This financial year Ashworths had continued to lose its specialist market share due to more designer boutiques springing up in Sydney, especially in the more exclusive suburbs of Double Bay and Mosman, and even in the trendy areas of Paddington and Balmain. Michaela had been quietly developing a strategy to counteract the downwards slide. The strategy was, for Ashworths, radical and would possibly be unpalatable to her mother, but facts had to be faced. If business losses continued in most departments and the trend was echoed interstate, within two years the company could … She didn’t want to acknowledge it mentally, but she did — they could be in a financial bind. Her plan continued to bubble away inside her head. On a daily basis she streamlined it, changed it; new ideas overtook older ones, but it wasn’t perfect enough yet to unleash on the board of directors as an option. It would take a few more months to iron out any perceived problems but, by the end of winter, if sales didn’t improve, she planned to show Daniel Blumner, their managing director, and other executives her plan to rejuvenate Ashworths.
A knock on the door halted her thoughts.
A man in his early fifties entered. He wasn’t overly tall and was well covered without running to fat, with blond curly hair that was slowly greying. Daniel Blumner, in his hand-tailored pinstripe business suit, pristine white shirt and navy blue-and-red-patterned tie, looked precisely what he was: the very capable, presentable managing director of Ashworths.
In his wake followed Michaela’s cousin. Neil McRae was Ashworths’ chief accountant and company secretary. Under his left arm Neil hugged several folders. Occasionally, when she was in a whimsical mood and glimpsed him prowling through the Pitt Street store with the folders under his arm, as if he couldn’t bear to be separated from them, Michaela wondered if they were permanently stuck there to help signify his position in the company.
The thought was uncharitable, but she couldn’t help it. She and Neil had never got on, even as children, and now they invariably clashed at budget meetings when she wanted to expand and invest capital in company growth and all he wanted to do was hoard Ashworths’ assets. ‘No-vision Neil’ was the private nickname she and Jo Levy had given him. To them he was a typical, no-imagination accountant of the first order, conservative down to his evenly tied shoe laces.
She had come to the conclusion years ago that, in a fit of familial sympathy, her mother had hired Neil because she felt duty-bound to do so, and to keep the peace with her sometimes difficult, often prickly brother Frank. But to his credit — and she tried to be fair — Neil had applied himself wholeheartedly to whatever task was given him, working his way through various positions in the accounts department and in other departments as well, to eventually be promoted to the position he now held.
Unfortunately, Neil, who wasn’t bad-looking if one liked earnest, cautious and plodding as qualities in a man, wore a permanent frown — as if the entire company’s future rested on his shoulders. Except — Michaela’s mouth quirked in a brief grin — when Jo Levy was around. At such times Neil McRae became a different man, proving that he could be charming and sociable when he wanted to. Unluckily for the rest of Ashworths’ staff, he only chose to exert this personality change when Jo was in close proximity.
‘I see you’re busy. As usual,’ Daniel said with an all-encompassing glance around the cluttered room.
‘Well, actually, no.’ Her dark eyes sparkled. ‘I heard that you were doing the rounds, so I had all this merchandise put here to impress you,’ she said, punctuating her words with a cheeky grin.
Nodding his head, Daniel ignored her tart humour; he was used to it, but his benign smile betrayed that he enjoyed, more than disapproved of, her teasing repartee.
‘Michaela, have you heard any of the staff talk about missing merchandise, stock that hasn’t turned up?’ Neil asked bluntly. His frown had furrowed deeper in silent criticism of his cousin’s apparent lack of respect for their boss.
Her eyebrows lifted and her long, loose tresses swayed. ‘No.’
Neil gave her a smug smile, apparently pleased to be one up on her. ‘There are some discrepancies regarding deliveries. I’m checking into them. Or, rather, what appear to be deliveries that have been signed into the store and the warehouse, but are in fact non-existent.’
‘You mean petty pilfering? A little always goes on in the store. It’s impossible to stamp out.’ Michaela’s tone was matter-of-fact.
