Chapter 2 #2
“I don’t think so.” Polly refuted that. She wasn’t the sort that Camay would envy. She might be if she owned a wardrobe full
of Victoria Beckham outfits. Or was tall and willowy like a catwalk model so that everything she wore looked fabulous on her.
As it was, Polly was neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin, with mid-brown, mid-length, poker-straight hair. Once upon
a time, though, her tawny eyes shone and she had a smile that could light up a whole city, someone kind had said. The only
beauty contest she’d ever have a chance of winning now would be Miss Average Great Britain.
“It’s just one day, half a day really, I suppose. I can cope with wearing it for that long,” said Polly. “Then I’ll gladly
take it off and”— walk away from them all —“put it in a charity bag.”
She had so wanted to share what she’d been planning with someone, and if Sheridan hadn’t been pregnant, that’s who she would
have confided in, but she couldn’t offload all that onto her, especially now when the bun in her oven was almost fully baked.
She had to be strong for herself, something she should have been long before this.
“Are they having a honeymoon?”
“Apparently so, but she says it’s top secret. It’ll be somewhere exotic no doubt.”
“Benidorm?”
“Ha. I’d put my life savings on it not being.”
“I love Benidorm,” said Sheridan. “I’ve had a lot of fun there, both with pals and Dmitri.”
“Me too.” Polly remembered getting off the plane at Alicante and feeling the blast of hot air almost knock her backward.
She’d gone with mates whom she wasn’t in touch with anymore.
Her first ever trip abroad. It was sensory overload.
They’d come home with all the souvenir tat, the Spanish dancer doll, the castanets, the fan, the big furry donkey.
And thanks to a young, handsome Spanish waiter and a split condom, Polly brought home an extra souvenir she didn’t know about until two months later.
“So who had the affair then, him or her?” asked Sheridan.
Polly stared at her incredulously. “What do you mean?”
“Well, isn’t it a thing, that people who have almost buggered up their marriage decide to wipe the slate clean and start again
with the vows they’ve just smashed into smithereens?”
Neither Camay nor Ward was the affair type. He wheezed getting out of a chair; humping some young thing would definitely be
beyond his capabilities. Plus, Camay wouldn’t allow it. And she would never risk being parted from his pension prospects for
an extramarital fling of her own. Unless it was with Richard Branson.
“Maybe, but not in their case,” replied Polly. “They’re solid as a pair of rocks.”
“Seems like a right old waste of money to me then,” said Sheridan.
“They have it to burn,” said Polly. Camay’s plum satin wedding gown and Polly’s shapeless beige bridesmaid bag, the cars,
the champagne, the hair and makeup woman and pink lamb main course wouldn’t even make a dent in their savings.
“I’d love to be super rich, wouldn’t you, Pol?” Sheridan sighed wistfully.
Polly nodded. “Of course,” she said, knowing that she was going to be super poor for the foreseeable future, at least moneywise. Her wealth would be in the form of freedom, and she planned on spending it
liberally.
Just after lunch Jeremy bobbed his head out of his office, not to ask for a drink for once, but for Polly to pop in. She followed
him and he closed the door behind them and asked her to sit. He plonked himself in his leather swivelly executive chair behind
his desk and smiled.
“I wanted to fill you in about Nutbush,” he said with a smile so greasy it was a wonder it didn’t slide off his lips. She noticed how deliberately he spoke, as if choosing every word with care.
“Okay,” replied Polly, not giving away that she’d heard the good news already.
“You’ll be delighted to hear that they are on the steepest of upward trajectories.”
“That’s wonderful,” replied Polly. “I knew they would be.”
“Suffice to say that they are extremely glad they reached out to us at Northern Eagles.”
“Great stuff,” said Polly, nodding.
“I’m aware this was initially your client,” Jeremy went on. “And you did an admirable job of pointing their ship in the right
direction.”
It was a slight understatement. Nutbush was a sports company on the brink of receivership. They had a lot of competition in
the market, both bargain stores and high-end, and they didn’t offer enough to divert custom from either. Polly had gone out
to visit them and found their shops a mess. But not beyond hope, never beyond; her old boss Alan had trained her to see that there was always that, if they were prepared to listen to expert advice.
There was nothing that couldn’t be spun around; it was just finding the right combination for the safe holding the treasure,
as Alan used to say. And when she did find it, the Nutbush file was whipped from her with the alacrity of a champion greyhound
on amphetamines.
“I wanted to formally acknowledge your input,” Jeremy went on, pressing his hands together and doing that thank-you gesture
that gave her the ick. “I know it was hard at first to get them to accept the changes we suggested, so well done on that.”
We . Polly laughed inwardly.
“But I must give you credit where it is due, Polly—you were able to get through to them that ours was the path they should
follow. Pretty basic stuff of course, but nonetheless... good show.”
It wasn’t basic stuff at all. It was a massive gamble.
Every other business was closing stores and upping their online trading, and that was what Jeremy and his team had expected her to suggest. But Polly’s instinct was to do exactly the opposite and expand their high street presence in areas where they were strong, in towns being regenerated where planners wanted to lure people away from their computers to shop in person.
She had the vision of making Nutbush a seductive space to wander around.
She wanted to make it cool to shop there and deliver an impact that couldn’t be felt online.
She spent a lot of hours visiting their stores to absorb what the problem with them was, who shopped there now, who might shop there in the future.
The fixes she suggested raised eyebrows, but they worked.
Retro music pumping through the speakers, less stock on the floor so it looked cleaner with more space, lowered ceilings, warmer lighting instead of the harsh bright white, even a change of coat hangers.
Then she discovered there was a premiership footballer by the name of Cedric Nutbush.
