They had left quite a mess. Ricky was still sleeping off his excess and Hazel helped the maid clear and clean the disordered filth that her husband had left.
“Yo, leave it!” Ricky shouted from the balcony, overlooking the lounge area. “We is payin’ for a maid. Let her do it.”
“But …”
“I is sayin' leave it!” He barked. She shuddered at the tone in his voice. “Bring us up a beer.” Hazel averted her eyes from the gaze of their Jamaican maid, busying herself with scrubbing the floor which had the remnants of a blue drink spilt upon it.
Hazel carried a bottle of local bear to her beau. She beamed as she entered the room, setting the bottle on the table as he tapped on his tablet. He didn't return the smile.
He stared angrily at her, and passed her the mobile electronics. “There is photos of me naked,” he barked. “On t'Internet.”
Hazel gulped.
He ignored her response and repeated himself. “Me. Naked. On the 'net.” He tapped the screen aggressively and threw it on the bed, beside her. Hazel picked up the tablet and saw a photograph he had sent her a couple of months ago. Naked with a phone by his side and pointing into the bathroom mirror. Smiling, carefree and cheeky.
She sat down next to him as they flicked through the posts on the image board, seeing naked pictures and videos of her husband, in many of which, he was engaged in sex.
She looked at the date on the video. “That’s four weeks ago. I didn't know you had photographed us,” she muttered, watching as the camera caught the grinning smile of her husband in the mirror in his apartment, before the video cut to the act of penetration into his partner. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Who did this?”
“I dunno,” he snapped. “Someone's seen that me is married now to t' naked tribe family and shown my naked pictures to the fuckin' world.”
“Umm … naturism isn't about …”
“It's about gettin' ya kit off in public. Showing da world yar cock and cunt. And what's 'appened to meh. I'm exposed.” He took a few deep breaths and snatched the tablet from her hand, throwing it against the wall so that it left a dent in the plaster. The screen shattered.
“Careful,” she whispered. “It's broken.”
“It's my fuckin’ device,” he shouted. “I'll fuckin’ break it if I wan'.” His hands screwed into fists as he hyperventilated. “No-one fucks with da Tempest. Fuckin’ no-one. I'll fuckin’ kill da bastard who did t'is to me.”
“There's pictures of me on there too.”
“Get Paige. T'is is her, I know it is. Give me ya phone. She did t'is.”
“Ricky, it's 5am back in Britain.”
“Dunny care, I is ringing her.”
“Paige? Paige wouldn't do this. She never had any of those pictures; you had them on your computer or your phone. Not even I had them.”
“No. T’s is some-fin your fuckin’ sister would do. Thinks it’s normal to run around barin’ her fuckin’ cun’ to the world. T'is is her. Or 'er naked frien's 'acking into stuff.”
Hazel's tears welled in her cheeks, shaking her head defiantly. “She wouldn't. She doesn't have a group of people who hack into phones working for her.”
Ricky clicked his fingers. “Go ring her.” Hazel's hands trembled on her mobile phone as she frantically dialled her sister.
“Paige?”
“Hazel!” Paige exclaimed, startled awake by the phone call. The surprise and the bleary eyed grogginess in the young singer came through the phone speakers in the Caribbean. “Are you OK? What's going on?”
“Someone's posted naked pictures on the Internet of me. And Ricky.”
“Hell! Who?” There was an eerie silence for a split-second.
“Ricky thought you might know.”
“Why the fuck would I know?” Paige asked. “Look it's not even sunrise here. What pictures? How many?” Hazel gave her sister the site address and Paige reached over her waking boyfriend to pick up Jack’s tablet, charging on his bed side table. Paige turned the call onto speaker phone as she typed the URL into the tablet’s browser and Jack, awoken by the conversation, helped her to navigate through the popular image sharing website. Eventually, she found the “folders” of her sister and her new partner.
“Hell!” Paige exclaimed. “And wow! These are all naked, private pictures.”
“I know.” Paige's finger hovered over the thumbnail labelled “The Tempest and his bitches.”
