Wonder Women (17 page)

They walked nonchalantly into the shop. It was beautifully and expensively fitted out, with a solid wooden floor and all the clothes hung on padded white-satin hangers. There were glass shelves with baby gifts and christening robes, and racks of delicate jewellery. Jo thought about what chaos Zach would be capable of in a place like this, and gave an involuntary shiver. She looked over to Holly and thought she must be thinking something similar, because she was staring at something with open-mouthed disbelief. She walked over and saw Holly was looking at a little girl's dress. It was an old fashioned smock-style dress with two pockets, in a butterfly print fabric. It looked like something out of an Enid Blyton
book: simple but pretty. Jo thought she wouldn't mind buying it for Imogene. But it was the price tag Holly was staring at. Jo glanced at it cursorily. Twenty pounds. That didn't seem unreasonable – about right for a dress like that. Then she looked again. She had missed a zero. The dress was two hundred pounds. Other than her wedding, she couldn't think of an occasion where she'd spend that on a dress for herself, let alone Imogene, who would dribble and spill on it, and have occasion to wear it three or four times before she grew out of it. Jo grabbed Holly's elbow and they backed out of the shop.

‘You were right,' laughed Holly. ‘Soooo not the competition. I don't think we're aiming at the same market at all!'

Later that week, after checking out their website and social-media presence, Holly set up a meeting with Chris and Daniel, the T-shirt guys. Jo had told her they were teenagers and she was expecting a pair of spotty fifteen-year-olds, so she was pleasantly surprised when two tall, well-turned-out young men in jeans and collared shirts walked into the West End restaurant where they'd arranged to meet. Chris was slightly shorter and rounder, with thick black hair that he'd obviously spent time arranging in an artful bed-head way. Daniel was tall and lean with sharper features and cropped light brown hair. They looked like what Judith would call ‘Nice, well-brought-up young men'.

‘Good to meet you,' Holly said, standing up to shake hands. When they'd exchanged greetings and sat down she ordered a coffee, and they both asked for Earl Grey tea, which she found rather endearing. They made small talk for a while and she discovered they had been friends since
junior school and were now entering their A2 year, the end of A levels. Daniel had just turned eighteen and Chris was a few months younger.

They were clearly nervous, and Holly could see that this meeting was a big deal for them. She tried to put them at their ease. ‘Let me just start by saying we really like your stuff, and we definitely want to work with you, if we can agree the right designs and the right terms.'

Daniel tried to look serious and businesslike, but his face broke into a wide grin. He had a lovely smile and very white teeth. A bit like a boy-band member, Holly thought. ‘Well, as soon as we got your call, I started thinking about kids' T-shirts, and I did a few sketches. Would you like to see?'

He opened the folder he had brought with him. ‘I came up with an idea ages ago for a kids' action hero, a little guy called Monkeyman,' he explained. ‘My dad used to call me that when I was little. Monkeyman's sort of like Calvin, from
Calvin and Hobbes
, you know. A kid who's always in trouble but thinks he's saving the world. So we see him jumping off the sofa on to the cat, or battling an evil alien with his mum's spatula, and he always wears a cape made out of a towel. This is him.'

He pushed a drawing across at Holly, with an ink cartoon of an impish little guy with a towel knotted around his shoulders, and spiky hair like Chris's. His little face was full of mischief. He reminded Holly instantly of Zach. ‘Aah! He's great!' she said, laughing.

‘So we wondered about a range of Monkeyman T-shirts, and then we started thinking about the jungle theme of your shop, so we did some animal designs too …'

Daniel was so excited his words tripped over each other as he handed drawing after drawing to Holly. Most of them were perfect, though a few were too avant-garde or adult for the audience, and those she put to one side.

Chris, who had not said much up until that point, then reached into his bag. ‘I got a few T-shirts from our regular supplier and printed some up for you,' he said shyly. He brought them out and handed them to Holly. They were neatly ironed and folded. He clocked her noticing and smiled. ‘My mum was so excited about this meeting; she stayed up till midnight last night ironing these for us. And she made us wear shirts.'

