Pam’s final words echoed in Charley’s ears long after her mother-in-law had left, and she spent the rest of the weekend racked with uncertainty. Was she ‘choosing’ to lose Ricky? She honestly didn’t think that decision was hers to make, yet Pam seemed to think it was so easy.
‘Tell him how you feel,’ she’d said, and apparently that would sort it all out; Ricky would abandon his plans, and his family, and give everything up for her. If only. Life isn’t a rom-com, and the route to ‘happily ever after’ isn’t that straightforward. Sometimes, as Charley knew only too well, the road ended abruptly, at a cliff edge, leaving you confronting a sheer drop into an empty chasm. If she did call Ricky, how would the conversation really pan out? She tried to imagine it, building a fantasy reunion in her mind’s eye, but she couldn’t write a convincing script, couldn’t even work out what they would say to each other. Besides, there was one glaring mistake in Pam’s assessment of the situation. She hadn’t factored in what Ricky wanted. It didn’t seem to Charley that Ricky was even remotely interested in rekindling their relationship. Quite the reverse in fact; it was patently obvious he’d already moved on. You only had to see how enthusiastically he was pursuing his plans to sell Erica his business. If he’d given Charley any indication of wanting to try again, or even to be with her, just once, well, then it might be different.
On Monday morning, she dropped Bubbles at Pam’s for the morning, and then headed into work. She was in a low mood, not having slept well, fretting over trying to sort things out with Tara.
‘I am so not looking forward to this,’ she muttered as she unlocked the door to the shop. ‘Obviously the best thing to do is tackle it right away the moment Tara comes in,’ she coached herself. ‘I’ll apologise, clear the air, and then suggest the meeting with Nisha.’
It probably would have been a good plan if Tara hadn’t scuppered it, not showing up until just after eleven and, unusually, not bearing coffee and pastries. Also unusually, she stayed standing in front of the serving counter and didn’t take her coat off, or make a move to join Charley at the till. A couple of women were browsing through the chocolates on the confectionary table so Tara kept her voice low as she spoke to Charley.
‘I’ve decided to give up helping out in the shop.’
‘Oh, no! Please don’t,’ implored Charley, also in a low voice.
Tara was adamant. ‘I’m sorry, Charley. I’ve thought about it long and hard, and I just can’t work with you anymore. I want to us stay friends, but working together is making that impossible.’
Glancing over to the customers, checking they were still out of hearing range, Charley said pleadingly, ‘I understand what you’re saying and why you’re saying it, but we can make this work, Tara. We can.’
Tara shook her head and said, with what was for her an astonishing degree of understatement, ‘We just don’t see eye to eye on how things should be run.’
‘I know,’ Charley agreed, ‘and I know I need to listen to you more, and take your advice more…’
She was met with a look of barely disguised disbelief and Charley couldn’t blame Tara for her scepticism, since she had consistently quashed or opposed nearly every suggestion her mate had made to improve the business. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the two women approaching the till, one of them clutching a small handful of items. Tara stood back to let Charley deal with them, and once they’d left, they carried on the conversation.
‘I was going to ask Nisha to mediate a meeting between us. You, me and Pam,’ Charley said. ‘Please come. If nothing else, say you’ll come to that. Give me one last chance.’
Tara took a deep breath then let it out slowly, clearly dubious. ‘I don’t know. There are some significant problems to resolve, Charley. I’d want to be properly involved in managing things, the decision-making and so on.’
Charley nodded. ‘Yes, yes, I know.’
‘And you’d have to renegotiate some deals,’ Tara added pointedly.
‘I agree,’ said Charley. ‘Starting with Angie’s. You were right. It’s a terrible deal. Even Angie says so! It’s on my To Do list already.’
This last admission clearly surprised Tara and seemed to get her wavering. ‘I’m serious about wanting to make some money out of the shop, Charley—’
‘So am I,’ cut in Charley. ‘But I don’t think I can do it without you. And in fact, I’m not even sure if I want to.’
The truth of this last statement hit home for Charley the moment she voiced it. Running the shop without Tara suddenly had no appeal for her. She wasn’t cut out for being a ‘sole trader’, she realised, or a ‘sole’ anything, come to that. She was a people person; working on her own was dull and dreary, a drudge. She didn’t just need Tara’s expertise in the shop, she needed her company too.
