The following morning was a Saturday so Charley got up extra early to give herself time to walk Carlo and arrive at the shop in good time to set up for the day. Thoroughly bored of plodding round the streets, she decided to take him for a quick run on the Downs, reckoning he’d get twice as much exercise in half the time. Despite the painfully early hour, a good many joggers and dog-walkers were already out, some combining the two and running with a dog lead tied round their waists. It all looked horrendously keen to Charley.
‘You can run, but I’m sticking with walking,’ she informed the lurcher. Unclipping his lead she let him go, expecting him to lope around her in wide circles as he usually did when Ricky was there. Carlo had a different idea. He shot off, in a straight line, streaking across the grass and heading back towards the city. Bloody hell!
‘Carlo! Carlo!’ she yelled, but the dog ignored her, wilfully deaf to her increasingly desperate bawling. Bloody, bloody, hell! She raced off after him, still bellowing his name. Heads turned and a few people tried to grab Carlo as he passed them, but they had no chance of catching him. To Charley’s horror, the dog was almost at the road and she could see cars coming in both directions.
‘Carlo!’ she screamed. There was a cacophony of squealing tyres as multiple cars slammed on the brakes. Miraculously, the lurcher emerged on the other side of the road, unscathed, and still racing onwards. Raising her hands in apology and gratitude to the drivers for not killing Ricky’s precious hound, she dodged between the cars, in hot pursuit. Ten minutes later, she was out of breath and the dog was out of sight. Bloody, bloody, bloody hell! What on earth was she going to do? She couldn’t even think clearly, her mind too bombarded with sickening images of Carlo getting hit by a car or a bus. Snatching her phone from her back pocket, she called Angie.
She garbled a panic-fuelled, incoherent account of the situation ending with a plaintive, ‘I don’t know what to do!’
‘Go back to the car, drive around looking for him. You’ll cover more ground that way,’ Angie advised rationally. ‘Let me sort out the kids and then I’ll come and help.’
Still out of breath, Charley walk-ran back to the car and started cruising round the streets nearest the Downs. She felt physically sick. If anything happened to Carlo she’d never forgive herself. And neither would Ricky. Should she call him and let him know? What good would that do? It wouldn’t achieve anything except worry him. Twenty minutes later, she’d driven around about half of the streets in Clifton and the Whiteladies Road area abutting the Downs but there was still no sign of the dog. Her phone rang and she hurriedly pulled over and grabbed it, thinking it would be Angie.
‘Charley, darling, it’s Pam.’ Charley had been so convinced it would be Angie it took her a moment to focus on what her mother-in-law was saying. ‘I’m so sorry to do this to you at the last minute but I’m not going to be able to get into the shop today. Freya, one of my young lodgers, isn’t at all well. She’s running a very high temperature and I just can’t leave her.’
In her panic about losing Carlo, Charley had forgotten all about opening the shop. Whilst she wanted to reassure Pam and tell her not to worry about getting in to work, she was desperate to get her off the line in case Angie tried to ring her.
‘It’s not a problem, Pam. Don’t worry, honestly. I can manage,’ she said abruptly.
‘I’m so sorry…’ Pam persisted.
‘No. It’s fine.’ Then, realising her brisk tone might imply she was annoyed, she added, ‘Sorry Pam, I’m just in the middle of something. But thanks for letting me know. And I hope she’s okay.’
She ended the call and glanced at the time on the screen. Nearly eight thirty. There was no way she could get in to open up in time; she didn’t even have the keys with her. They were in her handbag back at her flat. And besides, she had to find Carlo. She bit her lip and thought about her options – or rather, her only option. She’d have to call Tara. It wasn’t a pleasing prospect, given how frosty things were between them just now, plus Tara never worked weekends; her time with Monnie was sacrosanct. Charley was going to have to beg. She’d also have to make a grovelling apology and maybe even cave in on the promo event if necessary. Biting the bullet, she dialled her number. She barely had time to finish explaining her predicament before Tara interrupted her.
‘Does Pam have a key to the shop?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll pick it up and go straight in. Should just about make it by nine.’
‘Tara, you’re a star—’ started Charley, her gratitude only just outweighing her amazement.
‘Have you called the police?’ Tara cut in.
‘No, why? They’re not going to look for a missing dog.’
‘No. But if he causes an accident, they’ll know who to call. You don’t want them calling Ricky, do you?’
Charley’s mouth went dry. ‘How will they know to call Ricky?’
‘Carlo will be chipped and Ricky’s number is probably on his collar tag.’
Charley gulped at the idea of Ricky getting a call from the police about his dog.
‘And Charley, call 101 not 999!’ was Tara’s parting advice before ringing off.
You might be bossy, pushy and opinionated, but you’re also a bloody good mate and brilliant in a crisis. She rang 101, navigated the automated menu, and then hung on, waiting for her call to move up the queue and be answered. She waited ten minutes, all the while imagining Carlo involved in a dire accident, until she simply couldn’t cope with the sheer frustration and impotence of sitting there not actually doing anything to find him. She put the phone on speaker, plonked it on the passenger seat and carried on driving round looking for Carlo, trying to crush the rising panic inside her. A few minutes later, Angie called, so she gave up on the police to take the call. Angie had scoured the whole of the Redland district on the other side of Whiteladies Road but hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Carlo. They divided the inner city up between them and spent the next hour or so criss-crossing the streets, fruitlessly searching for him. Eventually, admitting defeat, Charley rang Angie to call off the hunt.
‘Do you think he’s found his way back to the bike shop?’ Angie didn’t sound at all optimistic.
‘Tara would have called if he had. Someone would have seen him and let her know, surely.’
