The Retail Therapist

by Colette Kebell

  “So he didn’t take advantage of you. What a gentleman – and an officer. Or was it the other way round?”

  “Gee, we have a comedian in the house,” he said, starting to wake up. Most likely it was the smell of bacon that was reviving him “How did it go with Allyson Traynor?”

  I opened my bag and pushed an envelope onto the table in his direction. “That’s your share of the loot,” I said, and then went back to fill the kettle. I hadn’t slept much the previous night and I needed a very strong coffee. So did Ritchie, by the look of him.

  He opened the envelope and looked at the cheque for a moment, turning it upside down as if he were analysing its consistency. “There’s an error; it’s in my name.”

  “I know it’s in your name; that’s your share of the pie,” I said. I was by the kitchen door, waiting for the kettle to boil and at the same time enjoying the reaction on his face, which went from dazed, to astonishment, and then to concern.

  “GiGi, that is ten thousand, one hundred and fifty pounds!”

  “I know what’s in there. I was present when Allyson signed it. Hey, I’ve had an idea; maybe you could frame it, instead of cashing it? You got her autograph, after all,” I teased him.

  “But … this is what I was earning in more than five months of my previous job. GiGi; are you sure? It’s definitely too much.” Now the guilt and the embarrassment were taking place. He’d done a great job and I had decided to split the fee in half; I was trying to bribe him and maybe convince him to keep working with me.

  “No errors there and no buts. There will be rainy days as well, so just enjoy your well-deserved salary.”

  “OH MY GOSH, OH MY GOSH! Are you saying all this money is for me? For real?”

  “Yeah, relax,” I said. “I was thinking that if you’re up for it, we could keep working together, fifty-fifty. What do you think?” He jumped out of his chair and came to hug me. I was the happier of the two, even if I didn’t dare show it.

  “What do I think? I think I love you, GiGi! I think I’m over the moon and I don’t give a damn about going back to working in a shop like I did before. I have a new vocation.”

  “So we have a deal. Fancy coming to my brother’s football match?” I asked, to lighten the atmosphere before we both started crying like a pair of babies in a nursery.

  “Yeah, let’s do that,” he said, as he finally let me go from one of the most emotional hugs in history. “Hey? Do I smell burnt?”

  Oh, shit! The eggs or the bacon? Probably both.

  CHAPTER 9

  All the talk about Allyson Traynor and her millions had set my memory on fire. I went back to the days when I was first a legal secretary for that German sod who was a stickler for rules. He had instilled in me that, if ever I suspected that someone visiting the office was claiming benefits or and not stating that they were, I should have told him. I could almost hear his voice in my head whilst recalling what he had to say on the matter. Listen zo me carefully, miss, vhen these clients enter and zit to vait, you pay attention zo vhat they have to say; ve do not allow clients to break ze law. He also, whenever a client came into the office bringing cash, insisted that both he and they walk across to the bank together to pay the money into the firm’s account. This was something that rarely took place, but it was indeed something that stuck as far as my training was concerned, due to the Money Laundering Rules and Regulations.

  At a far later date, I was unfortunately witness to a client entering the office, with a rather large sum of money, which had just been handed over, counted at the reception desk and then taken to the accounts department. I had found that exceedingly odd at the time, but decided to say nothing about it, though I didn’t ever feel that comfortable working at the place after that. I thanked my lucky stars that I had found a new vocation and that my clients were so different.

  I was mulling this over and how life has twists and turns when Ritchie popped his head around the kitchen door.

  “Hey gorgeous, sort yourself out and get that cute bum of yours into gear” he said with a smirk on his face, as only Ritchie could.

  “I thought we were eating and then heading off to watch the footie? You’ve been in the kitchen for over half an hour dealing with those burnt eggs and bacon. Are we ever going to eat? The clock is ticking and didn’t you say that match was starting around 11am?”

  He stopped in his tracks when he saw the look on my face.

  “What’s going on there?” he asked.

  “Nothing important.” I didn’t want to re-live those old memories any more than I just had (particularly that diatribe the old German had drummed into me), as it was enough to have lived through that time, and have come out the other side with my new venture, with Ritchie’s assistance of course, and I cursed them from having cropped up when they had so I just said

  “I had been daydreaming of another huge client, who was due to come across our path the following week”.

  He laughed and said “Yeah, sure. I hope, GiGi that I never see that kind of look on your face in respect of me, anytime soon as it was so dark and sinister”.

  He was right, I had dark moments occasionally. We all have, and sometimes those very moments define who we are. I had my share of bad luck, but I was determined more than ever to never go there again. This was all that mattered, being in control of my destiny and ensuring nobody else had to experience what I went through. The negatives in my life defined the positivity in my character. No matter what, I would have helped others instead of putting a lid on their dreams, providing they paid my fees of course, as a person cannot live on thin air alone, and this was my business.

  I joined in with his laughter to lighten the mood, handed him his breakfast and then off we set.

  The car was parked some distance away and it was a brisk day so, despite the few spats of rain, our mood had indeed lightened.

  The day may have been dull and grey and overcast, but Ritchie knew just how to lift the mood. He was a darling that way, we had been friends so long, that it had become instinct to him.

