THIRTEEN

There were some advantages to being a single mother, I reflected as I put Sarah in her cot for a sleep on Sunday morning. I looked down at my once-trendy pyjamas which were now splattered with stains of different colours. When I went out, I could get it together enough so that at least people didn’t stare, but at home when it was just Sarah and me, I didn’t even pretend. Believing that I had to maintain some standards, however, I did have a pact with myself that I wouldn’t stay in my pyjamas later than ten a.m. – even on Sundays.

I glanced at my watch and, seeing that I still had nearly an hour left, I padded into the kitchen to make myself another cup of coffee, just as the phone rang.

‘Can you believe I don’t have a hangover?’ said a voice I immediately recognised as Debbie’s.

‘Morning, Deb,’ I said. ‘What are you doing up this side of midday on a Sunday?’

‘I decided my body needed a bit of respite after my alcohol intake on Friday and went straight home after the movie. I was asleep by eleven and I feel like a normal human being this morning. This quiet life is sensational, Sophie, I don’t know what you’ve been complaining about.’

‘Trust me, the enjoyment wanes after you’ve done it for a year,’ I said darkly. ‘Surely Ben and Anna wanted to go for a drink afterwards?’

‘They cancelled at the last minute – something about all the fuses in the cafe being blown.’

‘Anna?’ I asked with a wince.

‘Afraid so. When I spoke to Ben he was threatening to ban her from the cafe altogether.

‘The reason I’m ringing is because I’ve had an idea for our business – well, actually, you sort of had it.’

I frowned into the phone while she continued.

‘Remember yesterday at the cafe when you brought out that hideous baby book?’

‘Deb, hideous is a bit strong – it was a present,’ I protested.

‘Trust me. I bought hideous stuff for five years. I can recognise it from twenty paces, even with a hangover that would have killed a horse. Anyway, I was going through some boxes of sample stock I brought back from various business trips and I stumbled across a range of notebooks I picked up in Hong Kong. They were made in Thailand and are very cool. There are different patterns or you can get plain colours in a kind of silk finish.’

‘Uh huh,’ I said, not sure what this had to do with Evelyn’s baby book. ‘What are you thinking of doing with the notebooks?’

‘Nothing with the notebooks. But what about if we used covers just like them and designed and printed pages for our own baby book? The books could come with all the different pages loose and you could just clip in whatever pages you want for your baby.’

‘Kind of like a do-it-yourself baby book?’

‘Exactly. It won’t be tacky because of the cover and the way we design the pages,’ Debbie said. ‘We could have pages like the baby’s head-wetting or . . . What do I know about what mothers want in their baby book? That’s your department. But what do you think of the idea?’

I hesitated. ‘Deb, I think it’s probably got merit. I have to tell you, though, the idea of sitting for eight hours every day in a shop talking to new mothers doesn’t do it for me. I’d rather go back to my old job . . . ’

‘I’m not talking about a shop,’ Debbie interrupted. ‘I’m talking about designing the book and then wholesaling it to the big department stores. They’re always looking for interesting stuff to buy.’

‘Do they really buy things like that from small companies? I would have assumed they’d import it themselves.’

‘They do import a lot of their own stuff, but for individual products like this they’re happy to buy from anyone if they think it will sell. I have a contact who is the national buyer for Handley Smith. I’ll give him a call and see what he thinks.’

Handley Smith was one of the largest department store chains in the country, and knowing Debbie, I was suspicious of the connection. ‘This contact of yours . . . You haven’t slept with him by any chance, have you?’

‘Sophie, I’m shocked you’d think that of me. Of course not!’ Debbie protested.

There was a pause as I let a disbelieving silence fall. Finally, Debbie broke.

‘All right, all right. I did make some moves on him one night about a year ago, but nothing happened. It turned out he’s been living with a woman for five years or something. Definitely not the kind of guy who would cheat. Shame, though – he’s not ugly.’

‘That sounds more like the truth. I guess if you already know him it can’t hurt to run the idea by him. Do you need me to do anything?’

‘Not at the moment,’ she answered. ‘Although you could start giving some thought to how we would make every new parent in Australia aware of the books with a marketing budget of about twenty cents. The department stores are more likely to take on a product if they know we’re going to be doing our own marketing and pushing people into their stores.’

I hung up the phone and grabbed a piece of paper to scribble a couple of ideas that had hit me while we were talking. Chances were nothing would come of it and Debbie would find something more glamorous than baby books to occupy her time, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a bit of a think.

