Having It All (42 page)

David sat over his second pint of tea in Bridge café and smiled at the motherly waitress who kept plying him with rock buns, custard tarts and Eccles cake. He pictured
for a moment the equivalent café in the South, where every surface would be littered with dirty cups and plates and the butter and jam came in tiny individual portions, not big enough to
feed a flea, direct from the freezer.

The moment he’d walked down that steep and slippery slope to Selden Bridge, David had felt comfortable here. It would be wrong to say he felt as though he were coming home, because home
for David was forty miles away over the peaks of the Pennines. But it might as well be four hundred miles, the feel of the place was so different. In Kettley people were friendly compared with
Londoners, but they were taciturn by nature and tended to keep themselves to themselves. Here, as he’d discovered in a single morning, people actually talked to you. Complete strangers
exchanged news and views, handed out advice, gave directions before you even asked for them.

It would, he knew, drive Southerners, with their obsession about privacy, always surrounding themselves with nine foot hedges, stark staring mad. But he loved it. You felt people cared.

Sipping the last of his tea David added up a column of figures on the back of an envelope provided by the cheerful waitress. He picked up the copy of the
Financial Times
he’d
bought earlier and turned to the FT 100 share prices.

If he sold the Mercedes and all his shares in Greene Communications he could almost do it. He would still need another twenty grand or so and to get that he had three options: he could borrow it
from the bank, he could cash in his pension rights for a lump sum payment, or they could sell the London house.

He put down his mug of tea and stared into space.
Sell the London house
. He’d never wanted to face the inexorable logic of getting rid of their house in Holland Park, but now that
he’d left Greene Communications it was madness not to sell it simply to save the mortgage repayments. If he thought there was the slenderest chance of Liz and he getting back together, things
might be different. But there wasn’t. Liz had made that abundantly clear.

Remembering the biting sarcasm of her tone, he felt the familiar anger and bitterness start to lick at him, but swiftly he kicked it away. That was all in the past.

The future was here. In Selden Bridge. Where the millstone grit of the moors seemed to him not grey and forbidding but welcoming. His waitress returned with the offer of another refill. David
smiled. And the well-meaning locals try and drown you in kindness and hot sweet tea.

He must write to Liz and see if she would agree. But first he must get someone to deliver those bloody Christmas presents.

Looking round the newly decorated office, Liz felt her spirits if not exactly soar, then at least rise up a few notches. Just as she’d imagined, the whole place had been
transformed by a weekend’s hard graft with the paintbrush and a few hundred quid’s worth of decent furniture.

And, thank God, they’d given the dreadful Kim her marching orders and replaced her with an eighteen-year-old called Dawn, whom Ginny thought Liz was mad to take on since she had no
qualifications whatsoever, except a bright personality, eagerness to learn and a gratitude so profound for employing her that she stayed in the office till everyone had left, just in case she might
be useful.

The office, with its minty-new designer-grey paintwork, black office furniture and splashes of red in the form of plastic filing trays and desk-tidies actually contrived to look quite smart. And
this morning Dawn had arrived with the star attraction – two huge abstract canvases in oil painted by her drop-out art student brother. If you didn’t look too closely you might just
think you were in a trendy ad agency in Covent Garden.

But, thrilled as she was, Liz knew that all they’d done so far was move the deck-chairs on the
Titanic.
On the way into work today she’d given herself a serious talking to
and decided she had three months, no more, to get things moving or WomanPower would be finished.

‘Right.’ Liz banged her fist on her new desk. ‘Down to business.’ She had spent the last three days reading everything she could lay her hands on about employment
agencies, she had studied the classified job ads and she had lurked outside the window of their rivals till she thought the police would come and move her on. Now she had decided it was time to cut
a few corners.

‘It’s time we showed a bit of enterprise!’ Ginny looked startled. ‘So I’ve decided to go and get a few tips on starting an employment agency from Ross
Slater!’

‘Ross Slater? But isn’t he the millionaire who runs World of Work? He’ll never give advice to a rival!’

Liz grinned. ‘He will if I pretend to be a reporter!’

Ginny’s face was a mask of horror. ‘But that’s dishonest!’