  We crossed a set of traffic lights and low and behold, Vanessa, was crossing the road. She spotted my little car, waved and flagged me down. I pulled over and wound down the window. She was dripping from the incessant drizzle, but still looked just as trim and proper as she had done when I had completed her assignment. “Hey, how the hell are you? Long time, no see. You look fabulous, by the way. ” I said as she approached the car window. “I couldn’t be doing better,” she said, “I’ve had loads of new invites to events and life is looking rather rosy”, she cooed. I was so pleased by her transformation, as she had gone from being somewhat mousy to being a bit of a doll, pardon the expression.

  We exchanged pleasantries and resumed our journey. We had a football match to attend and the way the weather had turned, it might turn out to be a long endurance to suffer. I wasn’t that much of a football fan, but what can you do?

  CHAPTER 10

  “First match today then, Bro?”

  It was a rainy, miserable day and the football pitch looked like a swimming pool, or maybe the match sponsor was a mud spa and they’d let the marketing manager go a bit wild.

  The team, the Bray Saints, looked depressed and beaten-up even before the start of the match. They came to the game each one with their own different outfit, and despite the small crowd cheering them on they were barely talking to each other, or even showing any enthusiasm about being there.

  “Indeed. It’s a mess. They’re lazy in training and we had a friendly match last week. A bloodbath: we lost six–zero: more like a bloody tennis score.”

  Brother was also in a bad mood. Football was his life and his passion, and losing was definitely not an option. He was clever and engaging, but somehow this new team was eluding him. They did what they were told, but they were also lacking in initiative.

  “Who’s the captain?” I asked.

  “The tall brunette by the bench, the one carrying the balls; her name’s Nala.” He p
ointed in the general direction of the stands; Nala was dragging her feet, probably counting the blades of grass beneath them and moving at a glacial pace. It didn’t sound promising.

  Dex assembled the team around him and made his speech, quoting the most famous coaches of the past, the pride of being part of the Bray Saints, this being the first step of a long journey and, no matter what, it was giving their best on each occasion that would define them as individuals. Personally, I would have added a sprinkle of Churchill, but that was just me.

  From the minute the match started it became evident that this was no ordinary football match. It was the re-enactment of Agincourt, where the poor Bray Saints played the part of the French. Despite every possible effort at playing, the poor team were overwhelmed; not only were their adversaries faster and better organised, but by the beginning of the second half they even looked taller and bigger.

  The puddle of rain became bigger and bigger, so much so that the referee suspended the match during the second half, when it appeared evident it was a game somewhere between water polo and wrestling in the mud.

  That was the good news, because the bad news was that the Bray Saints were losing seven to one. After an hour of shouting, suggesting tactics and encouragement Dex was drained; so he rested on the bench, head in his hands, without even the energy to complain.

  I needed to do something, even if at that point I didn’t know exactly what; after all, Bray was my home village.

  “Do you mind if I go into the changing room?” I asked Dex, who looked like an advertisement for an anti-depressant before the cure.

  “Knock yourself out. They are prepared and potentially a better team, but somehow they don’t work together.”

  Slowly, I followed the girls into the changing room and the atmosphere was indeed grim. Three or four were sitting on a bench, suddenly very interested in their shoelaces.

  “You never learned to play decently,” shouted a brunette, addressing one of her companions, “number nine was running all over the place.”

  “And how was I supposed to stop her, by shooting her? You, on the other side! You were alone in front of the goalkeeper and you hit the post. Go to Specsavers, next time!”

  Nala was trying to calm them down, without success “We have to play like a team, there is no use arguing amongst ourselves.”

  “And where were you? You were mid field doing nothing, waiting for someone to pass you the ball. You could have at least helped with the defence.”

  Football was not my forte and even if I grew up with a brother who could barely talk about anything else, my knowledge was minimal.

  I left them licking their wounds and went out again onto the field for some fresh air. A word kept coming into my mind: “confidence”. Yes, that was the point; they were lacking in confidence. They could play all right, but they definitely didn’t believe they could win – that was clear. I was wondering if they didn’t have trust in each other, but I soon discarded that hypothesis: if that was the case they would not have cared at all and ignored each other, which hadn’t happened. Simply put, they needed a leader.

  I was still pondering the matter when the girls finally came out of the changing room. I looked at Nala and her baggy, gothic attire and an idea started to form in my mind.

  After every match my brother used to take the girls to the nearby park for a pep talk and for a picnic. In fact we had the car full of beverages and food, the latter prepared by my mother, because nothing was less appealing to me than spending time trying to put together some concoction that, inevitably, would be inedible and end up in the bin.

  When we arrived at the park we soon realised that nobody really wanted to speak about the match, not even Dex (which was a first for him), and people just started minding their own business. Some of the girls sat together and talked about boys and school; I sat near Nala.

  “How long have you been a Goth?” I asked.

  “Oh, you mean this?” she answered, looking at her clothes as if it was the first time she’d seen them. “I don’t know: maybe a year or so.”

