“You may as well go home, Leah,” said Lottie as the last customer left the shop. “I can close up here.”
“Ah, thanks Lottie. It’s my mum’s birthday and I’ve got about half an hour to buy her a cake before the bakery closes!”
Lottie smiled and waved her off before returning to the stock room. She’d finally taken a job managing a sportswear shop five minutes from Riya’s house. It was poorly paid, but it was enough to prevent her from eating into her severance pay and the money she’d made selling her designer wardrobe. That was money she could plough into MarketMe.
Lottie had stuck an ad in the student magazines of all the top developer courses in the country and one, just one, candidate had been in touch. Myles was eighteen, studied IT architecture at college and suffered from severe social anxiety, choosing to spend most of his evenings holed up in the clichéd dark room as opposed to being out in sticky-floored bars drinking tequila shots and weak beer with a loud, sexually charged group of friends, like most young techies.
But social flaws aside, Myles was as passionate about the challenge of creating a platform from nothing as Lottie was about seeing her idea come to life, giving other businesses the tools to break the jargon and mystery of marketing, and the power to create their own strategy without investing thousands on external consultants.
Lottie was absolutely clear on her direction for the platform; she knew what the dashboard should look like, what structure should sit behind it, what numbers needed to be crunched and where. She knew what add-ons she’d need at a later stage; upsell facilities, an expert marketplace where customers could find suppliers for brand design, email builds, data inputting. She knew she wanted a points-based loyalty system that agencies could take advantage of if they bought a package for advising multiple clients. Her vision was far-reaching, but her budget wasn’t. Even with the money she’d made selling her designer wardrobe, Lottie could only pay Myles a meagre amount, but she still got more than she was paying for.
Myles had a crush. In fact, it was bordering on obsession. All he thought about, day in day out, was Lottie. Any spare time he had outside of college, if it wasn’t spent working on developing Lottie’s beloved platform, it was spent thinking about Lottie’s beautiful face, her model figure, her salon-perfect hair. That first day when he’d walked into the coffee shop where she’d interviewed him for the job, he couldn’t believe his eyes. He thought back over all the years he’d spent being teased about his anxiety, his bad skin, his inability to play sport of any kind, and in that moment, he wouldn’t have traded it for anything. If only the bullies could have seen him then, sitting opposite this gorgeous blonde, discussing the pros and cons of one database type over another, negotiating his salary. They’d have been green with envy.
He’d agreed to less that he should have done. But not because of his instant infatuation but because he loved the idea. No, he more than loved it; he believed in it. He had a weird feeling in the pit of his stomach as Lottie talked him through it; it was as though he could see how the future would pan out – this was more than an idea; this was life-changing. And he had to be a part of it. Lottie had offered him equity too, not that the idea was worth a penny. But Myles knew it would be. He’d become enough of a Silicon Valley geek to know which ideas took off and which didn’t, which entrepreneurs to be wary of and which ones – from a developer’s perspective, might be worth a punt.
Lottie sensed Myles had a crush, but she was careful not to exploit it. If he wanted to spend more time working on MarketMe than she was paying him for, that was his prerogative, but she would never have asked him to. She liked working with him – he had great ideas and he’d ‘got’ what she was hoping to achieve immediately. Together they’d brainstormed and come up with hundreds of scenarios, hundreds of potential problems that MarketMe could solve. It was forming right before their eyes. The bare bones were there, and Myles was working on the dashboard. He’d persuaded a college friend to create some designs in return for a discounted use of the platform once it was ready for market. It was coming together, slowly but surely.
Meanwhile, Lottie was counting the hours before she could close down the shop the four days she worked, so she could race home and continue developing plans for launching MarketMe to the world. She worked quicker on her own, so she was happy to let Leah leave early.
Lottie cashed up the till and returned to the shop floor to tidy up the stock ready for morning. Then the bell rang making Lottie jump out of her skin. She hadn’t realised Leah had left the door on the latch. She poked her head round from the rack she was tidying and caught her breath. Standing in the middle of the shop wearing a Burberry mac over blue jeans, his dark eyes barely visible beneath thick, manicured brows, was Zac Morecambe-Cheney.
Henry walked up to Janet Rod-Pelly’s desk. He was feeling pleased with himself. His conversations with Charles and Lucas had gone better than he’d expected. It seemed anyone could be bought. Thanks to a promise of higher salaries and bigger bonuses if they voted him in, they were coming around to his way of thinking. The added sweetener of a brand-new Aston Martin wouldn’t have hurt either.
“Hello Janet. Is Marcus free?” Henry said, knowing full well he wasn’t in the office. Henry had work to do, and it would be a lot easier to do if Marcus wasn’t around. But since the last board meeting, Marcus had closed down all access to his diary and been unusually secretive about his movements and whereabouts. Henry wanted some indication the coast would be clear for the next few days.
Janet looked up in surprise. She’d been sitting outside the boardroom when the vote took place and heard most of the conversation. But being discreet and consummately professional, not to mention unfailingly loyal to Marcus, Janet had kept her mouth shut and her head down. She knew Henry had taken a battering and hadn’t expected to see him crawling back with his tail between his legs quite so soon.
“Hello Henry,” she replied, warmly. His recent idiocy aside, Janet had always harboured a secret soft spot for Henry Carlisle. “I’m afraid he’s not in today.”
“Oh?” Henry said, surprised. “But it’s Wednesday! This is normally the day he tries to keep free so he can get work done. Are you sure?”
Janet laughed. “Yes, Henry. He has meetings today in town; he’s not coming into the office.”
“What meetings?” He asked, attempting to create a picture of innocence. Janet wasn’t fooled. “I’m sorry, Henry. I’m not privy to the details. I doubt it’s anything to be concerned about,” she added kindly.
“Is he out all week, or just today?”
Janet looked back to the screen in front of her. “Today and tomorrow. Then I think he’s planning to work from home on Friday.”
Perfect, Henry thought. “Thanks, Janet. Maybe I’ll try calling him. It’s nothing too urgent.”
Janet smiled. She had a feeling Henry’s outburst in the board meeting was the beginning of the end for him and it was a shame. Henry had contributed so much to the growth of Falcon, but the success had gone to his head. While she wasn’t aware of the extent to which Henry had consistently cheated on his wife, Janet knew he was flawed. Maybe he’d taken things too far. Whatever happened to Henry, Janet had unquestionable faith that Marcus would do whatever was fair.