Authors: Lulu Taylor
‘Why should you care?’ he asked, making his way carefully over to an armchair and then falling clumsily into it.
‘Why? Because it was fucking embarrassing, that’s
why!
I’m your wife, I’m sitting at the same table, and you’re all over some stupid little teenager, pawing her in a way that’s frankly disgusting for everyone else to watch.’
‘What’s wrong, Jemima? Are you jealous?’
‘Ha!’ She laughed loudly. ‘Jealous? No. Just humiliated.’
‘What about you?’ he said quietly, his eyes glittering. ‘What about what you get up to?’
‘I don’t embarrass you in public.’
‘Oh – that’s all right then. Except you were all over that greasy American tonight, weren’t you?’
‘Don’t be so offensive. He’s not greasy. And we were talking about business, if you must know. You, on the other hand, were blatantly trying to manoeuvre that girl into bed and it was just a degrading spectacle for everyone.’
Harry got up and started to walk towards the bed. ‘Can you really blame me, Jemima?’ He slumped on the bed next to her. His eyes were bloodshot and the toxic smell of whisky emanated from him. ‘It’s not as though we’re doing much frolicking in the marital bed, is it?’
‘What you do in private is your business – what you do in public, when I’m there, involves me too.’
‘You don’t want me any more, do you?’ he said quietly.
‘I … I …’ She felt suddenly unsure of both herself and him. ‘Not when you’re like this – you reek of booze. It’s disgusting.’
He leaned forward swiftly, put his hand around the
back
of her head and pulled her face to his. The next moment, he was kissing her, and she was pulling away as hard as she could, pushing at his heavy body with her hands.
‘Harry, get off! Get off me, stop …’
‘Come on, Jemima, please. We can’t go on like this. This marriage is like a living death. It doesn’t have to be this way … come on, please.’
‘No!’ she shouted. He pulled back and stared at her sadly. ‘You’ve done nothing but humiliate me all night – why on earth would I want to sleep with you? Besides, you’ve probably been snogging that little cow outside – the two of you looked like juvenile idiots. And you stink. Get away from me!’
He stood up, swaying slightly, unable to look her in the eye. ‘I’m leaving tomorrow morning,’ she declared. ‘I don’t see why I should have to suffer that supercilious bitch Emma and her godawful boring friends any longer. I did it for you, so that we could keep up the pretence that there was something in this marriage, but you’ve made a complete mockery of that. So I’m going back to London first thing.’ She stared up at him defiantly. ‘Don’t try and stop me.’
‘I’m not going to.’
‘Good. And you’re not sleeping here tonight. You may as well go and find that tart and sleep with her, because I don’t want you in my bed.’
His face hardened as he absorbed this. ‘Do you really mean that?’ he said, with only the hint of a slur.
‘Yes, I do. Go and sleep with her. I don’t care.’
He winced. Then he stared at her. Their eyes locked.
‘All
right. If that’s what you want.’ He threw off his jacket, turned, made his way slowly to the door, opened it and left.
In the moment’s silence that followed Jemima was astonished to find that tears were pouring down her cheeks. She threw herself onto her pillows and sobbed.
18
THE BOARDROOM TABLE
was covered in packaging and bottles. The boxes were in the Trevellyan signature dark blue, a royal warrant picked out in gold on the top of each and the flowing golden script announcing the name of the scent it contained.
The bottles were all identical – plain rectangular glass with gold-coloured atomisers and on each a white label with the name of the fragrance. A glass container held dozens of paper tester slips, and used slips lay on the table in little heaps.
Tara, Poppy and Jemima stood around the table, picking up bottles, spraying the scent on to tester slips and waving them under their noses.
With them were the directors of Trevellyan, standing about with bemused expressions as the women sniffed, thought and reacted.
‘This is horrible!’ exclaimed Tara as she flinched away from the slip she was sniffing. ‘God, I hate that
smell.
What is it? It’s powdery and dry, with something chemical and nasty in it. Like loo cleaner.’
‘That’s
Albermarle
, for men,’ Duncan Ingliss said helpfully.
‘It’s vile. Smell this.’ She held the slip under Jemima’s nose. Jemima sniffed and then wrinkled her nose in disgust.
‘You’re right. It makes me think of dentists.’
‘This one’s pretty,’ Poppy ventured. ‘It’s
Antique Lily
.’