‘It’s more serious than that. In some cases, whole shipments have disappeared,’ Daniel said.
‘Yes, much more serious,’ Neil reiterated. ‘A percentage of next spring’s merchandise, which should already be in the warehouse, hasn’t arrived, but we know that the ship carrying it unloaded the container at a Sydney wharf.’
Michaela sat up straight. ‘What?’ If the shipments weren’t located that could be disastrous. It was too late to order fresh supplies from manufacturers, who were already working on summer and autumn fashions. ‘I can’t believe it. Have you called the police?’
‘We’re looking at it internally first. It’s likely that someone in-house has decided to make a fat bonus for themselves, but so far they’ve covered their tracks masterfully. Leith Danvers from Markham’s put us onto the problem, though I’m not sure how he came upon the information. We’re doing an internal check prior to a meeting with him next week,’ Daniel told her, his expression grim. ‘Neil’s advising department heads to keep an ear out for anything they might consider odd but,’ he emphasised his next words, ‘we want all executives and department heads to keep the information about the thefts under wraps for the time being. No point in letting all the staff know we could have a major theft problem.’
‘The meeting with Danvers is next Wednesday, 6 pm in the boardroom,’ Neil told her officiously. ‘I’ll confirm it with a memo of course.’
‘How’s your mother?’ Daniel asked her, his voice gentling as he changed the subject.
‘Still being hard-headed about letting the reins go, as you probably know.’ Michaela’s answer was honest. ‘Joel and I are pinning our hopes on Caroline being able to convince Mum to take things easy.’
‘Laura should.’ Neil voiced his opinion, as he was wont to do without a thought of being tactful. ‘Apart from the current hiccup with theft, which I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of, Ashworths runs like a well-oiled machine. And,’ his tone became pointed, ‘she is getting on. Dad retired two years ago and hasn’t regretted it.’
Michaela bit her tongue. She was sure Uncle Frank hadn’t regretted retiring. McRae’s Transport had been going badly until Peter, Frank’s eldest son, had come in to manage the business. Poor Uncle Frank was a hard worker but a poor businessman, and she knew that several times over the years her mother had bailed him out financially. She was also astute enough to detect the inference in Neil’s tone and what he didn’t say. That Ashworths could and would continue to run with or without Laura Beaumont heading the company. Weasel. That was another nickname she and Jo had for him. Her cousin probably thought his chance to advance up the executive ladder was better if her mother retired. Well, as a company executive and shareholder, she’d have something to say about that if anyone put him up for promotion.
‘We’ll leave you to it then,’ Daniel said and motioned for Neil to leave with him.
Two hours later, sitting at a table near the back of Silks Restaurant, which was located on the fifth floor of Ashworths, Michaela waited for her friend and business colleague, Jo Levy, to join her for lunch.
Being a Beaumont, Michaela knew the history of why the restaurant had been called Silks. On the wall behind the counter was a cavalcade of coloured photos of various winning racehorses and their jockeys. Centred on the wall was a brass plaque to the memory of a particular jockey. Alexander Monroe was the first man her mother had loved, and he had died in a racing accident at Randwick racecourse before World War II. There was more to the story of Silks than the dedicatory plaque. Laura McRae — as she had been then — had married Eddie Ashworth during
the war. She had been Alex’s sole beneficiary, inheriting his estate on her twenty-eighth birthday. In 1950, that money and a hefty loan from an enterprising Commonwealth Bank manager had enabled Laura to turn her dream of the first Ashworths department store into areality.
Michaela idly thumbed through a fashion magazine she had picked up on the way in, and when she glanced up she saw Jo weaving her way around the tables to join her. Jo was one of the few women who looked good in the hand-tailored grey suit she wore. With her striking colouring, long, straight black hair and green eyes, olive skin and classical features, Michaela knew her friend would look good in anything — even sackcloth. With an amused smile she watched several men at tables close by turn their heads to locate where Jo sat.
