Chapter 3
Margot strutted towards me on heels that would surely prompt a nosebleed if I tried it. She swept into the restaurant looking like a perfectly mixed martini: ice cold and liable to leave you shaken. The ma?tre d’ almost genuflected. Smart man.
She was the human equivalent of a Rolls-Royce: immaculate engineering and prohibitively expensive. Her platinum bob was precise, just like her pearl-grey Armani suit. But I knew she wasn’t an ice queen. Margot had a sense of humour, and she loved her family.
Margot pulled out her chair before a server could assist, and slid into it with grace. She was a society woman who didn’t play by the rules. No-nonsense, to the point, just like her sister.
If you wanted something done, you called Margot. Just as long as you didn’t want those things done quickly. Margot needed her downtime, and she’d always been honest about that. Running Voss was not her happy place. Her place in Paris had probably developed cobwebs in her absence.
“You’re early. Colour me impressed.” She flashed me a wink as a waiter appeared, filled our water glasses, and took our orders for champagne. “A little fizz seems appropriate. How often is it I get to lunch with my youngest niece?”
The question was rhetorical.
“You look good. Fresh-faced. Which means you weren’t out face down in a puddle of prosecco last night.”
I smiled. “In bed by ten.”
My aunt rolled her eyes. “You’re one extreme to another, Poppy Voss.”
Shame rolled in my stomach as I recalled the stress I’d put my family through in my ‘unhinged’ period of grieving, as Katy had coined it.
I’d partied hard and slept with a fair few women, and the only reason I hadn’t ended up in a hospital or a ditch was thanks to my best friend Amina who always had my back.
Like everyone always told me, grief hit people differently.
For me, the initial period involved a lot of gin and forgettable sex.
“You need to find a happy medium.”
Sage flashed into my mind, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t what Margot meant.
“Like you have, by the sound of our phone call earlier.”
If Margot was blushing, I’d never see it under her perfectly applied makeup. She glossed over my comment.
“Life’s treating you well?”
My job is a nightmare and I’m painfully single.
“Can’t complain.”
The champagne arrived and Margot raised her glass. “To a future as yet unwritten.”
“How cryptic.” If she was going to play it that way, perhaps I needed to get more specific.
“Katy tells me you’re thinking of selling the business.” I paused, showing her my intent. “I’m here to ask you not to. I’m ready to step up.”
A resigned smile, a small shake of her head. “It’s a little late, Poppy. Where were you when I really needed help after your mum passed?”
I bit my lip. “Dealing with my grief.”
“As was I.”
I winced. I wasn’t going to be too hard on myself — my therapist would frown on that after such a trauma — but I knew I could have been there more for my family, full stop.
I wasn’t the only one who lost someone. We all did.
But there was no point raking over old ground.
Margot and I had already had that conversation.
“I’ve apologised for that, but I’m here now. I’m ready to do whatever it takes to keep the business in family hands. I don’t want you to sell.”
Margot sat back, her immaculate hands stroking the white table cloth.
“This from the woman who told me, in no uncertain terms last year, that she’d ‘rather shit in my hands and clap than have anything to do with Voss Watches’.”
It sounded like something I might say. “People change. Times change. I’ve done three years in two different startups, and I know how business works. I want to strike out, and it’s either do it at Voss, or start my own company doing something else. If you need help, it makes sense.”
“I don’t just need help. I want out completely.”
I blinked. “Oh.”
I hadn’t expected that.
“Yes, oh,” Margot replied. “This was never my dream, and I think you knew that. My life was going along just fine and then my mum died, then my sister, and I had to be there for my grieving nieces while picking up the company and making every single decision on my own.
“I’m tired, and I don’t want to run myself into an early grave.
I don’t want you to do that, either. Selling is a kindness to everyone.
It’ll set us all up for life, and then you can open whatever business you want.
Voss Watches will carry on, but it won’t be a millstone around our necks.
” She took a sip of her bubbles. “I think after dying of stress, even your mother might agree.”
She doesn’t, she told me herself.
But that wasn’t something I wanted to bring up right now. I wanted Margot to take me seriously, not banish me from the business for being kooky.
“I know I haven’t been much use up until now, and I can only apologise. I want to be a better niece, as well as a better support to you business-wise.”
“I’m selling, Poppy. You don’t have a say until you’re 30, which is a year away.
As the only other family member who does have a legal say, Katy agreed to stand by whatever I decided.
She doesn’t want to run the business either, and neither do you really.
This is a knee-jerk reaction that you’ll regret, given time.
I’m saving you the bother. Being a good aunt.
“It’s getting harder and harder to sell watches. The competition is fiercer than ever. Go into supplements or be an influencer. Young people don’t want watches anymore.”
“They don’t think they do, but they do.” I was two-thirds certain that was true.
“All my friends want to get away from their phones. We all want to carve out more time for us. We want to buy less, but buy better. A Voss watch answers both those needs. We just need to make them more visible.” I’d thought of that in the shower this morning.
It wasn’t a fully formed idea, but it was a germ of something.
“I can reach the youth market if you give me a shot.”