“Nasty. I don’t know what to say, Hazel. This is nasty.” Jack told her, shocked at the explicit exposure. “There are some bastards out there.”
“Call the Police” Paige shouted. “Get them to do their job and get ‘em down.”
“Did yar do t'is?” Ricky asked aggressively, snatching the phone from Hazel.
“Did I do what?”
“Pos' t'ose piccies. Yar wantin' people to be naked. Did you do it?”
“Mate, that's the work of hackers,” Jack cried incredulously before Paige could reply. “Paige has only recently worked out how to turn on my laptop, she ain't been hacking computers or servers. And these pictures were posted four hours ago. That’ll be 1am here and Paige was asleep.”
“What a fucking stupid thing to say,” Paige added. “Why the hell would I want to post naked pictures of you on the 'net anyway!” She glanced at the index page of the website a second time.
“Sssh,” Jack soothed, putting his hand on his girlfriend’s arm.
“And there are no photos of me. Am I not a big enough celebrity to warrant hacking? This is disgraceful behaviour by hackers. I demand equality with my sister.”
Hazel hid her smile at the faux-outrage from her sister. “OK, love,” Jack teased. “I think there may be the odd picture on the ‘net of you with nothing on. Perhaps they could hack your phone and get pictures of you clothed!”
“Laugh away you fuckin' jokers. T'is could kill my fuckin' career!” Ricky snapped angrily.
“Don't be stupid!” Paige countered. “It never stopped me from getting number ones. Four of them. How many do you have to your name? One, two? So, it's shit, really shit for you and for Hazel. I hope you can get the Police or whoever to get them taken down or something, but it ain't going to kill your career. And it really ain't my fault.”
“Sure?”
“Yes I'm sure.”
“You didn’t arrange for a naturist underground militia group to hack Ricky’s phone?” Hazel asked, suppressing a smile as she spoke the ridiculous words. “Ricky thought you might have access …”
Paige bellowed with laughter at his ludicrous allegation. “If I had access to an underground militia group, your dick pics wouldn’t be on my list of priorities, I promise you,” Paige replied. “Although I wish I did have access to a militia right now, Ricky. With a branch in the Caribbean and …”
“Hazel didn't link together photo albums wit’ you and it get uploaded to Naturism World or fucking what-not?” Ricky interrupted.
“No,” Paige snapped. “Now I'm going back to bed. A tired Paige is an angry Paige, and an angry Paige is a lethal weapon. Enjoy the rest of your honeymoon, Hazel,” she barked, putting the phone on her bedside table without ending the call. She slipped back under the covers. “He’s a bloody moron,” she moaned, loudly.
“Night love.”
Paige’s phone beeped and the display turned red. “Yeah, night. Although a naturist underground militia group would be pretty cool, right?”
“No comment,” Jack answered. “I’ve seen what your left-wing militia group did to me and it wasn’t fun.”
Chapter XXI
Lucinda
The middle-aged woman busied herself, shuffling papers. She wriggled in her seat, the cool leather seats in the boardroom of Bare Business Ltd caused shivers to dance up her spine.
The air conditioning had been turned off, the table containing hot drinks was ready: all she was missing was her three business partners.
Jack and Paige were the first to arrive; a mere three minutes late. Paige un
wrapped her dressing gown as she entered the room. “Nice.”
“Well it was door-to-door,” the singer replied. “Why get dressed?”
“Because what would happen if we broke down?” Jack asked, unbuttoning his jeans. “Can you imagine the looks we would have got?”
“Who cares!” Lucinda replied airily.
“Exactly. I don’t attire myself to please others.”
“You don’t attire yourself full stop,” Jack moaned. “Can I sit in my boxers? It’s cold.”
Paige poured herself a cup of coffee. “Sure. But you can’t vote. You know the constitution of the company. All board meetings must be conducted at a naturist venue. Any board member refusing to participate also forfeits their right to vote.”
“But this isn’t …”
“The boardroom is a naturist venue,” Paige reiterated. “We have this discussion every month and every month I win.”
