by Jo Thomas
‘I’m just not sure how many more chances I can give you, Emmy. You practically talk your customers out of spending any money,’ Trevor said.
‘Only if they don’t need anything. I can’t take their money off them if they don’t need it,’ I blurted out again, kicking myself and shooting myself right in the middle of my foot at the same time.
‘We’re a call centre, selling stuff!’ Trevor looked to the sky. ‘And once the other agents discover what you’ve done with the office collection . . . you don’t help yourself, Emmy. You don’t try and fit in.’ He’s right. I never have fitted in here.
‘I really think, Emmy, if you don’t think you can sell, and from your recorded sales calls I’d say you do struggle to sell . . . well, then,’ he shrugged.
Oh, no, here it comes, I thought. He was going to sack me. I felt myself go hot and then freezing cold. Clammy. He looked at me, his shoulders still shrugged apologetically.
Suddenly the office door burst open. One of Cadwallader’s best-selling agents, Harmony from ‘next day delivery flowers and chocolate boxes’, poked her thickly made-up face in and shrieked like a teenager on a fairground ride.
‘Oh my God! Trevor, I really need to talk to you!’ The air had filled with thick, cloying perfume, making me cough. Harmony is loud, brassy and orange, much like her best friend, Candy.
‘Harmony, I’m in a meeting,’ Trevor shouted back, throwing his hands up again. Harmony ignored his dismissal and carried on.
‘Trev, it’s no good, I can’t go to France! I’m having my teeth veneered next week. They’ve had a cancellation. If I miss my appointment I’ll have to wait months, and Debbie in double glazing is getting married in three weeks. I’ve got to have them done by then.’
Trevor clutched his head and squeezed. Trevor often clutches his head. He held his Biro like a cigarette and loosened his already loose, brown tie.
‘What? You can’t back out just like that! You’re leaving for France in the morning. It’s all booked. This new client could take this company to another level. I’m putting my best agents on this team. Harmony, please! Don’t do this to me. I’ve promised them four of my best-selling agents to train up. Don’t do this. They could take their business to Dickie Danbrooks and I’d have to make cut-backs, lose staff.’ He threw me an apologetic look. ‘Besides, there’s a bloody great pot of gold waiting there for the best-selling agent,’ he tried to appeal to her.
‘Sorry, Trev. Not my problem.’ Harmony looked me up and down. ‘It’s a no-brainer,’ she said and, with that, left again, stopping only to greet a man I hadn’t seen before arriving in the open-plan office with a huge smile, skirting around him closely and expertly on her high heels, whilst smoothing down her short skirt over her round hips. He smiled back pleasingly as she sashayed her way back to her desk, turning just before she reached it, fiddling with the pink ends of her white-blond hair, to throw him another killer smile, which he returned.
‘Where were we?’ Trev tried to refocus, head in hands.
Right now, ‘a bloody great pot of gold’ was exactly what I needed, I thought to myself. Or even a small one, for that matter.
‘Like I say, if I can’t start making more money, I can’t afford to keep everyone on, especially those not paying their way.’
The door knocked again.
‘Oh, for God sakes!’ Trevor threw his hands up and I turned to see the man Harmony had just circumnavigated and my stomach did an excited flick-flack. I can see why Harmony was so pleased to see him.
‘Charlie!’ Trevor jumped up, recognising the visitor and going into jovial-host mode, waved him in and put out a hand to shake.
‘Not interrupting anything, am I?’ Charlie, the new arrival asked, looking from Trevor to me, and my tongue twisted itself into a knot like a Twister lolly. He was wearing a smart dark blue suit that slightly strained over his biceps and shoulders as he stretched out a hand to shake Trevor’s. Under his jacket was a blue and white checked shirt, with silver wine bottle cufflinks. His face was tanned and lit up when he smiled; the bright white of his eyes sparkled. His dark hair was short, neat at the sides, stood up straight on top and had a slight glint of product in it. My stomach did another excited flick-flack, over and all the way back again. Not tall, but what did that matter with a smile like that and eyes that bright?
