Charlie Glass's Slippers (11 page)

“No, I’m really sorry, Gaby . . . I got distracted by talking to this lady.”

This is pretty unfair of Pippa, because she’s only been talking to me for the past minute, and she’s not even doing a particularly stellar job of that.

“Well, get a move on, will you? You know what my mother gets like when she’s kept waiting for something.”

This is enough to send Pippa scurrying, at roughly the speed of Usain Bolt, in the direction of the little kitchen out the back of the store.

“Is Flora on holiday?” I ask Gaby.

“What?”

“Flora. Your PA.”

“Oh, no, Flora’s left. Gone to get married, or have a baby, or something . . .” Gaby demonstrates, with a wave of her hand, the level of interest she has in the lives of her employees. “Pippa is helping me out these days.”

“But she’s the sales assistant.”

“What do you want me to say, Charlie? We’re streamlining. Everyone has to make cutbacks every now and then.” Visibly irritated, she turns back towards the door that leads up to the office floors, holding it open so I can follow her. “Well, if you’re absolutely sure Mummy said four fifteen, I suppose
you’d better come up. But you are aware that everyone’s here, aren’t you?”

This doesn’t sound good. “
Everyone?
”

“The company directors. Well, the ones who could make it at short notice. Mummy only called the meeting with three days’ warning.”

Of course she did.

Three days ago is when I emailed Diana to ask if she could meet with me sometime today. And I’m quite sure her very next move, after replying to my email, was to get straight on the phone to the company directors and summon them all to a meeting at the very same time.

God, I’m such an
idiot
! I should have remembered that ritually humiliating me is one of Diana’s very favorite activities. Such as the time she “forgot” to mention that the window cleaners were coming the same morning that she’d suddenly and unexpectedly suggested that I might like to treat myself to a Jacuzzi bath in her marble bathroom . . . or the time she kindly coached me in a few basic German phrases to try out on Gaby’s visiting exchange partner Karin, and I only realized I’d been duped when Karin herself very nicely took me aside and said that she was very sorry I was still wetting the bed every night at the age of twelve, but that it might makes things easier for me if I didn’t keep going around telling people about it.

And now Diana is trying to set me up all over again, springing a room full of intimidating, important company directors on me with absolutely no notice.

She’ll have it all planned out: the sly put-downs, the poor-dear-you-aren’t-really-following-are-you looks, the questions specially designed to make me look hopelessly out of my depth. This is her opening salvo in her war against me, a war of attrition that she hopes—no, she
assumes
—is going to end swiftly and with my total capitulation. The whole thing is designed so that I’ll barely even make it to the end of the day
without begging Gaby and Robyn to take my shares off me, and for a knock-down price at that.

And yet . . . well, if this is a war, I’ve got the potential for a bit of a stealth attack of my own, haven’t I?

I mean, Diana’s expecting me to creep into the boardroom looking overweight and under-groomed. And what was the whole purpose of the past fifteen weeks—the running, the lunging, the constant, gnawing hunger—if it wasn’t to give me at least the external appearance of someone who
isn’t
hopelessly out of her depth?

A phrase of Natalie’s suddenly pops into my head, one she was fond of yelling at us as we dragged our exhausted bodies into the boot camp gym for a post-jog round of circuits:
fake it till you make it
.

Gaby glances back at me, as she leads the way past the open-plan first floor and up towards the boardroom on the floor above.

“You know,” she says, rather abruptly, “if you’d rather just skip the meeting . . .”

“No. I’m fine.” I take a deep breath. “As a matter of fact, there are a couple of things I’d like to talk with the directors about.”

“
Really?
”

“Well,
a
thing,” I say, a bit less confidently. “Just the one, really. But still, a very definite . . . er . . . thing.”

Gaby gives one of her usual tetchy shrugs, makes the kind of face that generally goes with the expression
it’s your funeral
, and pushes open the boardroom door.

chapter eight

T
he first thing I
think is:
They’re all men
. Half a dozen of them, sitting around the long mahogany table. But of course, they’re not
all
men, because there’s a woman at the head of the table: Diana, of course.

She’s the first one to glance up as Gaby and I come in.

