Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
She’d lost Hope, and now Camille was fast losing all sense of reality. Her former PA’s planning system was a massive color coded spreadsheet. It had filters, and drop down menus. She was certain there was a special place in hell reserved for the maniac who had invented pivot tables.
Before this morning, Camille hadn’t even known what a pivot table was, but apparently Hope had a bit of a thing for them. The instruction document was littered with technical terms which didn’t make one lick of sense. Even Google had thrown up its hands at trace dependents . Was this some form of English that she’d failed to study at school?
It was now a little after seven am, and the only things Camille knew for certain was that her head hurt, and Sophie still hadn’t called her back.
Computers had never been her thing. A design pad and pencil was where her passions lay. Tailors chalk, scissors, and fabric. That was the world which Camille had grown up in, the world she’d always understood. The beautiful, dare she say at times almost carnal sensation of being able to lay your hands on your own creations was the language she spoke. Fashion was something primal which crossed all language barriers.
But this thing. This computer program. It might as well have been written in Ancient Aramaic for all that she understood. Life shouldn’t have to be this complicated.
Camille gritted her teeth. As frustrating as it was, she had no other choice but to try and get her head around Hope’s multi-colored nightmare. She didn’t want to call Bryce, not until she had at least attempted to unravel the mysteries of the planning system.
I hate feeling incompetent around him.
Her cousin would no doubt offer to help, but her pride would pay the price.
Hope couldn’t have picked a worse time to resign. The extra workload Camille would need to take on in the three months leading up to Fashion Week in mid-September was going to see her already overextended calendar stretched to its limits. But not having a PA would likely break her.
Her latest fashion line with Saks Fifth Avenue was selling particularly well. The eager store buyers were already asking for more product lines to keep the customers coming back.
On top of that were the two full seasonal catalogues which she was already committed to delivering between now and the end of the year. Thankfully those garments were designed and on the manufacturers production schedule, but overseas supply chains were not always reliable, and had to be carefully managed. A task usually handled with cool efficiency by Hope.
She could use those new pieces in her runway show, but fashion week would also want some extra unique pieces.
Camille held her hands to her face, and let out a groan. “I can design clothes forever but this thing…urgh. I don’t understand how it works. And I hate it.”
She could have sworn the horrible thing swam in front of her eyes.
What she would give to be able to punch the computer screen. To make excel understand that no matter what horrible things it threw at her, she was not going to be its bitch.
“Right. So green means we have booked the work, but not completed it. Dark green means. Oh!”
She threw up her hands, and shot to her feet. Her ergonomic desk chair rocked across the floor. Four solid hours of trying to figure out how this monstrosity of a planning spreadsheet actually worked, and Camille was ready to toss her laptop out the window. And then jump out after it.
A lack of sleep wasn’t helping. She would love to talk to a friendly voice and vent her frustrations. Misery shared was misery halved. But none of that would help with her current predicament.
“What I really need right now is someone who understands this horrible program and can take this spreadsheet off my hands.”
But she was no quitter. Before she handed the document over to someone else, she had to have mastered it. If she didn’t, she might well find herself in this very same predicament again at some point. And only a fool didn’t heed the lesson of measuring twice before cutting.
It would be so easy to call the accounting team at Royal Resorts and get one of them to come over and help. But she resisted. There was a pattern of behavior she had to break.
Task too hard. Call Bryce’s people.
Don’t want to learn a new skill. Call Bryce’s people.
Convenience had long ago turned into a crutch. Little Miss Independent had become Little Miss Helpless.
I have to learn to stand on my own two feet. This is my company, my future.
Camille’s cell phone buzzed, and her hopes flared to life. Could her former PA have suddenly had a crisis of guilt and decided to call?
Please. Please. Please let it be Hope.
She picked it up, but as she read the name on the screen KARL’s FAbrIC EMPORIUM , all her hopes of being rescued from the evil of excel quickly died.
Karl Thomas was one of her major fabric suppliers who operated out of a small store on Broadway.
“Hi Karl. How are you?”
“Oh my gosh Cami, your voice sounds so flat. Are you sick or did you eat a stack of pity pancakes for breakfast? Where is the sassy siren I’m so used to dealing with?”
Camille softly muttered, “Merde”. There was no avoiding it, word of Hope’s defection would get out soon enough. “Sorry Karl, but my reserves of sass are at an all-time low. Hope called me in the early hours of this morning to tell me she was resigning effective immediately.”
Saying the words out loud made the wall of misery which surrounded Camille press in on her.
“What? I thought the two of you were a tight team. Did you have a falling out?”
The fashion world was fueled by feuds and rumors. Karl was a sweetheart, but even he wouldn’t be able to sit on this news. Whatever she said in this conversation would be all around the garment district and lower Manhattan by the end of the morning. Camille paused for a moment and gathered her thoughts.