The next day I was just heading out the door with Sarah when the phone rang. I hesitated, trying to figure out whether or not to answer it. After all, the period of time in which Sarah didn’t need either to sleep or feed was a very short window of opportunity and I was heading to Karen’s for a much-needed chat. Talking to a baby was all very well, but it wasn’t exactly mentally stimulating.

However, I’ve always found it hard to resist answering a ringing phone, regardless of the fact I have an answering machine, and after a moment’s hesitation I picked up the handpiece.

‘Hello?’

‘Ms Anderson, this is David Fletcher.’

‘Oh, hello,’ I said vaguely, racking my brain to try to figure out who on earth David Fletcher was.

My tone had obviously given me away as he said, ‘I’m a buyer for Handley Smith. Your partner Debbie Campbell spoke to me earlier today about your range of baby books, which you’re interested in placing in our stores.’

Suddenly I wished I hadn’t picked up the phone.

‘Oh, yes of course, David. Debbie said she’d had a positive discussion with you this morning,’ I replied, inwardly cursing Debbie, who had told me nothing of the sort.

‘Debbie told me that your initial order of books is ready to be shipped to Australia and that you are in the process of placing them in various outlets.’

Thankfully he couldn’t see the look on my face, or the fact that Sarah had chosen this moment to vomit all down my black shirt. I was still attempting to wear black, largely because I didn’t own much else, but the combination of black clothes and white vomit just wasn’t working for me. I tried to ignore the mess both Sarah and I were now in and concentrate on figuring out just what untruths my ‘business partner’ had told this man, who could buy thousands of baby books from us if he decided to.

‘Yes,’ I replied lamely, trying vainly to recall how people conducted business discussions. ‘We’re very excited about the product and have a number of outlets interested in stocking them.’

I figured that if Debbie had told this man the screaming lies it seemed she had, then a couple of small additional ones from me wouldn’t hurt.

‘Well, as I said to Debbie, if the books are as good as they sound, we could be interested in doing a deal with you.’

My mouth fell open as I thought about what this could mean for us. Getting a grip on myself, however, I recalled that we didn’t actually have any products, or in fact any clue about what we were doing, or who would make them.

At that moment Sarah decided that standing still in the kitchen was insufficient excitement and started to cry. Figuring that David Fletcher wouldn’t be too impressed if he knew just how hands-on my baby book research was, I coughed loudly into the receiver until she had stopped and was staring up at me, obviously trying to figure out whether her mother had lost her mind.

There was a silence from the other end of the phone and I said, ‘So sorry, David, I can’t seem to shake this cold. What were you saying?’

‘I was saying that an exclusive deal isn’t out of the question.’ He sounded a touch impatient now. ‘But we’d have to move quickly. I have to finalise the products we’re stocking for the December season by the middle of next month, so I’d like to get a look at your products, talk numbers and decide whether we want to get them into stores for Christmas.’

‘The middle of next month . . .’ I repeated inanely. ‘That’s what, six weeks away?’ I was thinking that six months would be a more realistic deadline at this stage.

‘Just under,’ David answered. ‘But Debbie seemed to think that the timing is achievable for you. We’d need the actual products in the store by the start of November.’

Had Debbie been taking mind-altering drugs? Our business venture to date consisted solely of a ten-minute telephone discussion, but she had been doing a deal with Handley Smith that had us on a five-week deadline.

Turning my attention back to Sarah, who was squirming in my arms, I realised that another yelling session was imminent. Figuring that David would think I had some deadly disease if I produced another coughing fit, I unceremoniously dumped her on the hallway rug and retreated to the kitchen, where I could see her but hopefully David couldn’t hear her. The hideous pattern on the 1970s wallpaper seemed to appeal to her and she lay happily staring at the wall.

Now I could concentrate on the conversation, I figured that as Debbie had leapt in with both arms and legs I might as well do the same. ‘Yes, that shouldn’t be a problem, David,’ I said. ‘Tell me what you need from us between now and then.’

‘First up I need to know your colour range.’

‘Colour range? Yes, of course . . . ’ I replied. ‘Well, obviously we’ve got the traditional pink and blue . . . but not insipid pastels. They’re both really vibrant colours,’ I added with sudden inspiration. Rapidly running out of ideas, I looked frantically around the kitchen. I spotted the fruit bowl on the kitchen table and said impulsively, ‘And we thought we’d round the collection out with lime green, strawberry, orange and banana yellow.’