‘What about Ricky’s flat?’
‘I don’t think he’d know the way back, and it’s miles.’
Nevertheless, they both drove down to Ricky’s place in Bedminster, where they found an exhausted Carlo, lying flat out on the doorstep. Charley sank to her knees in relief, flung her arms round the dog and hauled him into an ungainly hairy hug. Carlo thumped his tail but still looked at her sorrowfully.
‘He’s not here, boy,’ she told him sadly.
It was almost lunchtime by the time Charley got into the shop, full of gratitude towards Tara, to the point where she was even beginning to feel guilty about scotching her proposal for the promo event. Whatever her mate’s flaws, Tara was big-hearted and supportive, and Charley knew the idea would have been driven by the best motives. Maybe she’d been too up herself? Too angered by Tara going behind her back to Nisha. Why not let Tara run the event? The woman was a human dynamo and it was only a one-off marketing venture, for goodness’ sake. Charley could probably pretty much leave it to her, although she drew the line at not turning up.
‘I owe you big time,’ said Charley arriving at the shop, with Carlo firmly on his leash, and spontaneously giving Tara a hug. ‘Seriously, thank you so much.’
‘Where was the little sod?’ asked Tara, nodding at Carlo who’d settled at his watch post in the window.
‘He’d taken himself to Ricky’s.’
Tara smacked her forehead in exasperation. ‘Why didn’t we think of that to start with!’
‘I know,’ said Charley, shaking her head at her own stupidity.
‘Anyhow. No harm done. He’s safe, thank God, and you don’t even have to ’fess up to Ricky.’
‘Thank God,’ echoed Charley.
She was fully expecting Tara to shoot off sharpish to spend the rest of the day with Monnie, but Tara astounded her for the second time in one morning by suggesting she fetch them both some lunch from the deli.
‘Baz is expecting to look after her all day, so I may as well let him. Anyhow, being in here was actually way more fun than watching Monnie ride round and round at pony club.’
Business was brisk and they had to grab snatches of lunch between customers so it wasn’t until halfway through the afternoon that there was a chance to catch up. Charley was still toying with how to broach the subject of the promotional event without losing face, while Tara gave her a rundown of her morning’s activities.
‘The wine bar called wanting a twenty-five more party bags.’
‘Oh, fantastic!’
‘I told them there was now a minimum order of a hundred bags, unless they wanted to pay a delivery fee.’
You did what? Indignation surged up inside Charley, until Tara took the wind out of its sails by saying, ‘They were fine with it. So if you let me know which products you put in theirs I’ll order everything.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Charley flatly, not just outmanoeuvred by Tara, but totally deflated.
Especially when Tara continued, ‘The thing is, it makes good business sense. If the venues have bought a hundred bags then it’s in their interests to shift them. They won’t want them hanging round gathering dust, all of which is great marketing for the shop, of course. Although it would be even better if you actually had the shop’s name on the bags, not just the “Charley’s” logo.’ The implied criticism hit home and Charley struggled not to leap to her own defence. ‘There’s no reason we can’t impose a minimum order with everyone,’ Tara finished blithely.
‘The pubs won’t order a hundred bags at a time,’ Charley told her, shaking her head. Thinking about the pub she’d worked in before she set up the shop, she explained, ‘They won’t have the space to store them, for a start.’
‘Do you know that for a fact or are you speculating?’
‘Well no, but—’
‘Well, we’ll just have to see, won’t we?’ replied Tara, glibly dismissing both Charley’s objection and her professional insight. ‘I’m telling you, Charley, this is the way forward with the party bags. The only way forward,’ she persisted, putting her hand up to silence Charley’s protest. ‘It’s all about economies of scale. It’s basic business sense. If the pubs don’t want the minimum order, we drop them.’
‘How can losing customers be good for business?’ challenged Charley.
Tara let out a sigh, which Charley took personally, before she explained rapidly, but in a painstaking tone, ‘Look, profit is total sales minus total costs, right? The total costs are the variable costs plus fixed costs. The variable costs are what we put in the bag, and the fixed costs are the cost of delivery – regardless of how many bags you deliver. So to make a profit, total contribution has to exceed total costs. So, factoring in…’
Charley zoned out. She’d tried to follow Tara but was defeated by what seemed to her to be the deliberate opaqueness of her business-speak. She only refocussed when Tara asked her a direct question.
‘Would you deliver one bag?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Precisely. You have to know how many bags you need to deliver to make it profitable. So, unless you know that figure…?’ Tara raised a challenging eyebrow. Charley gave her brief shake of her head. ‘Then I’m saying let’s go for one hundred. Okay?’
‘Fine,’ said Charley, completely defeated, knowing she couldn’t even begin to muster an argument to counter Tara’s decision.
‘You know, this is a brilliant little shop, Charley. I’m absolutely convinced that if we just roll up our sleeves and focus on improving the profit margins we can make a real go of it!’ Which seemed to Charley to be an insufferably pompous insult.
Working with Tara was like being on a rollercoaster. One minute she felt she was getting a handle on working with her and that everything would be fine, and the next minute Tara did something that made her want to retreat to a darkened room and resort to primal screaming.
Later, brooding on their exchange, Charley felt as if she’d somehow lost an important battle, outgunned and outclassed by a more knowledgeable opponent. Worryingly, she hadn’t really understood what Tara was saying, and the bottom line was that the conclusion still didn’t make sense to her. How could it be good business practice to deliberately lose customers? She rebuked herself for harbouring the probably unfair suspicion that Tara had made her explanation deliberately complicated. Nevertheless, it had left her feeling stupid, out of her depth as if she were playing a game whose rules she didn’t fully understand.