Chapter 28
Kitchen islands, thinks Georgie Glazier, unwinding for the evening. That’s the real problem here.
Georgie knows she shouldn’t really have got involved with Vern again. Shouldn’t have asked him for money. For what she was due.
Did Rosie and Steve know she was lying about it? Probably, they’re no fools the two of them.
She loved Vern as a teenager, and she wishes him well still, up to a point, but her life is a lot simpler without him around.
And yet.
Georgie sips her mint tea and looks through Instagram images of kitchen islands.
She knows she shouldn’t. She knows that kitchen islands are the top of a very slippery slope.
But a couple of minutes won’t hurt, surely?
She clicks on a video, a pop star who lives in New York and has a kitchen island with a TV that pops out.
Georgie shakes her head, she doesn’t need a kitchen island with a TV in it.
Nobody does. Georgie does what she always does in these situations. She gives herself a pep talk.
‘Georgie, you do not need a kitchen island. Repeat, you do not need a kitchen island. You have plenty of worktop space, you have a good draining board. Just because Lily Allen has a kitchen island, it doesn’t mean you have to have one. Put Instagram down.’
She clicks on another image. An influencer in America has two kitchen islands.
The influencer is saying, ‘I call my islands Trinidad and Tobago. Food prep on Trinidad, Mommy meals and family feels on Tobago.’ Georgie is both disgusted and aroused.
She feels an awful lot of dopamine exploding in her brain, but also a little bit of sick in her mouth.
‘Switch it off, Georgie. Do some work.’
Reluctantly, Georgie leaves Instagram and opens her order book. This is the perfect way to stop thinking about kitchen islands.
Business is still very healthy. She’s just listed 50,000 chemical peel masks she’d ordered from a factory outside Shanghai, and the tills are ringing.
￡1.20 per unit to her, and she’s charging ￡30 for three.
So that’s about ￡325,000 profit after costs if she sells them all, which, looking at the numbers, she will.
She scrolls through some of the reviews for another recent bestseller, a bee serum under-eye cream. Reviews are absolutely key in her industry.
‘Saw results in three days,’ says Jane1792. ‘Cheaper than the shops but just as effective,’ says FurBabyFiona12. ‘Absolute life saver on my wedding day,’ says LuckiestLadyAlive43891. When her customers are happy, Georgie is happy.
That there is no bee serum in her bee serum under-eye cream is neither here nor there. Wedding days often involve a suspension of disbelief.
In truth, Georgie has been thinking about kitchen islands – oh no, here we go again – ever since Rosie D’Antonio told her about Vern’s recent problems. Georgie likes a quiet life, values her privacy and freedom.
She wouldn’t want what Vern has, the bodyguards, the gates, the fences, the paranoia.
None of which seem to have been effective anyway.
Georgie likes to do her Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in the charity shop, have coffee with the Pilates girls, potter about, watch This Morning and know she has enough money coming in. More than enough.
But Rosie was right. Her house is a little small for someone who has been around such money.
It’s fine, absolutely fine. Big comfortable sofa, nice TV, couple of spare bedrooms, a table large enough for six people to sit around.
She doesn’t need anything else. She and Vern used to have a chef and a driver and a gardener. She remembers those days well.
Would it be nice to have a kitchen island? Well, yes, why not, all things being equal? Slip a couple of stools under the overhang, have coffee with pals.
But all things aren’t equal, are they? That’s the point.
First things first, if she had an island, she’d need a bigger kitchen, and that would mean a new house.
She likes this house. Likes the neighbours, it’s near Waitrose, there are weekly bin collections.
A lot of places these days have their bin collections fortnightly, and Georgie doesn’t think that would suit her at all. She uses a lot of cardboard.
And say you do buy a new house, what then?
You have your kitchen island, your dreams have come true, but then there will always be someone, like the awful lady in America with the beautiful hair, with two kitchen islands.
There are probably people with three. Kim Kardashian probably has a whole archipelago of kitchen islands.
The more kitchen islands you have, the bigger the kitchen you need.
The bigger the kitchen you have, the bigger the house you need.
The bigger the house you have, the further you are from friends and shops and community and pottery cafés and ice-cream vans.
Is a friendly neighbour really going to help you take your shopping indoors if your driveway is half a mile long?
So, while a kitchen island would be nice, just look at what it leads to. It leads to a villa in the Tuscan hills and twenty-four-hour security.
Yep, you get a kitchen island and, before you know it, you are Vern.
And the big difference between Georgie and Vern is not money, not lifestyle and not kitchen cabinetry.
The big difference between Georgie and Vern is that nobody is threatening to kill Georgie.
And that’s worth a lot in this day and age.
Georgie makes her mind up once and for all. Leave Vern well alone. Her life is ticking along nicely. She doesn’t need a kitchen island.
And yet, and yet, really, what has Vern done to earn all that money? Off the back of an awful lot of hard work on her own part?
And there must be a few big houses in the area on streets with weekly bin collections? Perhaps Georgie could have the best of both worlds?
She looks at Rosie’s number. Should she get involved? See where it all leads?
Georgie punches Rosie’s number into her phone. It is answered quickly. It sounds like Rosie is in a pub garden.
‘Georgie,’ says Rosie. ‘I was hoping you’d –’
‘Did you go into Vern’s kitchen?’ says Georgie. ‘In Italy?’
‘His kitchen?’ says Rosie. In the background Georgie hears a tray of drinks being dropped and an entire pub garden cheering. ‘I’m sure I did.’
‘Did he have a kitchen island?’ Georgie asks.
‘He had two,’ says Rosie.
Georgie nods to herself. Of course he has. ‘And how many kitchen islands do you think a billionaire would have?’
‘Oh, limitless,’ says Rosie. ‘I’m glad you called, we’re about to head to –’
Georgie ends the call. So Vern has two kitchen islands and she has none. That doesn’t seem quite right somehow.
Georgie makes up her mind. She will stay involved. Has to. A quiet life is all well and good, but it’s important not to undersell yourself.
She has a plan forming.
And, if you want to separate the professional from the personal, perhaps she has two plans forming?
Because it won’t do her any harm to get more acquainted with Rosie’s sidekick, Steve, will it? You rarely saw a man that dependable who was also that handsome.
Handsomeness usually sucks the dependability out of men.
The two things cannot survive in the same host body.
She and her friend Sue from Pilates had tracked Steve down on Facebook.
Only two posts in ten years. One entering a competition to win tickets for a Metallica concert, the other thanking people for all their messages after the death of his wife.
While Georgie would wish widowerhood on no one, that’s a man she could see slipping his legs under her kitchen island in the near future.
The professional plan she really will have to keep to herself.
And she will have to tread very, very carefully.
When there are bullets flying around, you mustn’t walk down the middle of the street, you must keep to the shadows.
Kitchen islands and handsome widowers are all well and good, but there’s something much bigger at stake here.
Does she know Jakob Eriksson, Rosie had asked her? Well, of course she does. She has known Jakob Eriksson a long time. Has sat around a table with Vern and Jakob Eriksson. Even knows his real name.
And now it seems he’s a billionaire.
Which means that she, of all people, surely has a great opportunity here?
How to play it with Steve and Rosie though? That’s the big question.
She can continue to pretend to be the ditzy housewife, but neither Rosie nor Steve seems the type to be fooled by that for long. She just needs to get close to them, to find out what they know and, more importantly, what they don’t know.
Most importantly of all, Georgie needs to find the man himself. The man they’re all calling Jakob Eriksson. Even Vern, it seems.
She knows it won’t be easy. But the two of them do really need a talk.