Chapter 9
If the fusties thought they had set on an obedient, if formidable, Labrador who would kowtow to their will, they got a rude awakening in that morning meeting.
It made for sobering listening when Jack Cesaroni, complete with PowerPoint illustrations, gave a forensically detailed presentation on the damage they had allowed certain personnel in the company to cause.
Was it their mission statement to promote those who hadn’t a clue what they were doing just because they had a golf handicap in line with Sir Roland’s?
Or were ‘Teflon’ because of secret intimate relations?
Tam had heard the rumours about someone on the board’s extra-marital fling with Frances Belk in PR and from the way he shifted in his seat when Jack’s eyes fell on him, it was clearly confirmed.
She was impressed to see that Jack did not duck away from his own mission statement: that people in his companies who were promoted to run departments should run them adequately.
And they certainly shouldn’t be throwing staff to the lions in order to bury any of their own mistakes.
Tam wished she’d brought some popcorn to enhance her enjoyment as she took in each board member’s shocked expression.
Jack Cesaroni had been brought in to chop out the dead wood, except the dead wood he’d identified took up much more of their forest than the board wanted to believe.
Richard Idle had to go. Frances Belk also. He had an immediate replacement lined up for her. Idle would be no loss seeing as the department was already being run by Olek Serafinski and so he would be given the invitation to formally take over. It wasn’t a request.
The board members looked to each other like nervous meerkats but no one said a word. Tam was riveted.
‘And, I am going to undo the ridiculous and totally nonsensical decision to merge Ops with Logistics. They should stay as two separate departments and Miss Remington here will return to her previous position as head of the former. She will have elevated duties, working more closely with me, and be paid in line with her increased responsibilities.’
Tam was actually quite glad she didn’t have any popcorn at this point because she might have choked on it, coughing with shock.
Jack turned to her, his large dark-brown eyes taking her in. His lashes were sooo long, she noticed.
‘I would like you to hear it from me how much Miss Remington achieved in her albeit brief stint as your MD and I can assure you that your business would have been in very safe hands had she remained as such,’ he went on.
All eyes drifted to Tam and she felt her cheeks begin to respond as if eleven hot-air guns were trained on her face.
It could have been a twitch in Jack’s eye but it looked like a wink.
He didn’t stop there, though. He listed everything she had done to improve staff morale in the last few years, the measures she had taken – unheralded and unnoticed by them – to combat all the one-man wrecking ball Martin Middlewood had inflicted upon the company.
His tribute to her was excruciating in its intensity.
She was thrown into blessed relief when he switched tack, tearing into the board for allowing themselves to be blinkered, resting on false laurels, trusting people without question when it was their job to be on the ball and look after their shareholders’ interests.
At the end of his tirade, the eleven men looked like withered little boys who had just been eviscerated by a headmaster for smoking.
Spent now, Jack turned off the PowerPoint and said, ‘Your thoughts, gentlemen.’ As the fog of shock cleared, the nods of assent began, the twitters of conversation between neighbours. Approval filling the room like a new version of oxygen.
‘That all sounds very . . . impressive, Mr Cesaroni,’ said Sir Roland.
‘And exciting,’ said someone at the end. ‘Very exciting.’
They had been right to invest in such a man, she could feel it emanating from them all. It was quite something to witness Jack Cesaroni in full force and suddenly, as if she’d needed any further proof, Tam knew this was why he commanded the big bucks.
‘Are you okay taking the lift down?’ Jack asked Tam, after they left the boardroom.
‘Erm, yes,’ she supposed. The middle lift they had come up in was marked ‘Out of Service’ now and she figured the likelihood of two failing on the same day would have negligible odds.
She could have kicked off her shoes and taken the stairs, of course, something she thought of just as the lift doors were closing on her.
In truth, she wasn’t out of the shock bubble of what had just happened – all of it, the whole morning’s events from start to finish.
No doubt all the lifts would be undergoing a serious review in the next few days, because Jack Cesaroni was a doer.
And Tam had enormous admiration for doers.
In the initial glory days of YorkMart, everybody in authority was like that.
When had it all begun to change? One minute all was great, then the goalposts had started moving subtly, unnoticed, giving a false reading of normality.
Thank goodness they’d caught things before they were too late.
Tam stood watching the floor numbers counting down, one word bouncing around in her head like a fly trying to find an escape door.
Exceptional.
Jack Cesaroni had made her feel exactly that in the boardroom. Like someone of value.
‘Do you have plans for lunch?’ he asked, as they approached floor six. ‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet.’
‘Erm, no, I don’t have any plans. Who do you want me to meet?’
‘The new head of PR. I’d like you to tell me what you think of them. I’ve booked a table for three at twelve. Presumptuous of me, I know. Carlo’s, around the corner. I’ve heard it’s quite good.’
‘It’s better than that,’ said Tam. ‘We are very lucky to have such a place nearby. Lots of business lunch hours are spent there.’
It was a particular favourite of Richard Idle’s, who took four-hour pleasure lunches there on the pretext of business.
Tam swallowed a smile; she could just imagine the reaction in his department when they found out he was for the chop.
They’d have a full-on party and she’d sanction the budget for it.
He was one of a few who presumed they were protected by their associations with board members.
It was going to come as a shock to them to realise they were not titanium.
YorkMart would be all the richer for being poorer of them.
Tam nipped to the loo, refreshed her nude lipstick and spritzed herself with perfume, a heavy, spicy one that Harris had bought for her to replace the signature scent she’d worn for years, which made him cough, he said.
It was too sweet and cloying, the perfume of a girl, and she was a woman, if she hadn’t noticed.
It was no big deal, just a perfume. She’d got used to it now.
Jack was waiting for her by the door down in the atrium.
He’d put on his jacket; he had a great line in suits.
She wondered if he had them specially made because he had really broad shoulders that tapered to a slim waist like Superman, strong, toned arms that filled his sleeves, and long legs.
She didn’t think he’d find that shape on a peg.
They talked as they walked. Jack said as they rounded the corner, ‘Between you and me, I think that Sheila is overdue a promotion to head of HR. Think she can do the job, Tam?’
Tam looked up at him in surprise. ‘In her sleep,’ she said with emphasis. Was this really the man who’d been her boss all these weeks? The man who emerged from the lift seemed different to the one who had entered it.
Thank goodness it wasn’t a long walk to Carlo’s because her feet were killing her.
But then Mr Louboutin was credited with saying that comfort was not his priority, his shoes were meant to turn heads.
She wished he’d reconsider. The waiter led them over to a booth where Jack’s guest was already present and waiting.
Tam’s eyes blinked in disbelief. A tall blonde woman had risen to greet them, her expectant smile segueing into shock as her eyes met Tam’s.
‘Oh my God. Tam!’ she exclaimed, her Lancastrian accent unmistakable, unchanged.
Never in a million years would Tam have expected the prospective new head of PR to be her old uni pal, Anna Anderson.