Jack threw his underwear into the corner of the room and took the towel on the back of the chair, unfurling it over the seat. “We concede, not you win.”
“No, I win.”
“The rest of us can make business decisions without the need to undress. It’s just you.”
“And me,” Lucinda called from the end of the boardroom.
“Well Amy-Louise, Claire and myself are able to conduct ourselves with our clothes on our bodies.” Their secretary blushed, pushing her shoulder-length blonde hair behind her ears as Jack gestured towards the undressed woman.
Amy-Louise was hired by Lucinda a few months previous. They had met by chance after the elder woman had visited the Job Centre to advertise the secretarial vacancy and had witnessed a tired and stressed woman arguing with the job centre staff.
Lucinda watched and listened to the discussion clandestinely; the young lady had missed her appointment earlier in the day as her father had been rushed to hospital, and even though she had telephoned the job centre, ahead of time, they were still “sanctioning” her by stopping all payments for two weeks. Her rent, her food, her safety net was all in jeopardy.
However, the young lady never raised her voice, but tried to address the injustice calmly and professionally. Her restraint when arguing against the sociopathic ridiculousness of the simpering Job Centre Manager impressed Lucinda, and she offered the woman the role at an informal interview in the local pub, over hearty lunch.
It had taken the 22-year-old woman a few weeks to adjust to the bashful and naked CEO; Amy-Louise had never practised naturism before joining Bare Business Ltd or had worked with someone as driven and robust as Lucinda, but it was an essential learning curve for the young woman. The acceptance of the personalities and company ethos was key to the employment opportunity.
But Lucinda paid well and looked after her young staff. She was bright, responsible and enthusiastic, and the Bare Necessities took to their new employee quickly; Amy-Louise had become a friend as well as an employee.
Claire arrived a few minutes later, haggard and tired. She sniffed as she undressed and flopped dramatically in the seat opposite Lucinda. “You OK, dearie?”
“Fine,” she yawned. “Late night.”
“Right. Well I call the 38th board meeting of Bare Business Ltd to order,” Lucinda announced. “Present are myself, CEO and Chairwoman, Jack Rees-Montague, Claire Baynes, Paige Simmons and Amy-Louise Tushley, our secretary.” She nodded towards the busty young lady at the end of the table, scribbling on her pad.
“Ooh,” Paige interrupted, turning to face the woman in the corner of the room. “Luci told me your landlord was being a tit. All fixed?”
Amy-Louise nodded. “Yes thanks.”
“Excellent.” Paige replied. “I was more than happy to …”
Lucinda bristled. “I sorted this last week. Can we continue? As I said before, we have a lot to get through.”
“Go on!” Paige mumbled.
“First order of business is to confirm Amy-Louise Tushley in her role as Office Administrator.” The buxom woman blushed again.
“Shall I leave the room?”
Lucinda shook her head; all of their businesses had the same employment policy: new staff would join on probation for six months and only be confirmed in their role if their performance was satisfactory. The parent company was no exception. “No need. I propose we confirm.”
“I’ll second it,” Jack added.
“Well …” Paige said with a grin. She turned to the naked secretary, sitting at the end of the board room table, and pondered dramatically. “She has agreed that board meetings need to be conducted properly attired and she did come with us on the naturist bike ride. But I have a few questions.”
Lucinda groaned. “Paige, can we …”
“In your own words, please explain the difference between naturism and nudism.”
“Errr …”
Paige hummed and glanced at Lucinda, who glared back.
“OK. Easier one, which of the American founding fathers advocated naturism by skinny-dipping in the Thames?”
“Errr …”
Paige turned to look at Lucinda. “What have you been teaching her? Not Naturism 101. I’m not sure about this and …”
Lucinda shook her head. “Apart from Paige, does anyone else object to confirming Amy-Louise in the role and moving her salary to £22,500 per year?”
“Can I just say, I don’t object …”
“Right, carried.” Lucinda interrupted. “And if we could continue without the interruptions. We have a lot to get through.”