‘Sounds good,’ said David, obviously taking notes. ‘Now when can I see them? Would Thursday work for you?’

I had been on a roll with my descriptions of the books and had almost convinced myself they were something other than a figment of Debbie’s and my imaginations. However, David’s question pulled me up with a jolt.

‘Let me check my diary,’ I said, desperately playing for time. I had absolutely no idea how long it would take for Debbie to get some samples that would roughly approximate what I’d just been describing, but as I couldn’t even get a letter to the other side of the world in less than a week, I figured three days was probably a little short.

Unable to think of a good reason to put the appointment off for more than a week, I said, ‘This week’s really bad for me – could we make it next week, say Friday?’ I looked at the calendar on the fridge as I spoke. My activities for the week consisted of one baby massage class and lunch with someone I’d met at antenatal classes who’d had a baby a week after Sarah was born. Not exactly wall to wall with appointments . . .

‘I guess that will have to do,’ David said reluctantly.

He was obviously used to people falling at his feet to try to get their products into his chain and seemed to be rather taken aback by my lack of enthusiasm. Had I a product to show him I’m sure I would have been at his office within the hour, but the present situation didn’t give me much option. I could only hope that he thought I was planning to talk to other retailers first.

Sarah’s fascination with the wallpaper seemed to be waning and I decided I should get off the phone before the conversation, which hadn’t been a resounding success to date, deteriorated any further. I wrote down David’s address details on the back of an unopened bill and made a time for the appointment.

‘I look forward to seeing you and your baby books next Friday, Sophie,’ he said by the way of goodbye.

As soon as we were disconnected, I dialled Debbie’s number.

‘What on earth were you thinking, telling David Fletcher we were ready to go with our baby books?’ I yelled into the receiver as soon as she answered.

‘Oh damn, did he call you already?’ she replied calmly. ‘I figured he wouldn’t do that just yet and so I’ve been trying to get some research done to stop you going ballistic when you heard I’d slightly exaggerated our position.’

‘Debbie, we don’t have a position,’ I retorted. ‘We have a vague idea about a concept for some books, no idea of what they’d look like, where we’d get them from, or if we even want to go ahead with it!’

‘Yeah, I know,’ she said sheepishly. ‘But when I started talking to David, he was so interested in the idea, I figured there’d be a good chance he’d try to get someone else to do it if we didn’t, so I decided to go for it.’

‘Well, we have an appointment on Friday week to show him our range of books, which, by the way, come in bright pink and blue, lime green, orange and banana yellow. Oh, and strawberry.’

‘Hmmm,’ Debbie mused, ‘you couldn’t have come up with colours that were a little more standard, could you?’

‘Debbie . . .’ I growled.

‘All right, all right, I understand you were in a difficult situation. The good news is that there’s a gift expo in Hong Kong in a few weeks. There’ll be suppliers there from all over Asia, including some that make silk- and paper-covered books. If we can wing our meeting with David and get him hooked, I’ll be able to find something very similar, if not identical, to the notebooks and sort out our pricing and lead times.’

‘Hold on, Debbie,’ I said. ‘We really need to figure out whether this is what we want to do before we get too carried away.’

When we’d vaguely discussed it yesterday, starting our own business had sounded like the perfect solution to my problem of having to earn money but not wanting to leave Sarah with someone else for ten hours a day. More than half of the money I’d put aside to live on until I went back to work had gone, and while I’d been trying not to think about it, I knew that at this rate I’d have to go back to my job within the next month or so. The thought of spending some of my quickly dwindling savings on a venture that might go nowhere gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

‘Sophie, I think we’ve got to follow this a bit further,’ Debbie said seriously. ‘We can see a gap in the market, there’s a major department store very interested, and I’ve got a pretty good lead on where to get the stuff from. I could get an airfare to Hong Kong on frequent flyer points, so we’ll only have to pay for my costs while I’m there. What do you say we see what I can come up with? If it doesn’t go any further we haven’t lost much. If it does work out and we each put, say $10 000 or $15 000 in, we’ll double or triple our money and maybe be able to roll it out into a full-scale business with a whole range of products.’

I didn’t have $10 000, let alone $15 000. But if I wanted to get off the corporate treadmill I was going to have to take a chance sometime, and I knew that passing up an opportunity like this was the kind of thing I might always regret.