“I have a buyer lined up.”
“Who is it?”
Margot looked down, considering the question.
Was it someone I knew? My mind rattled through my contacts list, but it came up blank.
“Remember Max Carpenter?”
Warmth flooded my system, and I immediately rolled my eyes at my traitor of a body.
I remembered Max Carpenter well. Mainly because I’d been best friends with his daughter, Eliza.
Until she turned 18, and I was only 14. Then, she dropped me like a hot brick when she went to university, and I was far too young and uncool.
“I do.” The last time I saw Eliza was two years ago, on a skiing trip in Les Gets. She’d elbowed ahead of me at the bar, and kissed the woman I’d been working up the courage to say hi to. She was not in my good books, hence neither was her dad.
“Max is interested; he confirmed it this morning.”
“On a Saturday?” I frowned. Max might be keen, but I was pretty sure he didn’t do business at the weekend. I distinctly remember he made his ex-wife a golf widow at weekends. Between that and sleeping with his numerous assistants, his extra-curricular activities were legendary.
Unless Margot was now one of those activities?
The dots joined right before my eyes, and Margot saw it.
“Did he tell you over coffee?”
She didn’t deny it.
“It’s best all round if he takes it off our hands. Max is skilled at buying companies and selling them off.”
“Not what I heard. Max is a friendly, familiar face, but he’s a corporate raider. Buys companies cheap, guts them, makes staff redundant, sells off the properties, and drops the quality. I can’t do that to our family business. Not while I’m alive.”
She leaned forward and shook her head. “You know, even though Voss is successful, it wasn’t always easy.
I lived through the ups and downs with my mum and yours.
Plus, running a business is very different to working at one.
And Max has promised to keep Goldloch as it is.
I know your reasons are worthy, but is this really what you want to do? ”
She was making me doubt myself now. But still, I nodded. “I want to give it a try. If it’s not what I want or if it doesn’t work out, I’ll accept it. But I have to try. Plus, I’m not going to run it how Mum and Gran did. I won’t let it consume my life.”
I had to try, if only because of yesterday’s weirdest lunch in the world.
“Easy words to say.” Margot gave me the saddest smile.
“But ones I thought you’d say after our phone call.
However, I’m not just going to hand the keys over to you.
You don’t have big business experience, so I want to bring someone in to help.
You’ll work with them, and listen to what they say.
Put your plans into action, see if it’s a job you want to do and if you can see any green shoots of new business.
Then we’ll come back and see where you are.
“Let’s see what you can do in three months initially, six months in all, then we’ll reassess and see if this is best for Voss and you. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t let the business consume any of us. It’s a promise I intend to keep.”
“Who will I be working with?”
“That’s again where Max stepped in. We spoke about it this morning. He suggested someone you know, to make it easier. He came up with Eliza.”
My mouth dropped open. “Carpenter?”
Margot shot me a look. “Do you know another Eliza associated with Max?”
“You want me to work with Eliza Carpenter?” Our myriad encounters as adults flashed before my eyes.
Stunted words, brushed shoulders, terse nods across the room.
As if the previous years of Highland summer trips, London Christmases, the occasional birthday or anniversary counted for nothing.
There was no way in hell that was happening every day.
“It’s a hard no.”
“Then I’m selling the company. Katy has the only other vote right now, and she already told me she’s happy with whatever I decide. You’re 29: until you turn 30, your mother’s will stipulates you don’t have a say. This is not an offer, Poppy. Work with Eliza, or we sell. Your call.”
“But Eliza is…” I couldn’t say the words to Margot.
Stubborn. Opinionated. Disloyal.
Also, blonde.
Sage’s words came back to me: Someone from your past. A woman with blonde hair. There’s something unfinished there.
Holy shit. Maybe Sage was the real deal.
“A lovely woman who has agreed to help,” Margot finished.
Every hair on my body stood up. I blinked, and tried to get my focus back in the room.
“You arranged all this on a Saturday morning?”
“What can I say? The Carpenters are hard workers. Plus, she’s living with her dad, so she was there having coffee with us after I got off the phone with you.”
Margot had been at his house? And Eliza was living with her dad following her divorce? Interesting. Last I heard, she didn’t think much of her dad and his life choices.
“And she agreed? Doesn’t she have a job of her own to do?”
“She was…” Margot picked her next word carefully.
“Hesitant. But she works for Max and he can spare her for a couple of months, maybe more.” She sighed.
“The two of you used to be such good friends. You can get on for a few months, can’t you?
It’s that, or you take Andrew. He knows the business inside out, but I suspect you might want to kill him after a week. ”
Andrew had been with the company forever. He lived and breathed Voss Watches.
She was right, I would murder him.
I bit my lip. “And what if I want to kill Eliza after a week?”
“Hold your impulses. This company has had enough death to last a lifetime. Tomorrow night, I’ve booked you into that place all the young people love with the lifts on the outside.
Drink tequila, work out your differences.
” She leaned over and stroked my hand. “And if it’s all too much, you know the alternative. Just say the word.”
That wasn’t going to happen.
I didn’t want to be haunted for the rest of my life.