Blue and Green Should Never be Seen! (Or so Mother says)

by Colette Kebell

  “I’d be glad to. A restaurant, you say? The food columnist in the Mail is actually a friend of mine; we went to school together. Mind if I bring her along? That would be stunning publicity.”

  A critic? I wasn’t sure about that; I mean, I’d never discussed critics with Raffaele, but for sure this was an opportunity, right? He was an amazing cook – pardon, chef – so the right publicity would be welcome, I thought. Shit: now it was too late to take the invitation back; if I said anything Natalie would think I was inviting her to dine in a fast-food place.

  “Not a problem, Nat. I’ll text you the address. So how’s the rest?”

  “I have a boyfriend now, too,” she said, giggling like a teenager.

  “The one from the gym? The Denzel Washington look-alike?”

  “You reckon he looks like him?” she asked, puzzled.

  “He’s definitely hot like him.”

  “Well, that’s the one, then – the hottest guy in Berkshire. I’ll send you the details of those friends of mine. Treat them nicely,” she joked.

  “I will. OK, catch you later.”

  “See you on the twenty-third; looking forward to it. ’Bye.”

  At that point, I didn’t know whether I was going to be a hero or a villain. But it wouldn’t take long to find out.

  CHAPTER 32

  More customers.

  Osheena was under training; however, she was a natural. She worked with both Ritchie and me and she understood exactly what we were doing and how; now the question was, would she be able to put her spin on things, adding her own personality? In theory the answer was “yes”, as I trusted my instincts, but plans don’t always go as expected, and I knew something about that! We needed another couple of people at least to keep up the pace, but we were reluctant to hire. First we wanted to be sure that we could sustain the growth; no point in hiring people when you can’t guarantee them a future, and not fair either. But I had an idea.

  I could hire some consultants myself and, if they were working within my guidelines, ethic and style, perhaps we had a way out of working twenty hours a day. We also needed a secretary; getting emails and phone calls was all fine and dandy, but that left us rather disorganised. We could cope when it was just Ritchie and me, but now with Osheena and Jacob, Ritchie’s new recruit, things were becoming more complicated.

  My little sister could maybe give a hand now that she’d finished university and was waiting to find a job, and for other potential candidates I started contacting a few of the bloggers Osheena had put me in touch with. That, at least, was the outcome of a little brainstorming I’d had the previous day with Ritchie. Hey, with some of them, we had similarities and maybe I could strike up some collaboration. What better than putting into practice what you’re actually suggesting, on your own blog, with real, paying customers? For those not just interested in chatting, it was the chance to put their ideas into practice. At a later stage, they could either choose to remain or, if they preferred, they could start their own business. I wasn’t afraid of competition and, let’s be honest, London alone has more than 8 million people; there’s plenty of space for a few more consultants.

  Of course, my aim was to retain them, but I had little control over what decisions they might make in future. I’ll spare you all the details about the training hours we put in for Osheena and Jacob, and the nights up in the office, sustaining ourselves only by means of coffee and takeaways – but it was tough.

  I hadn’t seen Raffaele in days and I was missing him. Well, work was also the excuse for not having told him about the critic Natalie was taking along for the opening. I’m good at procrastinating; I can do it for days and weeks, keeping on delaying things to a later time until I reach a point when a matter becomes unavoidable.

  “Rachel,” – I was calling my sister – “are you still looking for that elusive job?”

  “Hello, Sis. Indeed; how’re you doing?”

  “I’m grand. Business is flourishing and I’m working twenty hours a day.” It was not actually that good when you have to just work all the time, but I didn’t really want to complain.

  “My internship went belly-up. Six months spent doing Excel spreadsheets and cleaning up after the mess of six sales people, and now that I have a degree, they’re shrinking – or downsizing, or whatchamacallit. Anyway, I’m stuck doing a bar job and sending out CVs, waiting for someone to recognise my raw talent.” Rachel was in good spirits. Excellent.

  “I might have a proposition for you. I’m looking for someone to look after a few headless chickens, me included, doing some secretarial work, and maybe helping out with the website and the blog. Whatever you want to grab, you’re welcome to. You’d still have time for interviews and your own stuff. And we can pay!” I said, all in one breath. Oh dear – maybe I did sound a bit too desperate, but she was my sister; she needed something else to put on the CV and … I needed her.

  “I suppose I could. When would I start?”

  “The sooner the better. You could tag along tomorrow and I can show you how things work.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Are you seeing someone?” she asked unexpectedly. Usually she didn’t get too involved in my business, and I was glad that for once she had demonstrated some interest.

  “I’m trying to. Yes, I’ve got a boyfriend now: a nice one. But I’m too busy to even get a chance to see him properly.” It was true, and I felt guilty about that. Business and love don’t go well together and I was torn apart by the two. Of course I wanted to spend more time with Raffaele, but at the same time we’d never been so busy before and things were really picking up. I had a chance to succeed at what I loved; I had responsibilities towards the other people working with me. Things would settle down eventually, I was sure of that.

  “Kinda sucks.”