They all sniffed at the slip she was holding out.
Tara nodded. ‘Yes, that’s not so bad. I think we can all agree that the main women’s fragrances are the most successful.’
‘And a couple of the men’s,’ added Jemima. ‘I like
Leather & Willow
. It’s rich and woody and very evocative. I wouldn’t mind smelling that on a chap.’
Tara threw her an amused look. ‘That’s what Daddy wore.’
‘Is it?’ Jemima smiled. ‘How funny. It makes me feel safe, somehow.’
‘It makes me think of home,’ Poppy said wistfully.
‘Perhaps we’re not the right people to judge these scents,’ Jemima said thoughtfully. ‘After all, they’re completely bound up in our lives. Other people won’t bring this kind of emotion and memory to these smells.’
‘That’s why we’ll have a focus group,’ Tara said decisively. ‘I want to set up a group of ordinary people to assess the perfumes, and then to give their impressions of Trevellyan and what it means to them. I think
it’s
vital to find out what people think about the brand.’ She turned to William McKay. ‘Can you set that up? I want it done immediately.’
The marketing director looked confused. ‘I’m not sure. I’ll find out what it involves. It’s not something we’ve done before.’
‘That much is obvious,’ replied Tara crisply. ‘Come to my office later and I’ll give you my contact at a brilliant market research company. They can take it on for us. Fuchsia Mitchell can make anything happen.’
‘What about the budget?’ William McKay said uncertainly.
‘Just do it, and we’ll sort that out later.’ Tara looked around the room. ‘OK, I think we’ve done enough smelling. Let’s sit down and start talking.’
The sisters took their places at the top of the table, where three notepads and pens were set out, along with three tumblers and a jug of iced water. The Trevellyan staff took their places around the table, most of them averting their gaze from their new chief executives.
‘Right.’ Tara sat back in her chair and looked gravely around the room. She was every inch the capable businesswoman in her black suit and sharp white shirt. ‘This is the beginning of a new regime. You can forget the cosy little existence you’ve had so far – that’s over. The era of letting this company disintegrate while you take it for all it’s worth is finished. We’re starting afresh and we’re going to damn well take this place where it needs to go, which is back to the top. Now.’ She put on her glasses, as she always did when she
wanted
to appear more serious, and stared at the Trevellyan directors. ‘Who here is the production director, and who is in charge of product development?’
A man coughed nervously from further down the table and fingered his tie. ‘I’m in charge of production,’ he said in a soft Birmingham accent.
Tara looked at him over the top of her glasses. ‘And your name is …?’
‘Bill Haverstock.’
‘OK, Bill. Explain, in very simple terms, the set-up.’
‘Right …’ Bill swallowed nervously. ‘Well, I run the factory. We’re based on a trading estate outside Birmingham. We’ve got a small staff – the smallest possible, really, to run the operation. I’ve had to lay a lot of people off in the last few years and supplement the core staff with agency workers when it’s been necessary. Our set-up is very straightforward. In one part of the factory we manufacture the fragrances according to the standard formulas. In another, we bottle and package. We have an office division running the general operation, the accounts and distribution. That’s it, really. A lot of the operation is outsourced wherever possible, to keep costs down.’
‘And the raw materials?’ Tara asked, scribbling a few notes on her pad.
‘We receive deliveries of the raw materials on an as-needed basis. Those are for the fragrances themselves. The boxes are made off-site by another company, as are the glass bottles and the labels.’
Jemima frowned. ‘It’s really odd, but all this seems very unfamiliar to me. I mean, we grew up with
Trevellyan
perfumes in the house, and Mother had a decanter full of
Tea Rose
on her dressing table.’ She reached out and scooped up a bottle of
Trevellyan’s Tea Rose
. The bottle looked painfully simple and the label almost gauche in its old-fashioned simplicity. ‘It was nothing like this. This looks like the kind of thing you’d buy in an ancient chemist shop or find in some seaside B&B. How on earth did we come to be selling this?’
Duncan Ingliss swapped a glance with Bill Haverstock.
‘Um …’ Bill looked even more nervous. ‘There have been some changes over the years –’
Duncan cut in quickly. ‘Yes, we have at times had to look at our overheads and the best way to cut costs. That’s inevitably meant changing suppliers. About five years ago we moved to a new bottle supplier in order to keep the costs as low as possible.’