Paige slumped in her cool seat as Lucinda updated them on all the businesses owned by the shell company: the brewery was producing more beer than ever before, their nursery in the community youth centre in Southend had made record profits for the quarter, and the naturist resort had benefited from an exceptionally warm summer. Further renovation with the second phase of their villa refit was starting at the end of the month. The clothing-optional swimming pool on site had ensnared some school swimming contracts. Claire’s mum, who ran their florists, had broken even and the 50% share of the Rees-Montague factory had brought in splendid dividends. It had been a good quarter.
“Can we reduce the childcare fees?” Paige asked. She looked around the table looking for consensus. “I mean, if we are making record profits then maybe they are too high.”
“They are already the lowest in Southend,” Lucinda said. “We have a waiting list. In fact, if we wanted to expand we could easily fill the places.”
“But …” Paige huffed. “Childcare is really expensive. I don’t want to be profiteering from working families’ misery. If we aren’t going to lower our fees, do we need to give our staff a wage rise?”
“We already pay above the living wage.”
“So why is it so profitable?”
“Because every childcare provider is raking it in,” Jack answered. “It’s a license to print money. Staff on not much more than minimum wage and charges to customers astronomical.”
“But that’s wrong.”
“That’s supply and demand.” He sighed. “We’ve been here before, capitalism isn’t your thing, is it?”
“No!”
Lucinda coughed, sipping at her glass of water. “Every parent who gets their children into our nursery thinks they’ve done well. We are twenty, twenty-five, thirty percent cheaper than every other nursery and we have a better child to adult ratio than most. What I have is an expansion proposal. It’s the same deal in Southend, but we base it in Chelmsford. Next town along, so we can start to create a chain of them.”
Lucinda passed three copies of her proposal to her business partners. “How about a vote next month?” Jack asked. Lucinda nodded.
“There is one other thing we do need to discuss. Elvemere Naturist Resort. After Phase One of the renovation, we rebuilt the café on site.”
Paige smiled; the naturist resort was the investment she had personally selected and had helped design much of the recent building works herself. “Yes. We have a new caf�
�, a supermarket, a restaurant, a pool and …”
“Yes, well. Do you remember what you called the café?”
“Starbuffs.”
“Yes, well, a certain American coffee chain thinks that is violating their intellectual property rights.”
“Eh?” Paige asked, confused.
“They’re accusing us of violating their trademarks.”
“That sounds bad.”
“Yes. Well we have 28 days, well 26 now, to cease and desist. They want us to change the name.”
Paige hummed. “But they are trying to bully us. I don’t like corporates bullying us.”
“If it went to court, they might win.”
“So …”
“How about Caffe Nude?”
“Coffee Raw-public,” Jack suggested.
“I am not spending my morning mixing synonyms for nudity with the word coffee,” Lucinda barked. “And I don’t think it’s worth spending energy on. I suggest we just go for The Naked Café and tell the lawyers who’ve written to me to sod off.”
“Bare Brews?” Paige sighed. “That sounds more British.”
“OK. Motion seconded,” Jack added and it was voted through.
“Lastly, just to say, I know there are less royalties coming in for the Bare Necessities but we’ve more than made up for that. We have made some smart investments I think and I’d say the forecast is looking good. Even with the donation of that community centre in Southend.”
Paige hummed. “I know we kept half of it with the nursery, but it seemed like a good thing to do. We got so much good press and that building is its own trust now for the people of Southend. I’m very proud of what we’ve done there.”
“Good. Although we pay rent for the nursery. OK, a peppercorn rent, but still rent. But running the building, the youth centre and community centre was always going to be a drain and a cost-centre. Good to get the building maintenance off our budgets and the donation of a capital asset to a charitable trust is good for our tax returns too.” She shrugged at Paige. “Sorry, I have a business brain as well as a social conscience.” They turned to see Claire slumped on her hands at the end of the table; she had said nothing all meeting. Paige nudged her, waking her friend from her slumber.
Bare Necessities 2 (The Bare Necessities) Page 10