  “Strong it is, the dark side of the force,” I said trying to make my best impression of Yoda, which resulted in a quizzical look. That hadn’t gone down well, so I ditched the Star Wars approach

  “Ehm … I mean: what is it that attracts you about those outfits?”

  She pondered the answer for what seemed an eternity and then came out with, “I don’t know.”

  Damn! I kept quiet.

  And then she added “I guess I’m trying to be different.”

  “Different from what?”

  She shrugged and then added, “I don’t know.”

  This conversation was going to be a difficult one.

  “I suppose I want to be different from everybody else,” she eventually added.

  I wanted to steer our talk onto a lighter subject, but she pressed on. “I don’t think I like what I’m doing, at school and stuff; it’s all so boring.”

  “We’ve all been there, trying to figure out what we would like to do in our lives, who we would like to be and where we would like to go.”

  “And?” she asked with sudden attention.

  “And what?”

  “Did you figure it out?”

  That got me thinking. About my job as a secretary, the difficulties I’d had to endure at school, and what I was trying to do as a fashion consultant – with the satisfaction followed by the grief when things were not going as expected. “I suppose I’m still working on it,” I said, “But I have an idea of where I’m going.”

  “So what do you do?”

  I explained what my job was and it sounded more glamorous than it was in reality.

  “Wow. I haven’t figured out what I’d like to do yet; I only know I don’t want to end up like my parents.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I don’t know.” That seemed to be her favourite phrase “I suppose they’re boring. They always do the same things: they go to work, they come home and complain about it and then they get stuck in front of the television for the whole evening. And the following day it’s exactly the same. They aren’t going anywhere in their lives and they seem to accept it; they’ve sort of given up.”

  How could I explain that that was more common than she thought? I wasn’t much different from her parents and was still trying to find my own way in the world. I might well end up in twenty years’ time with my dreams broken, returning to secretarial work. I too had idolised my parents when I was a kid, only to find out later, when I was Nala’s age, that they were just ordinary people. There’s nothing wrong in being “ordinary”; going to work, paying the bills, raising a family and ensuring the kids don’t get lost is a hell of a job. It’s less glamorous than some others, but nonetheless something to admire. I would have signed on the dotted line on the spot, if someone had assured me I could have done that job as well with my own kids as my parents had done with me and Dex.

  “But you like football,” I said, passing some “polpettes” that my mother had prepared. Those were definitely a winner; she had obtained the recipe from an Italian friend – they were a sort of pattie made with minced beef, parmesan, potatoes, breadcrumbs and seasoning and then fried. Simple food but, hell, I could have scoffed the lot. She took a bite and showed her approval with a nod of her head.

  “That, yes.”

  “It’s a start; in some respects it’s a better choice than mine of being a fashion consultant – I mean, less expensive. “

  “I love the way you dress, it looks always … appropriate.”

  “Maybe we should go shopping together sometime.” She looked at me enquiringly, so I added, “Don’t worry, I won’t charge you.”

  “GiGi, do you have a boyfriend?”

  That was a sore point. I’d had a few, some nice, some not. “That’s another thing I’m working on.”

  “Me too,” she added, “me too.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The weeks passed by, one c
lient came and went. Not the easiest of the assignments as she was a famous basketball player. Good for my finances, bad for the lack of choice in clothes. I hadn’t had much experience of kitting out the taller ladies in the world, let alone know the shops that sold those kind of sizes, so that job had taken a vast amount of research. Thanks, Ritchie, I thought, you had been wonderful, more than that he was fast becoming a star, at least in my eyes, as he was dedicated and hard-working and also fun to work with. It seemed that his talents knew no bounds and he had cracked on day after day, bringing together a board of samples, which I then showed to the client. The client had been overjoyed with the pieces he had put together, obviously with a little tweaking from my good self. Once the job was done, however, the cheque received was indeed welcome and went into the office funds.

  “Here comes the money, ready to be spent,” I said. Looking forward to investing them straight away in some fancy new outfits.

  “Are you sure?” he said.

  “Sure, that I’m sure. That’s how the world spins around. You work, you earn, you spend. Then the circle starts again.”

  “GiGi, what about the future? Maybe we should put some money away for the rainy days. Things are not going bad, so maybe we should think about office space.”

  I loved the idea, but I was also scared. An office was a commitment and I wasn’t so sure this business would go a long way. I had my doubts and insecurities.

  Observing my silence, Ritchie spoke again, “Let’s do it like this: we put the money into the company account, given it is a substantial sum. That will add to what we earned from the Allyson makeover and slowly we build from there.”

  I hated the voice of reason, but he was right. We needed to find somewhere else to work from… Eventually.

  What made me laugh, though I did feel somewhat wicked for having done so, was when Ritchie referred to our basketball player customer by the nickname he had given her. Some people might have referred to her as a “Stretch Armstrong” which is a none too pleasant phrase for describing someone quite tall. Ritchie, however, spoke of her as Mount Everest. We had a chuckle. I did have pangs of regret over the nickname though, as she was an incredibly nice lady and was quite the character, once you got to know her. It was often like that: the ones we got along with got a nickname. We didn’t know why, it was absurd, but we could not prevent ourselves from doing otherwise.