She wormed her way around his PR. Did he want to help out an ailing sports firm, set up by a young man who’d had a promising football career until a car crash shattered his leg?
An inspiration to young kids that there wasn’t just one road to success?
Could they use his image (for the price of a hefty donation to his underprivileged kids’ charity) and the slogan ‘Nutbush. No Limits’?
Cedric Nutbush went for it and the whole combo worked like magic.
And Polly wasn’t even invited to the reopening of their flagship store in Manchester, although Jeremy and his merry band of
male managers were. The photo of them, Cedric, and the Nutbush founder ended up in all the national papers. That weekend she
took the train to Manchester Piccadilly, walked around the shop, felt the vibe, saw the length of the queue at the till, and
felt a massive sense of pride, albeit tainted with some rightful anger and frustration. Her old boss Alan Eagleton would have
put her on a pedestal for what she’d done for them, not shoved her in a cupboard out of sight.
“The company owes you,” said Jeremy, jabbing his long, thin finger at her.
Everything about Jeremy was long and thin: his nose, his chin, his legs, his fingers.
He’d have long slim feet with elongated toes as well, she just knew, though her imagination forbade her from going any further than that.
“I’ve had a word with HR and we are upping your salary by a thousand pounds.
So what do you think about that?” He beamed.
Jeremy beaming was not a good look because his mouth turned into a deranged V shape.
What do I think about that? Polly mused. She could imagine Alan sitting at the desk Jeremy now occupied, raising his shaggy eyebrows and urging her to
tell him to stick that grand up his arse, one fiver at a time.
“Good, good.” Jeremy didn’t wait for her answer but picked up a file from his desk and handed it to her. “Knew you’d be thrilled.
Now, if you could take a look at this. You won’t have heard of them and that’s the point. They have a big budget to spend
on improvements. If anyone can make them into the next Warburtons, you can.” He stood, signifying their meeting was at an
end. He was still smiling, in the way the pope would smile having granted a poor person a blessing.
“What’s up, Pol?” said Sheridan when Polly returned and threw herself down on her seat. “Your cheeks are very red.”
“I’m cross, that’s what I am,” said Polly. “Cross enough to storm out of this damned building and never come back.”
Jeremy’s V-shaped lips were branded on her brain. V for the victory he’d claimed for doing nothing other than regurgitate
her ideas, her suggestions, and then he’d had the nerve to fling her a bit of icing from his celebratory cake.
“I’ve just typed up a letter from Germy for HR. Is it—”
Polly held up her hand to stop Sheridan from saying any more. Her heart was racing, her head full of words unsaid. She’d taken
two years’ worth of crap from him now, and it was enough. She really did need to be more Sabrina . She couldn’t wait for her effect to kick in.
During her lunch hour, Polly took the folder Jeremy had given her into the canteen and sat in the corner with it.
Confusingly it had “Auntie Marian’s Bread” on the front, but inside was a brief pertaining to a very different company—a burgeoning Italian restaurant chain called Ciaoissimo.
She unwrapped her sandwich and chewed half-heartedly on it.
The catering in this place used to be top-notch, but company cuts had led to detrimental changes.
Alan Eagleton was always of the belief that an army marches on its stomach and quality scran was an essential.
But then, there was a chasm between the sort of man Alan was and the sort Jeremy was that made the Grand Canyon look like a crack in a pavement.
With an absence of anything else to occupy her, she started to read about Ciaoissimo: Authentically Italian it cried, even though it was about as authentically Italian as Bjork.
No wonder they’d asked for help. High staff turnover, low morale, lack of vision, crazy menu, and their mission statement
seemed to be “Get the money off the customers, feed them crap, and chuck them out.” Negligible number of repeat customers— no shit, Sherlock .
They were a mess. She opened up an envelope in the back marked Strictly Confidential and didn’t like what she found there.
She hoped this one landed on someone else’s pile; otherwise she might actually be tempted
to cock it up.
She took the folder back to Jeremy after lunch.
“Ah, straight on it, Polly Kettle; that’s what I like to see,” he said.
“Well, I would have been had the outside matched the inside,” she replied, bristling at the stupid name Jeremy insisted on calling her.
She bet he didn’t call Jack Jones, the head of Finance, “Jack Spratty,” or Marjorie Wright, the head of HR, “See Saw Marjorie Daw.” Mind you, with good reason, because Marjorie would have had his balls off.
She was fierce but fair: Fools were not to be suffered.
Polly had always really liked her no-nonsense approach, and there was too much nonsense in Northern Eagles now.
Marjorie was part of the old guard, most of whom had been dispensed with when the company was sold and the new guard came in.
Two of her particular favorites had been driven out: Phil Bowery, one of Alan’s brightest protégés, and Dave Deacon, a young graduate with a real nose for business.
They went to the wall because Charles Butler wanted his own people in, even if they were inferior.
Marjorie escaped the firing squad probably because she was female and less of a threat, but she was drafted over from the directorate to Human Resources out of the way.
Polly answered Jeremy’s confused, inquiring expression. “The outside says Auntie Marian’s Bread; inside there’s a business
profile of an Italian restaurant chain called Ciaoissimo, not a mention of a teacake to be found,” she explained.
“Ah. Not sure how that happened. Just forget about this one; it needs expert handling.” Jeremy opened up the big drawer in
his desk and dropped the folder in there quickly. “I’ll have the proper file brought over to you.”
Interesting , thought Polly on the way out, wondering why Ciaoissimo should be classified. Anyway, let one of Jeremy’s “experts” deal
with it. No doubt he’d run into difficulty and need her input, so it would end up with her eventually anyway. That’s what
usually happened.