‘Sorry I’m late. Neil cornered me in my office. He had Mark with him. You know, he wants me to go over my advertising budget.’ Jo’s shoulders shrugged with the eloquence of the successful model she had been in her youth. ‘Again! He’s so pedantic about figures. Questions every projection. It’s driving me crazy.’
Michaela raised an understanding eyebrow at her friend. ‘What was Mark doing with Neil?’ Mark was the youngest of Uncle Frank’s sons, the one in the family whom she liked the least. He was sly and, when he could get away with it, a troublemaker.
‘Neil’s given Mark a job in accounts, so he said. Evidently Mark can only work part-time because of a back injury,’ Jo said.
‘It’s not Neil’s pedantic nature that’s driving you crazy, he’s driving you crazy.’ Michaela’s grin was knowing. ‘It’s obvious that where you’re concerned, Neil’s interest is not entirely business-oriented. It’s you and your figure he has a mind to investigate, rather than the numbers in your advertising budget.’
Jo’s cheeks flushed under her natural tan. ‘Don’t be silly. Neil and I have known each other for years. He’s never shown a personal interest in me.’
‘He was married then. Stacy, very smartly, has given him the flick, so now he’s free to pursue whatever romantic interests take his fancy.’
‘Well,’ Jo quipped, ‘he’s wasting his time. I can’t see Andrew taking a back seat to Neil.’
Michaela nodded. Andrew Haywood was a prominent Sydney businessman who had been dating Jo for months. That Andrew was smitten with her was as plain as the nose on his face, but her friend continued to keep her feelings close to her chest. One failed marriage that had resulted in two children, Joshua and Kirra, and several unsatisfactory relationships since, had left Jo wary of stepping onto the ‘marriage-go-round’ again.
‘Let’s not talk about men,’ Jo said with a dismissive flick of her hand. ‘Caroline and Fern came over last night for dinner. Caroline looks great, doesn’t she? Considering what she’s been through. Fern got along well with my two, especially Kirra.’
‘They’ve settled in well at number fifty-two. Mum really enjoys having Caroline around. They could always talk, those two.’ There was no rancour from Michaela as she admitted that. From an early age her father had helped her to understand the special bond between her mother and Caroline. Laura’s unhappy marriage to Eddie Ashworth had made Caroline and Laura very close. That bond had deepened as Caroline grew up and Eddie had become more difficult, refusing to give Laura a divorce so she could marry Jack.
‘Do you think she’ll come to work at Ashworths?’ Jo asked straight out.
‘Did she say she wanted to?’ Michaela countered and, when Jo gestured negatively, she said, ‘Maybe. That’s up to Caroline.’
It was now Michaela’s turn not to give too much away. If the truth be known, she was sure that, sooner or later, Caroline would work for Ashworths. Her mother had already hinted at creating a position for Caroline, to ease her into the company. Not at the bottom, behind a counter, where Michaela had started, but in a fairly non-essential middle management position where she could be fast-tracked, if she had the ability, to a higher executive level. She got liverish just thinking about it, but there wasn’t much she could do or say if that’s what her mother and Daniel wanted to do.
‘What about her and Nick? Do you see them getting together again?’
Michaela thought about the question before she answered. ‘I don’t know. I saw them together when he came to pick up Fern for the weekend. My half-brother’s a bit of a poker face, as you know. There was something in his eyes, though, when I saw them together.’ She paused, reflected. ‘A longing, I think.’
‘They shouldn’t have broken up in the first place,’ Jo said. ‘If two people were meant for each other, it was Caroline and Nick.’
Michaela knew that Jo and Caroline had been friends ever since the Levys had returned from Israel in the fifties; their mothers had been lifelong friends. The friendship had only changed and drifted after Caroline moved to Europe. ‘Well, I can understand why they separated.’ Caroline had been almost twenty when Michaela was born, but she still remembered the hours of piano practice and her sister’s total dedication to classical music. ‘Caroline had this passion to be a concert pianist — she’d dreamed of nothing else since the age of eleven, and she had the talent to make it. Nick, well, with his Italian and American background, he’s a strong-minded man, very much like our father.’ From her words it was clear that Michaela was fond of and had a good deal of respect for her much older half-brother. ‘You couldn’t expect him to play second fiddle to Caroline’s dream indefinitely. I think that in the end he got tired of waiting and wanted out.’