  “Don’t tell me that! See you tomorrow, then? Someone’s calling me on the other line.”

  “Sure. Don’t work too hard; you only have one life.”

  She wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t either. I was trying to secure my future, making a stable platform from which I could then build a family. Nothing wrong with that.

  I dealt with the next customer and had just hung up the phone when Ritchie and Jacob returned from their trip. They came in the door and started playing a Haka in full Maori style. “Hula Waka taka maa, aloka taka maka booo,” hitting their elbows and legs in their best impression of the All Blacks rugby team.

  “What’s up with you guys – had a magic mushroom risotto for lunch?” I asked, as soon as they’d finished the show.

  “Even better. We finished a job and a nice, fat, juicy cheque is in my pocket, ready to be deposited,” said Ritchie, patting his heart, or most likely the wallet inside his jacket. “And it was a success, darling. Pure love for our little firm.”

  Good. With success come also expenses, and now we had more mouths to feed.

  “And Jacob here is a natural: I told you so.”

  More good news; another guy that we could now unleash and make more clients happy. Osheena also was taking new assignments, and now we really were busier than a one-legged man in a kickass contest.

  “Ritchie, we also have my sister on board. She starts tomorrow.”

  “That’s great news. Any of the bloggers?”

  “I haven’t reached that point yet. Would you mind looking at these few?” I said, marking their names on the list I had in front of me. “I’ll take the second half.”

  “Sure; I’ll work that out with Jacob.”

  I was wondering if I had to start being jealous of Jacob. He was getting all of Ritchie’s attention and there was none left for me. I amused myself with the thought of just saying it out loud, but eventually thought otherwise, knowing very well that we went back a long way and had been through some difficulties.

  We spent the day making calls and organising interviews for the following day. Damn, we needed my sister to take care of all these things. Every day in the office was a day in which we were not seeing customers, and
competitors could have been out there eating our lunch and providing the same excellent services. We needed to hurry.

  Fast, fast, fast. There was no other word in our dictionary.

  CHAPTER 33

  Rachel was brilliant, and not only because she was my sister; she truly was brilliant. She got the switchboard in a jiffy, and our archiving system, and she also started working straight away on a work schedule that would maximise our profits – getting the right balance on acquiring new customers, taking care of the existing ones, trips to the shops to buy stuff: the full monty.

  I couldn’t stay long that day, as I’d organised a dinner with Raffaele and had volunteered to do the cooking in order to apologise for not seeing him as much as I would have liked. Come on, GiGi, I said to myself: don’t lie to yourself – I had to apologise for not seeing him much at all. Period.

  He actually complained a couple of times and made some half-jokes about my being a ghost, or sending him a picture of myself occasionally, so that he could remember what I looked like. He was right, and I kept avoiding the issue; that was me, scooping the dirty stuff under the carpet all the time and avoiding confrontation.

  The following day we were due to spend a full day doing a paintballing game with friends and I was looking forward to it, despite being a rubbish shooter. I still had my mind lost on the evening menu when Rachel came in with a letter in her hand.

  “We’ve received an eviction notice.” Calm, as if she was announcing we had some junk mail that might have been of interest.

  WHAT????

  “Let me see that.” I snatched the letter from her hand and started reading. Yep, that was that. Eviction notice was written in bold, red letters – couldn’t argue about that. I started reading and there was an awful lot of bla-bla-bla, failure to maintain the property in good repair, failure to negotiate a new lease (which was untrue; we still had two crippling years on it) and a list of other items I couldn’t even comprehend. That was a mistake, for sure; but we had to do something. I looked at the leasing company name at the bottom of the letter. No phone listed. I went to the computer and started searching for Richards, Whole and Newsham, the leasing company, and there was the website. Hang on – at the very bottom it said “a Barnes Ltd Company”. Could it be a company related to Jasper? I went on the Battersea Fashion Centre website and yep, there it was. A Barnes Ltd company as well. What was Jasper’s problem? Why wouldn’t he let it go for once?

  I had to find a friend – one with a shotgun – or maybe I should start browsing one of those sites on the dark web to find a killer. I wasn’t fussy; anyone who could kill would have done and I would’ve paid good money for that.

  A plan started forming in my mind, I definitely had some dark clothes in my wardrobe; I just needed a balaclava for the newly formed GiGi Special Unit. A bunch of Ninja (actually just one, but I would recruit) ready to slip silently through the night and take revenge when the enemy was least expecting it. I imagined myself climbing walls and gutters, entering from a window accidentally left open, unsheathing my katana and … zack! A head would roll on the pavement. The next would be Lady Whilsham’s and I was already seeing the headlines the day after, in bold, about the mysterious bloodshed. Poor Harry would be an orphan, but in war we can’t really think too much about the innocents …

  Unfortunately, my good side took over and I tried to think about options that were more reasonable.

  “Rachel, could you please get Tom on the phone?” I said. “He’s listed in the system as Sloman.”

  “Isn’t he Lillian’s boyfriend? I saw him once at a dinner at your place.”