She was a member of the international Royal family, people whose wealth was counted not in billions of dollars but in GDP. Media training was something all Royals went through before they began working in any of the family businesses. Controlling the narrative around their names and reputations was paramount. The truth of Hope’s leaving had to remain a secret. In its place would be a carefully crafted statement.
“Hope and I ended her employment on a positive note. Yesterday, her boyfriend surprised her with a romantic escape to Las Vegas. Once they were there, he proposed, and they got married. She and I had been discussing her future for some time, and we agreed that now was the right time for us to part ways.”
And that didn’t sound the least like I’d just got an AI chatbot to write it.
There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment, then Karl let out a loud tsk of disapproval. “Tell me she didn’t marry that asshole, Neil. I swear I’ve lost count of the number of times Hope would arrive to pick up fabric samples and be in floods of tears because of something he’d done.”
Camille stared at the computer monitor, trying to figure out whether the shade of blue on one of the drop down filters was cerulean or sapphire.
“Hope’s private life is none of my business. I wish her and her new husband all the very best for the future,” she replied.
She got a second more firmly uttered tsk of disgust from Karl. He might not like it, but it was all he was going to get.
“Well, Ms. Camille Royal, if you are not going to gift me with any decent dirt, I shall get to the purpose of my phone call. Fabrics. Your blue woven cotton with the shot of gold thread has arrived, and I have to say it looks amazing. I can’t wait to see what you will create with it. And the other samples you wanted, the ones with silver, white, and blue pinstripes are also here. So when are we going to see you?”
For the first time since she’d gotten the call from Hope, the fog which had clouded Camille’s mind began to clear. She might struggle with spreadsheets, but she lived for fabrics.
Normally Hope would have either gone to pick up the pieces herself, or organized a courier, but this morning Camille couldn’t resist the lure of getting out of her studio and walking the streets of New York City. Even if it was only a couple of blocks.
“That’s great thanks Karl. If it’s alright I can come over this morning and pick them up. I’ll stop by that coffee place on Broadway and pick you up a creamy coffee. Did you want a cake or something to go with it?”
Her own breakfast delivered earlier by the Royal Resorts Manhattan kitchen still sat untouched on the countertop in her downstairs apartment. After the morning she’d endured, Camille couldn’t face food.
“Don’t you dare, it’s black coffee or nothing,” growled Karl.
He was known to have a sweet tooth, so his reaction was a little odd. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“New York Fashion Week intends to do a spread on me and my fabric emporium. I’m planning on fitting into the vintage Prince of Wales check, Alexander McQueen suit I got married in. And to say that the pants are a little tight around the crotch at the moment would be an understatement.”
She stifled a laugh. At worst Karl would have three or four pounds to lose, but this was Karl, and he was a perfectionist. When the people from Fashion Week arrived to take his photo, he would look his usual fabulous self.
“Long black. No sweetener. No cream. No cake. Got it. See you soon, Karl.”
Camile hung up the call. She clicked out of the planning spreadsheet and into her emails. The one from the booking committee for New York Fashion Week still sat at the top. It was time to put her disappointment to one side and get busy.
She sent a carefully worded response, graciously accepting the offer and informing them that her team would do everything to ensure the show was a success.
This morning her team consisted of just herself, but she would rectify that situation as soon as possible.
Back downstairs in her apartment, Camille took a long hot shower. Under the water, the tears finally came. She let them fall. Let every single one of them roll down her face. A damn good cry in the privacy of her home wasn’t an indulgence, it was the mind set therapy she needed.
It did her the world of good. As soon as she had toweled off and done her hair, Camille slipped into her bra and panties and headed back upstairs. She composed an email to Bryce. In it she explained what had transpired over the past few hours.
Finger hovering over her laptop, Camille was ready to hit send. But then a thought hit her, and she sat back in her chair. It would be all too easy to send her cousin a list of things she needed help with in the wake of Hope’s departure—far too easy.
If she was going to be serious about learning to solve her own problems, then Bryce and the Royal Resorts team had to stop being her first port of call in a storm. Camille deleted the bulk of her email. Instead she sent a short message to Bryce informing him that Hope had left her employ; and that she might need his IT people’s advice in covering off any possible access issues. She then went back to her apartment to get dressed.
In her walk in robe, she selected a red and white polka dot dress from her current summer collection, matching it with a pair of handmade red leather high heeled shoes. Today’s weather forecast was for a mild 25 degrees Celsius, or seventy five degrees Fahrenheit. She was certain she’d never get used to the American system. But either way it would make for a nice, pleasant day.
Stepping out the front door of her red brick building and into West 28 th Street a half hour later, Camille was wearing her favorite pair of oversized sunglasses on her face. She took a deep breath and whispered, “Let’s get this done.”
The spring in her step said it all. She had suffered a small set back this morning, but that was now all behind her. This was the Big Apple and Camille Royal was ready to take another big juicy bite.