‘Just a bit. But it’ll be worth it. He can tell me more in half an hour than I’ll pick up in a year on my own.’ She started laughing. ‘Naturally I won’t tell
him my real name. And anyway if I do a good job Bert at the
News
will probably publish it.’

‘But won’t he check out your credentials?’

‘I doubt it. Successful men are very vain when it comes to being interviewed. It’s just a chance I’ll have to take. He can only throw me out.’

Before Ginny could raise any more objections Liz reached for the phone and dialled.

‘Hello. Is that Mr Slater’s office? My name’s Susannah Smith from the
Daily News
. I’m doing a series on Britain’s Top Ten entrepreneurs and I’d very
much like to include him.’

‘So tell me Miss, er, Smith, what are you after from this piece?’

Liz sipped her coffee in its dark green and gold French cup and tried not to feel disconcerted by the man sitting opposite her. He was in his mid-forties, wearing a polo shirt and lightweight
suit even though it was February, looking fit and tanned as though he’d just got back from the West Indies. Liz identified the style as Design Guru with a touch of Retail Whiz-kid. And he
still had just a trace of a Cockney accent. But despite his steely charm she found Ross Slater unexpectedly disturbing.

She’d met plenty of rich men in her time and she knew very well that you had to be a bastard to get to the top, but there was something both magnetic and vaguely threatening in Ross
Slater’s manner which was making her nerve trickle down her spine into a small pool on the floor beside her. For the first time she wondered whether it had been such a great idea to lie to
him and give a false name.

Lifting her chin, Liz looked him directly in the eyes, and tried to think about Ginny’s house which would be repossessed if she didn’t find a way of saving WomanPower. ‘The
angle I’m interested in is advice to a beginner.’

‘I see.’ He looked sceptical.

‘The fact is every idiot out there thinks they could be Ross Slater if only they got the breaks and I’m trying to show the skill of making money, the way you create your own
breaks.’ She smiled at him, and he smiled back, seeming to relax. ‘So how did you start World of Work?’

‘On a £2,000 overdraft, in a moth-eaten office in London’s most boring suburb.’

Liz’s heart quickened. If he could build the biggest agency in Britain from such humble beginnings in five years, then she could at least save WomanPower!

‘And how big is it now?’

‘A hundred branches. In every major town in Britain.’

Liz decided it was time to take the plunge. ‘So,’ she asked brightly, ‘what advice would you give to someone starting out in the employment business?’

Ross Slater thought for a moment.

‘First find out who your potential customers are, and the kind of businesses they’re in. There’s no point in signing up two hundred spot welders if all businesses want is
computer programmers. Second, find out who the opposition’s clients are and steal them . . .’

‘How would you do that?’

‘Really, Miss Smith, you’re not showing much imagination. Go and work for them.’

Liz was riveted. She’d never thought of trying that.

‘Third, make sure your people are
good
. That they can do what they
say
they can do. If a girl says she can word process at 120 words a minute make sure she doesn’t
mean 120 words an hour.’

There was a brief silence and Liz looked up from her notes to find Ross Slater studying the narrow band of pale skin revealed by the wedding ring she’d slipped off just before coming.

‘Is that all?’ She covered her left hand with her right.

‘No. Last and most important point. Make local contacts. Go out and look for your customers, don’t wait for them to come to you or they’ll always go to a firm they’ve
heard of.’ He stood up, giving Liz the message loud and clear that the interview was over. It had lasted precisely twenty minutes.

‘One last question.’ Liz was amazed by her own nerve. ‘Could an agency specializing in part-timers catch on?’

He looked at her curiously, ‘Why do you ask?’

Liz smiled modestly. ‘A pet scheme of mine, that’s all. I’ve always thought it was quite a good idea, with so many women being wooed back into the workforce.’

‘No chance, I’m afraid. It’s far too specialized.’

He couldn’t be right. He just hadn’t looked at part-time working as a prospect that was all. She
knew
WomanPower was a good idea.

So preoccupied was she with reassuring herself about WomanPower’s chances of success that she didn’t notice he had already walked to the door and was dismissing her.