‘Can’t we just try again? What have we got to lose?’
‘Our friendship?’ remarked Tara.
‘It won’t come to that, I promise. I value your friendship, and I value you, too much,’ Charley told her sincerely.
‘You’ve got a funny way of showing it,’ said Tara, with uncharacteristic bitterness.
‘I know,’ admitted Charley. ‘And I’m truly sorry. Things will change. I promise.’
‘Okay,’ said Tara, hesitantly, but the doubt on her face had begun to slowly dissipate and eventually she smiled at Charley and said, ‘I suppose I’d better go and get the coffee and the croissants then.’
‘No,’ said Charley delving into her bag for her purse. ‘I’ll get them. You call Nisha and sort out the meeting.’
Nisha agreed to come round to the shop after it closed on the Saturday. In the meantime, she told them to spend the week privately, but candidly, drawing up a list of the problems they had working together and then, without sharing the list, they were to send them to Nisha by close of play on Friday.
‘I’m going to need a sodding great big piece of paper,’ said Tara.
‘You can have a little bit of till roll,’ joked Charley.
When Pam got in, Charley updated her. ‘Will you be okay to stay on after closing on Saturday?’ she asked.
‘Yes of course, and I suppose I’d better send Nisha my list too.’
Charley’s head whipped round. ‘Wait! You have problems too? Please tell me they’re with Tara and not with me?’
‘It’s a private list,’ Pam retorted, her mouth twitching playfully.
The reconciliation with Tara lifted Charley’s spirits for the rest of the day, until Ricky waltzed in, closely followed by Erica. Unnecessarily closely, in Charley’s opinion.
‘I thought I’d introduce you,’ he told them. ‘Erica’s taking over the bike shop.’
Erica flicked her hair, flashed Ricky a blatantly flirtatious smile, then turned towards Charley and Pam, put out limp hand and said, ‘Hi! I’m your new neighbour!’
There was a beat and then Pam stepped forward, shook Erica’s hand and said, ‘How lovely to meet you.’
‘Yes. Welcome to Cargo!’ cried Charley, a little overly brightly. Even to her ears, her tone sounded false and brittle. She was really going to have to get a handle on how to cope with this woman, she told herself.
‘Thank you so much,’ enthused Erica. ‘It’s so good to meet you. Ricky’s told me how friendly and helpful everyone is.’ She pulled a simpering ‘lucky little me’ expression and Charley’s hands itched to slap it off her face.
‘Have you run a bike shop before?’ asked Pam politely.
‘No. And I have absolutely no idea where to start!’ replied Erica gaily. Putting her hand on Ricky’s arm, she added, ‘But Ricky’s going to hold my hand and talk me through everything. So, fingers crossed, I should be fine.’
Charley stared at the woman, trying not to hate her. It didn’t work. Erica’s nauseating coquettishness just put her back up.
‘So, is the deal all done and dusted?’ asked Pam, possibly out of politeness to fill the awkward silence, but Charley suspected the older woman of fishing. Pointlessly, in her opinion, since, judging by the expression on Erica’s face, it was clearly a done deal.
‘Well… we’re nearly there,’ replied Ricky, cautiously.
‘We’re just working out the final details,’ gushed Erica, gazing up at Ricky. ‘Looks like Ricky’s going to be a bit of a sleeping partner,’ she said and then turned to smile sweetly at Charley.
Ricky looked as if didn’t know where to put himself – whether it was because he hadn’t wanted details of the deal to be broadcast so openly, or whether it was because Erica was so obviously being deliberately provocative, Charley couldn’t tell. Either way, she could have happily throttled her.
They stayed for a few minutes, Erica asking Charley some questions about footfall, customer numbers and seasonal peaks and troughs which she did her best to answer, although she knew she was coming across as vague to the point of evasive. She could sense Ricky’s dismay at her apparently unhelpful attitude. The problem was, she didn’t actually know the figures, she’d never compiled any and, for obvious reasons, wasn’t keen to admit that. When they left, Ricky looked back over his shoulder at her, a look of bewildered disappointment in his eyes, and she hated herself.
‘When she says “sleeping partner” she means a business sleeping partner, surely?’ said Pam. ‘One that invests in the company but doesn’t actually work there, yes?’