  “That very one, and now he’s her husband.”

  “Cool. I liked him. I’m on it straight away.”

  I was fuming. I thought of sending a text to Ritchie, but it would only get him anxious and he might decide to come back to the office straight away, forgetting about his clients. A nice gesture, but we needed to keep going, no matter what.

  The panic came a few minutes after, when Rachel told me Tom would look into it tomorrow. He asked if it was a court order, and apparently it wasn’t (thanks to Rachel for still thinking straight), so there was no reason to worry yet.

  Yeah – right. Don’t worry.

  I started browsing the internet, searching for a new place; I scavenged every website, but everything was so expensive. Bummer. I had the responsibility of those people working for me; Osheena had left her secure, well-paid job, and I couldn’t let her down like that (or any of the others, for that matter).

  Move outside London, perhaps? That could have been an option, but it would make our lives miserable. Not only would we have had to commute on a daily basis, but who would really trust a fashion consultant based in Slough? I kept browsing through the commercials, and the only things I could find in the area were warehouses – far too expensive if you weren’t selling goods. And the offices: yeah, hang on, there were some, but far too unattractive. Gosh, we just needed a decent-sized office that looked good; had they all disappeared?

  Finally, I stumbled upon a good one in Lombard Street. Bingo! Just two thousand per month: that was a bargain. I had to give them a call. I looked at the agent’s number and tried not to let my voice shake when I called. I soon realised, to my embarrassment, that two thousand was the price per hundred square feet; they had indeed a great office space that could be remodelled to our needs, and we could have picked up as much space as we liked.

  “I have to talk to my business partner,” I said at the end of that awkward conversation. Shit! I was far too naïve to live in this world. All the others that I liked were POA. I wanted to cry, go back home and hide under a duvet.

  If I’d only had the capital, I could have got a major retail space, just in front of Jasper’s, and shown him how things should be done! I was still shaking when, almost an hour later, I went to prepare a cup of coffee. Rachel followed me.

  “Is everything OK?” she asked, pouring hot water into her cup.

  “I’m just a bit nervous about the eviction, that’s all,” I lied. I was in full panic mode. I could accept it if I’d made a mistake, but I hadn’t. Businesses close every day, owing to the economy or to bad management, and that was a risk I’d taken into account when I’d started this enterprise. What I couldn’t accept was sabotage; that’s what Jasper was doing, and I couldn’t understand why.

  “Tom said not to get worried.”

  “Easy for him to say, from the other end of the phone. This business is my life.”

  Rachel went quiet for a moment, probably pondering her position. Not a good day at the office for her; I wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d decided to run at that very moment. I would have done the same.

  We carried on doing our job as if nothing had happened. Eventually, at around four in the afternoon, Ritchie came back from his errands and I filled him in.

  “What a bastard! I’m going to kill that little prick,” he said angrily. His face was red and his fists tight; if Jasper had entered the office at that moment, he’d have been bloody murdered.

  “What options do we have?” he asked eventually.

  “Not many. First we have to wait for Tom’s call. We faxed him the letter and he’ll look into it tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

  “He’ll look into that nonetheless.” I trusted him and he always delivered on his promises. That was something I was sure of: perhaps the only thing, at that very moment.

  “Can we find another place in such a short period of time?” he continued.

  “I don’t know. I’ve browsed the internet and everything seems so expensive. We’re supposed to be in a recession.”

  “Maybe we could work from home with the existing customers. Lie low for a period of time: keep doing what we’re doing until we find the right place.”

  We’d actually had to do that in the past, but it wasn’t a good idea. We were in London; prices would never go down, and even to find this place we’d struggled and had to invest
a lot of money. It would be tough.

  “Perhaps,” I said, not wanting Ritchie to worry. “We’ve been through difficult times – even worse than this. D’you remember that winter when we worked from the shed at your parents’ house?”

  “Oh, don’t go there! It was bloody freezing, in spite of the electric heaters at full power! And that spaghetti junction we had? A single thirty-metre cable extension from the garden plug, then we had at least five power plugs connected to it – the printers, the computers, the lights, the heaters. It was a real safety hazard.”

  “Yeah, and when you tripped on the cable and everything came with you, crashing onto the floor … When they mention people doing things in the shed, I have a very vivid memory of what that’s like.”

  “We were poor, but we were happy,” he said, with a fake sentimental note in his voice. We both sighed, thinking of the old times, and burst out laughing. No way were we going back to that shed. Too much was at stake.

  CHAPTER 34

  I left the office slightly relieved; that was the effect that Ritchie had on me. No matter what, he was my rock, I could count on him to be there and pick up the pieces. I was driving towards Raffaele’s place; I still had to pick up the ingredients for the dinner I was going to prepare that evening. I had a rough idea of what I would do, although I admit the kitchen is not really my domain.

  The phone rang. It was my mother.

  “Hello,” I answered. I started hating that hands-free kit. Why was she calling now? Mothers must have some kind of radar, or some sort of hidden device that tells them when it’s the least suitable moment to call. And they call nonetheless.