‘Goodbye, Mrs Ward.’ He held the door open, a silky smile lifting the corners of his mouth. ‘And good luck with the agency.’

‘Hello, Suzan, this is David Ward speaking.’

‘David? How are you?’ Suzan put her feet up on her desk in the crowded newsroom and picked up a press release in the attempt to hide her excitement and sound casual. ‘What are
you up to?’

David grinned. Nothing had been finalized yet but he had seen round the
Selden Bridge Star
and had liked what he saw. He’d expected outdated machinery and a dyed-in-the-wool staff
who didn’t even want the paperclips moved, but he’d been pleasantly surprised. Still, he had a long way to go yet and he didn’t want any bar-room gossip to screw up the deal.
What’s more, the hardened hacks of the
News
would think he’d finally lost his marbles. For them the known world stopped around Wembley.

‘I’m fine. Very well.’ He wondered if she’d think he was mad too. ‘Cliché, cliché but I’ve gone back to my roots. It’s amazing what a few
days of good Yorkshire air will do for you. I’m feeling terrific.’

Suzan smiled. He sounded it too. ‘What can I do for you?’

David felt embarrassed to be asking Suzan to do him a favour but she was the only person he could think of. ‘Could you possibly deliver a box of presents to my kids down in Sussex?
It’s a lovely drive.’ He took Suzan’s fractional pause for irritation. ‘I expect you’re very busy. I’m sure I could find someone else . . .’

‘No, no, of course I’ll do it.’ Suzan wondered why she felt an instinctive reluctance to meet David’s wife and children. ‘Where do I find the presents?’

‘They’re in the hall of my house in Holland Park. I’ll send you the key with the address. Thanks a million.’

And he put down the phone, imagining the pleasure on Jamie’s face when he opened the Ghostbusters Proton Pack, and feeling relieved to have found a solution to the practical problem that
had been niggling him.

So it didn’t occur to him to wonder what Liz would make of a young and beautiful woman arriving on her doorstep loaded down with Christmas presents for Jamie and Daisy.

‘He sussed me! I was just walking out of the bloody room and he called me Mrs Ward! I nearly died!’

Even though Liz threw herself, giggling, into Ginny’s arms she could still feel herself going cold and clammy when she realized that Ross Slater had known exactly who she was all
along.

‘How did he find out?’

‘He must have phoned the
News
, I suppose, and then done some detective work.’

‘So why did he see you?’

‘God, Ginny, I don’t know! To play with me perhaps? To flex his millionaire’s power muscles? Maybe even to put me off. He tried, you know, said WomanPower couldn’t work.
But, weird man, he also gave me some useful tips which we are about to follow now this minute.’

Forgetting Ross Slater, Liz pulled out her notebook from her briefcase and flipped it open. She couldn’t wait to get moving. ‘First, you, Ginny, are going to get a job with Nine to
Five and steal all their contacts, while Dawn tests the speeds of the measly number of applicants who have shown the slightest desire to get a job through WomanPower and I, poor fool, will try and
find us some customers!’

‘And the same to you, you stuck-up cow!’

Liz slammed down the phone and let rip with the tension of two fruitless, frustrating days spent on the phone crawling to patronizing PAs and superior secretaries who clearly felt that they were
doing her the big favour by even lifting the phone, and that no,
Good God, no
, she could
not
speak to the Personnel Manager/Head of Recruitment/Exec in charge of Hiring and
Firing.

After two whole days of it Liz had vowed never to be rude to a double-glazing salesman or Personal Pension Plan adviser who cold-called her ever again.

Used to relying on the magic word Television to open every door, Liz couldn’t believe how difficult it was for ordinary mortals to get to speak to anyone in authority. Trying to ring the
Personnel Manager of some tinpot little company specializing in plumbing supplies or spot welding was marginally harder than getting through to Buckingham Palace.

Liz gazed down the long list of numbers she still had to ring and slumped back in her spanking new office chair. She had to face it. This wasn’t working. They were going to have to try
something else.

If only she had a name to drop or had met the man before, no matter how briefly, she knew things would be different. It was all very well Ross Slater banging on about making local contacts, but
how the hell, short of joining the Rotary Club or becoming a Freemason, was she going to meet any?