She’s presumably been anticipating my arrival, because for just a half-second her face is fixed in its usual icy, superior smile.

And then she actually sees me. Which is when something else happens to her face. It contorts—fleetingly, but it most definitely contorts. There’s Diana in all her true colors, her face all twisted up with the hatred she’s usually so expert at concealing.

But there’s something else there, alongside the hatred. Something even I don’t think I’ve ever seen in her face before.
Fear.

It doesn’t last for long. She’s up on her feet already, the icy, superior smile safely back on her perfectly powdered face.

“Charlotte! My goodness!” This, it’s instantly clear, is the closest she’s going to come to openly acknowledging my new appearance. She comes to greet me, placing a kiss—purely for the benefit of her audience—in the vicinity of each of my
cheeks. She smells, as usual, of Guerlain’s Les Meteorites powder—a sweet, violet-heavy scent that, thanks to her, I can’t abide—and the Elnett hairspray that keeps her chignon in place. She’s back in her high heels, of course, after February’s bunion surgery, and looking somehow taller and more imposing than ever. “We weren’t expecting you.”

“You told me to come at four fifteen.”

“Yes, but four fifteen tomorrow.”

“You said Thursday.”

“Well, it can be difficult to get these things right, especially when you’re not used to having to come to meetings and so forth.” She snakes an arm around my shoulders. “In fact, this is why I purposely didn’t ask you to come to this meeting today. I know it’s a world away from the kind of thing you’ve been doing for the past few years. Charlotte’s been such an angel,” she suddenly announces, to everyone sitting at the table, “playing nursemaid to my late ex-husband, Elroy. There aren’t many people who’d do the awful, undignified jobs she’s had to do, let me tell you. Pureeing Elroy’s vegetables, helping him in the bathroom, pushing him around the place in a wheelchair . . . I’m sure you all appreciate how difficult these things can be. Even if it
sounds
terribly simple and basic.”

It’s the first battle of the war, and she’s won it. Won it, in fact, without me getting off so much as a couple of shots of cover-fire.

“Well, seeing as you’re here, I really should introduce you to everyone.” Keeping one arm around my shoulders, Diana points at a large man with a shock of salt-and-pepper hair, who’s sitting to the immediate right of her own place at the head of the table. “This is Alan Kellaway, not only a director of the company but also our much-loved and terribly distinguished lawyer.”

“I know Mr. Kellaway,” I say. I haven’t seen him in years, but I can see that he’s not changed in all that time. I’m quite
sure he’s still wearing white Y-fronts and argyle-pattern socks beneath his suit. I nod in his direction, but—knowing that he’s got both his feet placed very much in his long-term mistress Diana’s camp—I can’t quite bring myself to smile.

“And I know Charlotte, of course,” Alan Kellaway says now, nodding back at me. “Though you’ve changed rather a lot since the last time I saw you, I must say . . .”

“So, who’s next?” Diana sings, cutting Alan Kellaway off before he can draw attention to my makeover. She waves a hand in the direction of two more of the men, both a good deal younger than Alan Kellaway, and both of whom are staring at me so fixedly that I’m suddenly concerned I’ve got watercress from my low-fat lunchtime soup all over my teeth. “This is James Sadler and James Butterfield. They’re from the private equity firm that gave us the capital to build this very store five years ago. And this gentleman here,” she goes on, graciously indicating the last of the directors, an overweight and rather grouchy-looking man in a pinstriped suit, half-moon glasses, and what looks like a cricket club tie, “is Terry Pinkerton. Of course, you’ll recognize his name, Charlotte.”

There’s no
of course
about it.

“Terry Pinkerton?” Diana repeats. “Of Pinkerton French Gibbon? The investment group that has owned fifteen percent of the company’s shares for the last twenty years?” She shoots an embarrassed, apologetic look at Terry Pinkerton of Pinkerton Dutch Baboon, or whatever his investment group was called. “Well, Charlotte, you mustn’t worry. It’s perfectly all right to admit that you’re still struggling to get to grips with all of this. Nobody would think any less of you if you were finding it harder being the chief shareholder than you thought it was going to be!”

“Actually, Charlie’s job as chief shareholder would be much easier if you’d let her see the company accounts, among other things.”

