag! And what about getting the students off tomorrow morning? I have to pack stock!’

  ‘I’ve asked Phumi to come in and organise the students. And I packed you a bag, it’s in the boot. I also have your passport.’

  ‘My passport? But I have to be back by Monday!’

  ‘You will be,’ said Damon soothingly. ‘I also need to be back.’

  He got their bags from the boot of the car, and they went into the airport, where they were ushered straight to the front of the first-class queue in departures. Damon made Holly stand back a little when he checked them in so she wouldn’t see their destination, but she nagged so relentlessly that when they got to the first-class lounge, he handed her her boarding pass.

  ‘You’d find out in a minute anyway, when we go to board,’ he said.

  She looked at the card in her hand and gasped. ‘Mauritius?’

  ‘Only the best for you, my love.’

  They landed in the early hours of the morning, and there was a car waiting to whisk them to a exclusive hotel. They were both exhausted and fell into bed. When Holly woke up the next morning, however, Damon was not beside her. She stumbled sleepily out on to the balcony, and found him staring out over the snow-white beach and turquoise water. She slipped an arm around his waist, and they looked at the view without speaking.

  Eventually Holly said softly, ‘You’re a total crazy, you know. This must have cost you a fortune, but thank you. I’ve never been to such a beautiful place.’

  Damon didn’t say anything for a long while and then he said, ‘Holls, I brought you here with a plan. I wanted to do a whole elaborate thing tonight, with dinner on the beach, and you in a stunning dress. I’ve even got a string quartet booked and fireworks planned. We can still do all of that, but … well, now the time is nearly here, I’ve changed my mind. I want this to be a moment between the two of us. Just us, as we are.’

  He was wearing a pair of pyjama bottoms, and Holly was wrapped in one of the hotel’s white towelling bathrobes. She hadn’t brushed her hair, and she had mascara panda eyes. Despite the gorgeous location, she had never felt less glamorous. But as Damon slowly went down on one knee, she couldn’t have cared less. She realised that he’d been holding a ring box in his hand the whole time they had been out on the balcony, and he opened it now. The early-morning sun glinted off an enormous diamond.

  ‘Holly, will you be my wife?’

  She started to cry, happy, gulping sobs, and sank to the ground so she could put her arms around his neck. He gently disengaged them and said, ‘Hang on, you haven’t answered me!’

  ‘Yes! Yes, you big crazy man! Yes, of course!’

  He slipped the ring (perfectly sized, of course, she would have expected no less from him) on to her finger, and drew her to her feet. Then he gently pulled her back into the room and on to the big white bed.

  Later, when Holly told people Damon had taken her to Mauritius to propose to her, they’d all asked how she’d liked the island, and she’d had to admit that from Saturday morning till Sunday night when they flew out, she’d only seen the inside of their suite and briefly, the view from the balcony. He promised her that they would go back there on their honeymoon. ‘By then, of course, we’ll be sick of each other, and we can do all the sightseeing you like!’ he joked.

  They were in no hurry to set a date for the wedding. Damon was in the middle of setting up the biggest property deal of his career: a multi-multimillion-rand hotel and retail development. And Holly, now she was going to be married to Damon, felt that accepting his offer to buy into Doradolla was the right thing to do. She signed the paperwork, and within a few days, the first of several large payments arrived in her business account. Damon told her to make free use of his advisors, and they recommended she hire a young, newly qualified accountant called Jonathan September to manage the money side of the business. She agreed readily, and she and Jonathan worked out the budget for hiring seamstresses and permanent market staff. She spent a busy six weeks interviewing and hiring, and overnight, Doradolla went from Holly and Phumi to a real company, employing ten people. The set-up period and training took the better part of four months, but after that, Holly slowly began to realise that Doradolla was a machine with its own momentum. She could take a day off, or spend a solid week in her office designing, and the work would keep happening. It was a revelation. She’d once read that you could never have a great job, a great relationship and a great place to live all at the same time, but it seemed to her at that moment that she was triply blessed, and did indeed have all three.

  One morning, it dawned on her that she and Damon had not had sex for a week. That was the first inkling that all was not perfect in her world. They both had high sex drives, and it had always been a vital and consuming part of their relationship. They usually did it every day, often more than once a day. They rarely missed a day, and never missed two unless Damon was out of town. A week was unheard of. Holly had a moment of concern, and then smiled to herself and thought that maybe they were settling into a comfortable long-term relationship. By the time they got married, she thought, they might well be a once-a-week under-the-duvet lights-off kind of couple. It didn’t worry her at the time: they’d both been working hard and she was sure they’d soon be back on track. But when, over dinner, she jokingly mentioned it to Damon, he snapped at her. ‘God, Holly. I’ve got more on my mind than sex, you know. Give me a break.’