‘No, no, nothing we can’t finish later, eh, Emmy?’ Flustered, Trevor dismissed me.
I went to stand, feeling like I’d had a stay of execution whilst awaiting sentencing.
‘Just popped in to check you’re all ready for the morning. I’m heading off back to the Featherstone’s office in France this afternoon. Just wanted to make sure you had all the agents in place and ready to go.’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Trevor clutched the edge of his desk.
‘Glad you think you can do this,’ said Charlie. ‘Danbrooks’ is a much bigger operation but I could see this means a lot to you. Don’t let me down.’ He cocked his head, winked and gave another cheeky grin. I felt a crackle of electricity rocket through my body as his sparkling green eyes, flecked with light green and gold, stared straight at me, so I could see they had a ring of darker green on the outside. Like an emerald-green lagoon you see in holiday brochures, you just want to dive into. They were mesmerising. His intense stare made me feel like I was the only person in the room. Embarrassed, I dragged my eyes away and looked at the floor. Trevor reached for his e-cigarette, looking flustered. He looked through the glass of his office towards Harmony with an imploring look.
‘Everything is OK, Trevor, isn’t it? I mean if you don’t think you can raise the team . . . I know you’re a small company.’
From her desk Harmony shrugged a sorry and I could see Trevor’s shoulders slump.
‘Yes, yes. No problems . . .’ Trevor was suddenly like a drowning man looking for a passing branch. ‘I just wasn’t expecting . . .’ He laughed nervously. ‘Emmy and I were just finishing up on some sales figures . . . um . . .’ He pointed to me and trailed off, and I suddenly felt very guilty. He did give a lot of people jobs, even when they weren’t bringing in the revenue. Me included. He was a bit of a softy really. Anyone with my disastrous track record should have been sacked years ago. But Trevor had kept me on, moved me from department to department. I wish I could help him now, repay him for his faith in me. But what could I do? I couldn’t even hang on to the office collection.
‘Emmy. Hi.’ Charlie leaned forward and put out a hand to shake mine as my stomach did that flipping thing again, like an Olympic gymnast going for gold.
‘Hi,’ I tried to reply with my twisted tongue, shaking his smooth hand.
Trevor cleared his throat again and tugged at his loose tie.
‘Charlie is our new client, very big new client. He’s bringing a lot of new business our way,’ said Trevor in his telephone voice, but I could see he was feeling very nervous by the way he kept tugging at his collar. He was playing for time.
‘If all goes to plan,’ Charlie corrected Trevor with a smile, and something told me that this was very much a testing of the waters.
‘Charlie is taking over Featherstone’s Wines from his dad and is looking to expand, not just sell to single customers on the phone, but to move into restaurants, shops . . .’
‘Supermarkets, hopefully,’ Charlie added. ‘Cadwallader’s agents will be learning about the wine in France before coming back here to fly the flag and train up more staff as sales increase. It could be win-win for us all.’ He beamed at a now visibly sweating Trevor.
Of course I knew about the new client and the trip to France. Trevor was always on the lookout for new clients, and Charlie Featherstone’s deal had been the talk of the office. It wasn’t something I was ever going to be in the running for, not with my sales record. This was for the high-achieving agents.
‘Are you one of my new
sales team?’ Charlie asked, and I looked up and around to see who else had come into the office.
‘Oh,’ I stammered and started to wave away such a silly idea. They would never let someone like me go.
‘Actually,’ Trevor said quickly, ‘Emmy’s just leaving.’ I gathered my bag and turned back to Trevor. He had a look of panic about him. This was his biggest client yet and he was about to lose him because Harmony, who had been booked to go for months and talked endlessly about matching outfits with Candy, had now just pulled the rug from under his feet. Could I really leave Trevor drowning like this?
‘Actually . . .’ I said slowly, my head shouting, What are you doing? and my heart saying Just do it! I took a huge breath. Trevor and Charlie both looked at me, waiting on what I was about to say. ‘Yes, yes, I am. I’m one of your new sales team and very much looking forward to it.’ I put out a confident hand to shake his, whilst the voice in my head screamed in panic. Trevor’s face fell in horror and then he started to nod slowly, looking at me in disbelief and then finally with a strained smile.