This voice comes from the corner of the room, and I realize there’s another man in here who isn’t sitting at the table but stuck away in a lonely chair by the window, as if Diana is punishing him for something.

And she almost certainly
is
punishing him, because it’s Oliver Winkleman, Dad’s solicitor, who put her nose so permanently out of joint at the will reading, and who very kindly kept in contact with me while I was away, sending me a nice little dossier of company information that I emailed to ask him for. Not the up-to-date accounts, though. He’s spent all these weeks trying—and failing—to get Diana’s assistant to let him have those.

“Oliver!” I beam at him. I’m relieved beyond belief to see a single friendly face. “Hi! How are you?”

“Oh, yes, I forgot. You two are great pals, aren’t you?” Diana can’t entirely keep the sour note from entering her voice. “Was that why you were so keen to join us today, Mr. Winkleman, even though you’re not a director? Because you wanted to catch up with Charlotte after her travels?”

“But according to you, Charlie was meant to be coming to a meeting with you tomorrow.” Oliver gives Diana a pleasant smile. “So it would have been odd for me to have been expecting to see her here.”

Diana, who isn’t expecting to find such implacable opposition in someone who looks so incredibly mild, is too shocked to reply. Before she can gather herself, however, there’s a knock at the boardroom door, and Pippa comes into the room with a tray of fresh coffee. I attempt to use this distraction to scurry over to where Oliver is sitting and grab the chair next to him, but Diana is having none of it.

“Oh, Charlotte, no!” she says, as I make a move towards Oliver’s lowly corner. “You’re
the most important person in the room now. You should be seated at the head of the table.” She steers me there and practically manhandles me into her
seat. “Don’t you all agree, gentlemen,” she adds, appealing to the rest of the table, “that the new chief shareholder should really be the one running this meeting, now that she’s graced us with her presence?”

“Mummy, come on,” Gaby begins, only to be interrupted by Terry Pinkerton.

“Actually, Diana, I think we’d all really just like to get on with the meeting, full stop.” His voice sounds about as grouchy and impatient as he looks. “After all, Moscow could do with some more discussion . . .”

“Absolutely it could.” With a great show of humility, Diana scuttles back down to the far end of the table and slips into an empty seat. “Charlotte, why don’t you give us your thoughts about Moscow?”

“Moscow?”

“Yes.”

“My thoughts?”

“Yes!”

Time seems to stand still. Alan Kellaway, the two Jameses, and Terry Pinkerton are all staring fixedly at me. Gaby is staring fixedly at the screen of her iPad. Diana is still smiling. Beaming, actually.

Stall for time: that’s what I need to do. I pick up the pen in front of me and pull a blank sheet of paper towards me, with a purposeful expression on my face.

“We’re all waiting!” Diana sings. There’s a joyous, mocking undertone to her voice that she’s always seemed to reserve for her special moments of cruelty towards me. It’s precisely the same tone that she used to employ when telling me what a shame it was that I didn’t have anyone to send a Mother’s Day card to, or when she would reach across the dinner table to prevent me from taking another potato because “it’s enough of a pity that you were born plain and boring, darling, but it’ll be positively tragic for you if you end up fat as well!”

It’s the mocking singsong that does it.

Fuck her
. I mean, seriously. Fuck her. Who the hell does she think she is, setting up this whole elaborate scheme with the sole purpose of humiliating me? Wasting the time of everyone in this room, just to have the maximum possible number of witnesses there when I make a total idiot of myself.

I hold up a hand to silence her. “Hold on one moment, please, Diana. I just have to think something through.” I write down the letters
ABCDEFG
, then the numbers
1234567
, all the while trying to look deep in thought. “In fact, Diana, if you could possibly fetch me a cup of coffee, that would be much appreciated.”

Down the other end of the table, Gaby lets her iPad slip from her fingers. It thuds, gently, onto the table.

“Black, please. No sugar,” I add, when Diana doesn’t move. I’m not meeting her eye. I write
Peter Piper had a peck of pickled peppers
on the sheet in front of me, nodding sagely as I do so. “Just a small cup will do.”