  She was surprised. They’d always been light-hearted about their sex life, and she’d been expecting him to make a joke, or to sling her over his shoulder and carry her upstairs.

  But he didn’t. He picked up his plate and went into his study, shutting the door behind him.

  She sat in the kitchen staring at her food, unsure what had just happened, but certain that it was something new and unwelcome in their relationship. It made her feel cold inside. She knew him well, and she knew going in to talk to him now would be the wrong thing to do, so she finished her own meal and then went and watched some television. At eleven, she showered and got into bed. She still felt upset and hurt, and she was sure she would never be able to sleep, but she did doze off eventually. Much later, in the early hours, Damon slipped into bed with her. It woke her, but she kept her back turned and her eyes closed. He immediately curled himself around her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered in her ear as he cupped her breast with one hand. ‘I’m so, so sorry, my precious Holly. Sorry I snapped, sorry I’ve been so busy. I want you so much. I do.’ She relented and pressed back against him slightly, and that was all the encouragement he needed. He was feverish, almost desperate, and very demanding and quite rough with her. Holly would normally have found his ardour exciting, but somehow the small icy chip in her middle that had formed when he yelled at her just wouldn’t melt.

  It was the beginning of a very unsettling pattern. Damon was distant, very distracted and often away from home for long hours and more frequently overnight. Then he would suddenly overwhelm Holly with passionate declarations of love, intense sexual demands and extravagant gestures. She never knew which Damon was going to come through the door, and she found herself almost dreading his return. She began to wonder if he was quite sane, or whether he was exhibiting signs of some kind of personality disorder. It crossed her mind that it might be drugs, but Damon, a health freak and fitness fanatic, had zero tolerance for any kind of mind-altering substance beyond the occasional drink. But that was another change she noticed in him: he was exercising less and drinking more, both very out of character. Every time she tried to raise any part of this with him, he would either yell at her or be apologetic and tearful, assuring her that it was just work stress. There was no talk of planning a wedding, and they became more and more distant and estranged from one another. Holly found herself beginning to wonder how she might extricate herself from the relationship. She knew she could move out – in fact she knew Pierre would welcome her back at their old house. But given Damon’s involvement in her business, the work side of things was a lot more
complicated. She tried to tell herself things would get better, even though she didn’t really believe they would. And then, suddenly, they did.

  Damon announced he had been working too hard and was taking a week off. He was around the house every day, and was sweetly and patiently interested in the goingson in her sewing room. He drove her to the suppliers, carrying her bags and waiting patiently while she agonised over fabrics, buttons and trimmings. He also spent a long time chatting to Jonathan, Holly’s business manager, and looking at the financial side of Doradolla. In the evenings, he cooked for Holly or took her out for dinner. He was calm, even-tempered and in fact very much his old, sweet, romantic self. He talked about holidays, and even suggested that they pick a date for the wedding, so her family could begin to plan or book flights. That weekend, they went to a chalet in the Drakensberg. It was winter, and they spent a picture-perfect weekend, walking, drinking red wine and watching films, and making love in the big old wooden bed and in the living room in front of the fire.

  On the Monday morning, back in Jo’burg, Damon was up and dressed long before Holly. She stirred and gazed at him in his crisp shirt and beautifully cut suit. He was looking at himself in the mirror, his face expressionless and, as always, beautiful. He saw her watching him sleepily from her nest of pillows and he came to kiss her on the top of her head. ‘Go back to sleep, lovely,’ he said softly. ‘I’m off to the office. A million emails to catch up on.’

  She smiled and drifted back to sleep. Later that morning, she supervised the seamstresses finishing a set of skirts that were going to a boutique in Pretoria, but they didn’t have enough of the gold braid that was a feature on the pocket. Holly jumped into her car and went to her haberdashery supplier to get more. She also collected some pretty buttons for a new design she was working on, as well as an assortment of reels of cotton and some lovely cream-coloured lace trim. She took her selection to the till and handed over her business debit card. The shop assistant, who knew Holly well, chattered about the weekend as she put all the items through the till. Then she frowned, surprised. ‘Your card’s been declined,’ she said, embarrassed.