Charley didn’t reply. Watching Ricky and Erica walking off together back to the bike shop she was suddenly overwhelmed by the realisation that his departure was not just inevitable, but was gathering momentum, like a plane hurtling down the runway before take-off, and she was powerless to stop it leaving the runway.
For the remainder of that week, every time Charley saw Ricky, Erica was with him, laughing at something he’d just said, and seemingly forever pawing at him. She told herself off for being pathetically jealous. And as for Ricky, she could hardly bear to look at him. She just wanted him to be gone. She couldn’t wait for him to leave, so that she could begin to get on with living her life without him. Waiting for his final departure was agony.
After the shop closed on the following Saturday, Nisha came round as she’d promised to mediate the meeting. She cleared one of the display tables and put a pop-up flip chart on top of it, opening the cover sheet to reveal a chart with their names down one side and the words ‘Strengths’ and ‘Weaknesses’ on the other side.
‘What’s crucial, going forward,’ she told them, ‘is that you recognise your own and each other’s strengths and weaknesses, play to the strengths and address the weaknesses.’
Which was, Charley thought, far more tactful and positive than kicking off by going through, and no doubt inflaming, the list of grievances they held against each other. It didn’t take much imagination to guess what Tara would have said about working with her – although she had no idea what Pam’s complaints were, and promptly censured herself for not knowing.
By the end of the evening they had, in theory, thrashed out an acceptable way of working together. Charley readily accepted the business needed to prioritise making enough for Tara to get a decent profit share. And since Tara had far superior business skills and knowledge than both Charley and Pam put together, they all agreed Tara should draw up a development plan which would enable them to achieve that goal. A tad begrudgingly, Tara acknowledged that Charley had better taste than her and knew which products would appeal more to the punters, so Charley should take the lead as product buyer. Nisha pointed out that Pam’s strengths were diplomacy and objectivity and argued that in the event of any disagreements, instead of Charley and Tara slugging it out between them, they ask Pam to mediate. They all agreed that Charley should ask Angie for a twenty per cent cut in her artwork and then, at Nisha’s insistence, they accepted that everyone should have at least two days off a week, not just Tara, and regular holidays – again, not just Tara. It was Charley who objected, declaring she was happy to work six days a week and didn’t need holidays. Nisha candidly informed her nobody works well when they’re overtired. Finally, after bluntly reminding them of the personal and financial investments each of them had made in the business, Nisha summed up with astonishing perceptiveness what they each had to lose if they couldn’t make the business work.
‘Tara, you’d lose the chance to have a term-time job you could love, rather than one you’d hate. Pam, you’d lose the chance to develop a new career late in life, in a supportive working environment, and Charley, you’d lose the chance to prove yourself, and find the successful business woman we all know you can be.’ Nisha eyed them all sternly. ‘Make it work, ladies.’
It was nearly ten by the time Charley headed home after the meeting, thanking her lucky stars that she had such wonderful friends, and not to mention a one-in-a-million mother-in-law, although she still didn’t know what Pam’s issues might have been, she mused. It was raining as she drove through the wet, lamp-lit streets, the wipers swishing across the windscreen, with the cockerpoo curled up on the seat next to her. She hadn’t eaten yet and neither had the poor dog, she realised guiltily.
‘Sorry, Bubbles, you must be starving,’ she told him. ‘I know I am! Never mind, nearly home.’
She was in a buoyant mood as she walked down the steps to her flat, with Bubbles bounding down behind her, although she wished she’d thought to leave the hall light on. The light from the street lamp on the pavement above didn’t reach the last few stairs so she watched her step, not least since the concrete could be slippery when wet. Taking out her key she went to open the front door, but her hand froze in mid-air. The door was ajar. Had she forgotten to shut it? She very much doubted it. Living alone, and in a garden flat, had taught her to be vigilant about locking all the doors and windows. Cautiously, she pushed the door open. Bubbles immediately shot inside, no doubt keen to be out of the rain and eager for his supper. Flicking on the hall light revealed a trail of wet, man-sized footprints, heading up the hallway. Charley’s heart nearly stopped beating, and her mouth went dry. Shit! There’s someone in the flat. All of a sudden, there was a furious outburst of barking from Bubbles.
‘Bubbles,’ she called urgently. ‘Bubbles!’ Then there was a yelping, and a crash from inside. ‘Bubbles!’ she yelled one last frantic time and then she panicked and fled, taking the steps two at a time, praying the dog would follow her.