The temperature in the boardroom, by my reckoning at least, has fallen about 10 degrees. I still refrain from looking up, but after a moment, I hear Diana get to her feet and move, her heels tap-tap-tapping, ominously, towards the coffee table.

Now I glance up, look directly at Terry Pinkerton, and clear my throat.

“I think Moscow is a very interesting proposition,” I say. “But obviously I don’t want to tread on any toes. I’d very much like to hear your thoughts about it.”

“My thoughts?” He peers at me over his half-moon glasses. “Well, I don’t suppose it’s the worst idea in the world to channel funds into opening a new flagship store in Moscow.”

Of course. A
new store
in Moscow. I write the words
new store in Moscow
on my sheet of paper, already feeling better than I did ten seconds ago.

“It does seem as though sales in the Russian Federation
countries are up,” Terry Pinkerton continues, in his growly voice. “And frankly, they’re the only sales that
are
up, as you probably know.”

“Actually, Charlie may not know that,” Oliver Winkleman pipes up again, now behind me, “because she’s not been given any of the relevant paperwork. And I’d just like to say that I am being fobbed off every time I try to get hold of any up-to-date company accounts that I think Charlie ought to be allowed to—”

“Oliver, for the love of God!” Alan Kellaway turns around in his seat to glare at him. “Will you stop banging on about company accounts? Charlie is more than welcome to see any accounts she wants—isn’t that right, Diana?”

“Of course.” Diana is heading my way, with a coffee cup in her hand. She doesn’t look as if she’s actually about to fling it into my face, but she certainly looks as if she’d like to. “Here’s your coffee, Charlotte.”

“Thank you, Diana. Now, I was hoping to pick up on something that we were just discussing. About sales being poor everywhere except Russia.”

“Sales aren’t
poor
!” Gaby snaps.

“They’re not brilliant,” one of the Jameses mutters, though he seems to regret it when Gaby turns on him, her eyes spitting fire.

“Sales are down
across
luxury brands, as it happens! I’m sure the struggling economy isn’t something you’ve noticed in private equity, with your big, fat bonus checks at the end of every fiscal year, but people aren’t exactly chomping at the bit to pay a fortune for a pair of shoes these days, what with their mortgages and their gas bills to pay.”

Which is an opening for me to talk about something I
do
actually have a clue about, instead of getting bogged down in this Moscow stuff.

“Actually, that’s something I’d really like to discuss,” I say.

My voice has gone a bit wobbly with nerves, but I try to distract everyone from this by leaning down to my handbag to get the plastic file I’ve been assembling.

Obviously, now that I’m in a room with all these important-looking men, I’m having a couple of last-minute doubts about Glass Slippers, concerns that the plans that seemed so super-duper and shiny when I was talking them over with Lucy yesterday are just going to sound like a little girl getting up in front of the grown-ups at a party and offering her opinions on international politics. But I’m supposed to be faking it until I make it, aren’t I? If I can look and sound confident enough, then surely there’s at least a chance that one of these people is going to listen to me.

My heart is hammering as I open my file.

“Um, perhaps I should start with the tale of a girl called Melanie Morgan . . . no, no, forget that!” I say, hastily, as I see Terry Pinkerton’s face descend further into grouchiness. I take a deep breath and start again. “Okay, look, what I really want to say is this. I think Elroy Glass shoes have become far too expensive. I think we’re pricing ourselves out of the market. I know for certain that my father never intended for his shoes to be unaffordable by anyone but the trophy wives of Russian oligarchs. So what I’d really like to do is launch a small diffusion range of better-value shoes and sell them in the old King’s Road store.”

Okay—it’s not exactly the way I envisaged my presentation, but I think I got everything in there that I wanted.

“Oh, and I’d call it Glass Slippers,” I croak. “In case anyone was wondering.”

“Hmmm,” Terry Pinkerton says, after a moment. He looks at both the Jameses. “What do you think? Because that doesn’t sound like a totally ridiculous idea to me.”

It doesn’t?

“I think, Terry,” the other of the Jameses ( James the Sec
ond?) replies, “that we’d want to see some sales projections. And a proper business plan. And of course, we’d need to know how much it would cost . . .”