‘So these are new bottles?’ Poppy reached out and picked one up. ‘I thought they didn’t look much like they used to. Does anyone have one of the old ones?’
‘There’s a display in the foyer of our scents through the ages,’ Duncan said. ‘You’ll see the old bottle there.’
‘Could you get one please?’ Tara said sweetly, and watched as Duncan hauled himself to his feet and went out of the room, clearly unaccustomed to doing such a thing himself. ‘Well, it’s obvious that the operation is being run on a shoestring. We won’t be able to save ourselves much there – it’s already cut to the bone.’
‘I’m very glad you said that,’ Bill Haverstock said, clearly relieved. ‘I thought I was going to be sent back with the task of sacking yet more staff and cutting yet more costs. To be honest, I just don’t know how it can be done. We’re all already running as cheaply as we can.’
‘Could I say something?’ asked Simon Vestey.
‘Yes … Simon – you’re the finance director, aren’t you?’ Tara asked. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Cutting costs has been the only way we’ve been able to reverse our decline.’
‘Reverse it?’ Tara asked coldly.
‘Well – stop it.’
‘You may have slowed it down but you certainly haven’t stopped it. And as for reversing it – please. It’s quite clear that every time you’ve cut costs, sales have also dropped. It’s been a relentless fall.’ Tara shuffled through some papers in front of her. ‘Now, I’ve done my best to learn about the fragrance industry in a very short time. It’s not something I knew anything about. But one of the things that’s abundantly clear is that it’s a huge market, and the top perfumes and scents make millions. The market for fine women’s fragrances is worth over five hundred million in the UK alone. Men’s fragrances are close behind at around three hundred and fifty million. In this area of retailing, quality always does better than the mass market. We’re a quality brand, so why is Trevellyan doing so bloody badly? We got a tiny amount of market share, and it’s dropping.’
The door opened and Duncan Ingliss came back
in
holding a small glass bottle. He returned to his seat and put the bottle on the table.
‘Oh, it’s lovely!’ exclaimed Poppy.
They all looked at it. It was about ten centimetres high, a cylindrical bottle of clear, silvery glass with a faint pleat in it. The round lid was silver, flaring out prettily at the top.
‘Yes, that’s what I remember,’ Jemima said, picking it up. ‘That’s the bottle I know. Why on earth are we using that one?’ She pointed at the current bottle with its blunt angles and bland design. ‘It looks cheap and nasty, nothing like this. This is the kind of bottle I’d like to see on my dressing table.’
‘We’re using the new design precisely because it is cheap,’ Duncan said stiffly. ‘The new bottles are mass produced and therefore the quality of glass is lower than the old style.’ He gestured at the bottle in Jemima’s hands. ‘That bottle costs an awful lot to manufacture. We couldn’t go on using such an expensive product.’
‘But isn’t that part of what you pay for when you buy a Trevellyan scent? The beautiful bottle? You can’t charge people for a premium perfume and put it in that bottle. It’s obvious that it only costs a few pence.’
With great respect, Lady Calthorpe, you don’t have the first idea about this business –’
‘Perhaps not,’ Jemima shot back, ‘but I know something about buying scent and I can tell you that the packaging is absolutely key. What’s blindingly obvious is that when it comes to perfume, a woman is as much
attracted
by the bottle it comes in as she is by the way it smells!’
Tara intervened before Duncan could reply. ‘Let’s leave that for a moment, though you’ve made an excellent point, Jemima, and one I want to come back to.’ Tara leaned forward on her elbows and stared Duncan in the eye. ‘You haven’t yet told me who is in charge of product development.’
Duncan looked uncomfortable. ‘Well … The truth is – we don’t have anyone.’
Tara stared at him, surprised. She frowned and took her glasses off. ‘What? There had better be a good explanation of why not.’
Duncan sat up straight. ‘Listen, I’m beginning to get a little tired of this. It’s a strange and unpleasant interrogation by people who don’t know anything at all about our business. Mrs Pearson, we are not like the big fragrance houses. We don’t launch new lines every year. We have an established set of very famous scents and we don’t see the need to add to them. To be quite honest, we cannot afford to add to them. Launching new fragrances costs a great deal of money and we simply don’t have it. We have instead put our resources behind promoting the perfumes we do have. After all, we have
Trevellyan’s Tea Rose
. Very few perfume houses can boast a name as famous and resonant as that.’