‘Yes, I’m . . . er . . . just checking Emmy’s passport details and reminding her to be at Bristol Airport tomorrow morning, first thing.’ He looked at me wide eyed as if trying to give me all the details telepathically.
‘Great.’ Charlie threw me another killer smile, showing off his white teeth, and my insides felt like they’d been microwaved. What had I just done? Was Trevor going to kill me? I had to do something. I couldn’t let him sack me. I needed to save my house, mine and Dad’s. And at least this way Charlie Featherstone wasn’t going to go to Dickie Danbrooks. He had to be pleased, didn’t he?
Although, a moment before I was in the middle of being sacked, Trevor smiled at Charlie, then took me by the elbow and showed me the door, whispering in my ear, ‘Bristol Airport first thing in the morning. I’ll email you details. I’m giving you one last chance, Emmy. I mean it, don’t blow it!’
I stepped out of the office. ‘And Emmy,’ Trevor called me back and I turned to him. He swallowed. ‘Thank you,’ he said briefly, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t got it totally wrong then. And at least this way I didn’t have to face all my colleagues when they discovered I’d spent the office collection.
I had a lot to thank Trevor for, and I was determined not to let him down.
Whoever first said ‘It’s just like riding a bicycle,’ should try it themselves sometime. Who’d have thought that just twenty-four hours after leaving Trevor’s office, and hanging on to my job by the skin of my teeth, I’d be standing in the road, next to the Dordogne, sweating in my cheap suit trousers in the midday sun, court shoe poised on a pedal?
I’ve been lent a bike. Nothing fancy, thank goodness. Just a bog-standard lady’s ‘sit up and beg’. It comes with the gîte we’re all sharing. It was Gloria who remembered the bike and suggested I go back for it. We were shown it when we first arrived, when Colette, Featherstone’s office manager, met us with a definite look of scepticism in her boldly made-up eyes. Colette looks like Dolly Parton. Dyed blond bob with a pink streak, blue mascara over her brown eyes, tight-fitting garish pink T-shirt with plunging neckline and rhinestones. She was wearing a tight denim skirt and tassel-trimmed ankle boots. She offered me the keys to the Featherstone’s cream and burgundy Citroën van, but I shook my head by way of explanation that I didn’t drive and took the bike instead.
I haven’t ridden a bike since I was twelve. And frankly, I’m not sure which one of us is more rusty, me or the bike.
The others have decided to buy two baguettes, ham, tomatoes and bottled water. They’re now sitting at a wooden bench and table, on the grassy riverbank, just across the road from Featherstone’s, as I attempt to take my first few turns on the bike’s pedals. Having ditched my jacket and covered my face and arms in factor 50, I’m perched on the tiny saddle.
Quite frankly I’d like to be sitting on the riverbank too, but I have to find this purse’s owner.
I try to push forward steadily and take my foot off the ground at the same time, but it takes a few attempts and I’m very aware I’ve now got an audience behind me. I had no idea it would be this hot here. I take a huge breath and push down on the pedal, hard.
Suddenly I’m off. The wobbling front wheel seems to be mostly pointing forward in the direction of the road ahead.
A gentle incline in the road allows me to get both feet on the pedals and start to turn them, occasionally checking the brakes, well, quite a lot really. I daren’t turn round or call back to the others. I have to just keep going.
‘Be back for two. We’re meeting at the winery with Charlie Featherstone and his wine man,’ calls Nick, and I can barely hear him as the wind starts to whistle in my ears. But I do know he’s said Charlie’s name. Charlie, whom I met yesterday at the Cadwallader offices. Him with the smart dark hair, those two-tone green eyes and the wink! My stomach fizzes with excitement.