‘You’re probably right. The timing for them to be together was off. But things are different now. Caroline’s musical career is over. She’s come home and she’s looking for something to do. She isn’t romantically involved with anyone either. So once Laura retires, who knows? The next few months could be interesting.’
Michaela chuckled and shook her head. ‘If she ever does retire! Mum’s still keeping us in the dark about that. Joel’s getting impatient, and he told me her specialist is strenuously encouraging her to quit immediately, for her health’s sake. But you know Mother, she’s a law unto herself.’
‘We all know that.’ Jo picked up a menu, even though because they ate there so often, she knew all the dishes off by heart. ‘Come on, let’s eat, I’m starving.’
Caroline sat alone on the patio enjoying a mid-morning cup of coffee. She and Fern had been ensconced at number fifty-two for over a week now, and she was amazed at how easily both of them had slotted into the change of country and the change of lifestyle. Yes, being here was different from living in the centre of cosmopolitan Paris. She couldn’t walk out of her apartment building and within ten minutes be at a café sipping a long black at an outdoor table with a protective umbrella to shade the sun from her face. She wasn’t able to nod and smile at passers-by she knew, nor block out the sound of the incessant traffic and the slight but noticeable gasoline fumes car exhausts emitted.
Did she miss that lifestyle? Yes and no. She missed the familiarity of it and the many friends she had made over the years, but there was ample compensation in being home with her family again, and seeing Fern’s enjoyment in getting to know her aunt and uncle and her much-adored grandmother.
Caroline cocked her head to one side and listened to the near silence. That was very different from Paris. It was quiet at number fifty-two once everyone went to their allotted tasks. Fern was already at school and made her way there independently. Her mother was always out of the house by eight-thirty to be in her office before nine. The Porters went about their work unobtrusively, Porter chauffeuring Laura in and out of the city and doing any necessary marketing, while Daphne attended to various household tasks. And Joel was usually off to university by ten o’clock, roaring down the drive in that noisy car he loved.
She had taken to walking down to the water’s edge most days with Rufus, to sit and watch the harbour traffic. Something was always happening on the water: yachts sailing by, ferries plying their way to Manly or other destinations and freighters or the occasional passenger ship on their way into port. Th
e peacefulness of the place allowed her plenty of time to think. About herself, her future, what she was going to do.
What was she going to do with the rest of her life? She had been plagued by this question for months in her Paris apartment, unable to decide. But, since her mother’s health problem had arisen and she’d decided to come home, it was as if a door, a door of opportunity, had opened for her. But this open door revealed several dark, indistinct corridors and she didn’t know which one to go down. Her options were limited. Having devoted her entire adult life to the pursuit of musical perfection, she had no training in anything else. There could be musical opportunities in Sydney and, while she had rejected several offers in Paris, could she afford to reject one if it were offered to her here?
Sipping her coffee, she continued to ruminate. Something inside her, some gut feeling, kept tugging her away from a pursuit related to music. She was in the fortunate position of not having to work. She had an income, modest, but sufficient for her and Fern’s present needs and, when the apartment on Ile St-Louis was sold, they could buy their own place, but she didn’t want to fritter her life away. She wanted to do something useful. The question was, what? One day Joel had hinted that Laura might like her to try her hand working at Ashworths.
Caroline had fleetingly thought of that back in Paris, but she had misgivings. She had no experience in retail or management. Once, years ago, she had considered doing a course in psychology. Was that an option worth considering? Or … perhaps interior decorating.
She had loved decorating her Paris apartment, hounding second-hand and antique shops for just the right item of furniture. Even friends had called on her for advice in furnishing their homes and apartments. Was that something she could do professionally? It would mean taking courses, of course, becoming qualified.
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