‘Okay, okay,’ I said, taking a deep breath. ‘Book your ticket and let’s see if we can figure out how to come up with something vaguely resembling a baby book, before the meeting.’

The next couple of days passed quickly as I spent every second Sarah was sleeping trying to come up with a design for the baby book pages. Debbie had found someone who would supply a patented binding system, which made the whole book easy to personalise by inserting individual pages in any order. My challenge was to come up with some pages that looked great and would appeal to different people.

Having spent years coordinating the printing and design of event invitations, designing some pages for a baby book should have been a piece of cake. However, it was proving surprisingly difficult. What to take out of the standard baby books was easy. It was what to put back in that was slightly harder. I sat staring at a blank piece of paper for a number of hours. I decided to think about the things that I wanted to remember and I thought Sarah would one day like to know.

First Pictures: This page could be whatever the parents wanted it to be. For Sarah, I decided it would be a picture of the first ultrasound Dr Daniels did.

Birth Announcement: This would assume that the news had been spread via email, which was how Debbie had informed our network of friends of Sarah’s arrival. I also wanted to figure out a way that some replies could be slotted in (some of the ones I’d received had been hilarious, one of my friends even having penned a limerick to celebrate the occasion).

First Visitors: In Sarah’s case it would have to be Debbie, who unfortunately had avoided being captured on film in the very unglamorous outfit she’d worn during the delivery.

First Party: Of course this would have to be Sarah’s coming-out at the King Street Cafe.

Baby’s Family: This was a tricky one, but I figured if I left it at that, people could put in what worked for them. At least they wouldn’t have to deal with things like glaringly blank spaces in sections dedicated to the baby’s father.

Baby’s Family Tree: Sarah’s family tree needed a bit of work, but I thought it was important for her to know where she came from.

Vital Statistics: This wasn’t just the standard baby weight, length, etc. It was also a calculation of the number of times the baby fed, woke during the night and had its nappy and clothes changed over the first ten days. I’d found myself totting these things up in sleep-deprived moments and figured it wouldn’t be bad for Sarah to have some idea of what she was up to in her early days.

List of Accomplishments: I felt that just recording things like first smile and sitting up missed out a lot of milestones that were significant to me. After all, as Sarah wasn’t going to read this book for quite some years, it was my book as much as it was hers. So I decided to add a checklist of things that had proved hugely daunting on our arrival home from hospital, but which were already second nature. Jotting down the first couple of things that came to mind, I listed burping the baby over your shoulder (which I only tried for the first time after I put a pillow behind me in case I dropped Sarah over my back), and my personal nemesis from the early days – fingernail cutting.

After a bit of thought, I put back some of the more traditional options I’d initially excluded. This book was supposed to be about options and a lot of people still had babies in wedlock and had them christened.

With an initial list of pages in hand, I visited an old friend of Max’s who ran a design studio overlooking the water in the harbourside suburb of Balmoral and to whom I’d given a lot of work over the previous couple of years. Single and childless, Simon might not have been the best choice to design a baby book, but I wanted the book to look different from all the others on the market. One thing I was sure of was that Simon wouldn’t come up with a design sprinkled with storks and chubby babies. Besides, I sometimes missed the buzz of a design studio and it was a good excuse to visit – even if it was only briefly.

‘So let me get this straight, Sophie,’ he said. ‘You’re looking for a contemporary feel for a baby book . . . Has no one ever told you that kids and cool don’t work?’

‘Simon, shame on you. Haven’t you seen Cindy, Elle or Catherine lately? A baby is THE accessory. You’re just not in the loop if you don’t have a baby.’ I wasn’t even sure that I believed this argument, but I felt I had to at least put up a fight.

‘Well, I’ll settle for the latest Mooks trousers myself. When do you need these designs back?’ He laughed at the look on my face. ‘You’d think, after nearly fifteen years in this industry, I’d stop asking that, wouldn’t you? Let me guess, you’ve got a meeting with the head of Harrods tomorrow morning.’

‘It’s not quite that bad. It’s not Harrods and the meeting isn’t until the end of next week.’

‘Actually, you’re in luck. I’ve just had a new designer start this week. I’ll throw her this one to warm her up before I give her a real job.’

Despite Simon’s professed lack of enthusiasm, I had worked with him for long enough to know that he would relish the challenge, and I left knowing there was a good chance he would spend more time than his junior designer on the project.