The road is worn, full of dips and bumps, and dusty in the dry heat. It catches in the back of my throat. But I’m moving! Well, side to side, violently, before crashing into a grassy bank. Thank God it was the grassy flower-strewn bank and not the riverbank. I pick myself up and reposition the bike, pointing in the right direction, when there’s a loud hooting noise behind me, making me jump. I stop and turn, and see that my colleagues do seem to be containing their laughter, just. Down the middle of the river, flying just above the water, are two huge white birds, honking as they go. That’s not something you see in Cardiff city centre every day. I suddenly feel like I’m in another time zone altogether. Life is going on at home. Dad will be watching Pointless or one of the many other TV quizzes he loves, and I’m here, in boiling hot, dusty France with a huge expanse of river just a stone’s throw from where I’m staying, and surrounded by fields and countryside on the other side. It’s surreal. I can’t believe I’m here. I should really be thinking how lucky I am, instead of getting hot and cross. I reposition the bike and poise my foot on the pedal. I push off again and focus on the road and my front wheel, which is veering violently left and then right again.
I reach the entrance to the bridge where the trees thicken either side, throwing the path into darkness. I can hardly bear to look as I wobble to and fro, and find myself squeezing my eyes tight shut as I go up and down, my stomach following, and I head away from the river up a shady lane towards Saint Enrique, the place Jeff seems to think is Petit Frère’s overbearing, overpriced, bullying neighbour. My legs already ache.
A small farmhouse, Isabelle Obels had said, called Clos Beaumont. She said I wouldn’t miss it, the last house out of Petit Frère and before Saint Enrique. No other houses around it at all. A stone farmhouse up a lane with old gateposts that I’d see on the roadside. But Isabelle hadn’t mentioned it was going to be uphill all the way.
On either side of me are fields now, with row upon row of vines. They have bunches hanging from them like little bags of marbles and big green leaves like dinner plates. There is a different-coloured rose at the end of each vine, which is strange. I thought roses were a British thing. In some fields they are red, some yellow. Every now and again there is a splash of vibrant bright yellow: a field of large sunflowers nodding their big yellow heads in the early September breeze. There’s definitely more of a breeze up here. And there’s a smell in the air of herbs, mixed with summer sunshine. Wow! If you could bottle that smell . . . It seems to lift my flagging spirits. I pedal faster, and the faster I go, I discover, the more of the breeze I feel and the more of that tangy, sunshine smell fills my lungs.
But suddenly, as I turn a bend in the road, there’s a large tractor coming towards me and, just like earlier, I’m in the hedgerow with the bike on top of me instead of the other way round. The driver calls to me in French but I have no idea if he’s asking if I’m all right or shouting some-thing rude at me. I pick up the bike, dust myself off and set myself back on the road again af
ter a couple of false starts. I do hope this won’t take much longer. I have to be back by two. I look at my watch. I must remember to move it on an hour. My stomach roars again. I wish I’d taken some bread and ham from the picnic the others were having before I left them.
As I was leaving Petit Frère I passed pretty little houses with verandas covered in brightly coloured flowers, neatly tended vegetable plots with fat, white geese and chickens pecking away in well-fenced runs. I passed a noisy campsite where holidaymakers are enjoying the last of the summer holidays and then suddenly, nothing. Now there are no houses at all, just this lane – more like a dirt track in parts – the vines and the occasional nodding sunflower field. Let’s hope I find Clos Beaumont soon. In the distance I can see the town of Saint Enrique on a hilltop: a church steeple at the top and sand-coloured stone walls and houses spreading out from it like a bridal gown, down to the town’s stone wall at the foot of the skirt, where there are huge houses, standing proud, showing the world their finery.
There isn’t another farmhouse in sight. All I can see now is the road starting to incline steeply uphill again. I’m halfway up when I have to get off and push. I’m sweating and panting, and frankly I don’t think I can go any further. My lungs feel like they’ve had the air ripped out of them. More tractors pass me but I’m grateful for the whoosh of air they bring as they pass. I finally make it to the top of the hill. Saint Enrique still looks a distance away. The road has flattened out. I turn back to see the Dordogne like an inky line through the middle of the vines and in the distance the bridge just before Featherstone’s. At least it’ll be downhill all the way back. But I don’t think I can go on. I stop and contemplate turning back when I feel the weight of the old lady’s purse in my pocket pushing against my thigh. I can’t turn back. I have to just try to go on a little further.