‘I would have worn a shirt anyway,' said Daniel seriously.

Holly unfolded the T-shirts. They were reasonable quality, and she liked the way they were printed in unusual colours and unusual places. Monkeyman ran along the hem of one T-shirt and peered out from under the wearer's arm on another. ‘These are great,' she said. ‘Let's talk wholesale price.'

Chris brought out a carefully typed list with their prices per size and quantity on it. Holly scanned it. ‘That's a great start. Now go away and recost it with an even better quality T-shirt. I want something that won't fade or shrink and can withstand multiple washes, okay?'

‘Okay.' Chris looked downcast.

‘Don't get me wrong, these are pretty good,' said Holly. ‘But we're talking about dressing a real-life Monkeyman. We're making clothes for kids that are going to get up to all sorts, and parents will expect the clothes to keep up. But let me just say we have a deal, and you guys are going to
be very busy in the next few months. Now would you like something to eat?'

Chris and Daniel nodded enthusiastically and began studying the menu. Holly had grown up with an older brother, and she suddenly remembered how much teenage boys could eat. She almost regretted her generous offer, but what the hell. They were sweet kids, and their T-shirts were going to be fabulous.

*

They set an opening date of 1 November, reasoning that it gave them time to iron out any kinks in the running of the shop before the Christmas rush. With four weeks to go before the launch, there were a million things to do. Both Jo and Holly kept enormous lists, which seemed to get longer, never shorter. Holly worked out her notice at the shop in Ealing and breathed a sigh of relief. She'd been juggling two full-time jobs for so long, she'd forgotten what a good night's sleep felt like.

Jo was run absolutely ragged. She had to fit everything for the shop around the kids, who had pretty full-on schedules themselves. She found herself sitting by the pool while Zach had his swimming lesson, working on a spreadsheet on her laptop with one hand while feeding chunks of apple to Imi with the other. Then, in the week that all the clothes started to arrive, first Zach and then Imi came down with horrible colds and she was up all night with feverish, coughing children.

She was exhausted all the time, but there was no way to stop. If the kids were asleep, she had to grab the hours to do some work, so even after they got rid of their colds, she
was managing on about four hours a night. Then, one day, she was so befuddled that she managed to reverse the car into her own gatepost. It wasn't a major accident, just a scratch on the bumper, but she knew it would never have happened if she was her usual competent self. She sat in the car, sobbing, while Zach patted her arm, full of concern, and then she took out her phone and rang Lee. ‘I really need your help,' she said. Lee hesitated for a second, and that was all it took for her to start sobbing again.

‘Don't cry, love,' he said, horrified. Jo was always so tough, so calm under pressure … she almost never cried. ‘Let me see what I can do.'

He rang back ten minutes later. He had spoken to his boss, and she had allowed him to take a couple of weeks' leave from work to look after the kids so Jo could put in all the hours she needed. Things were a bit easier after that, and on Lee's orders, she made sure she got at least six or seven hours' sleep every night.

One of the most crucial concerns was finding a third staff member. Holly had made it clear that she didn't want to be stuck behind the counter. She'd done her time in retail, and while she was happy to give advice or fill in, she didn't want to work regular shifts. Jo wanted to be there day-to-day, but her family commitments meant her hours were limited. They needed someone full-time and utterly reliable. They wrote an ad and ran it on a few retail job sites.

Holly came into the half-fitted shop one day to find Jo sitting, her head in her hands, at the dusty counter, looking at a great stack of pages.

‘What's the problem?'

‘What makes you think there's a problem?'

‘When you bury your fingers in your hair like that, it's because you're wrestling with something. What's up?'

‘Have you been talking to Lee? He always says to me, “Are you trying to hold your head together, or pull it apart?”'

‘Well, which is it?'

‘This hiring thing. It's like the worst kind of blind dating.'

Holly pointed to the pile of papers. ‘Are those CVs?'

‘So many CVs. More than sixty. How do I begin to choose? We don't have time to interview sixty people.'

‘Okay,' said Holly in her best businesslike tone, ‘let's split the pile in half, and be brutal. We have to go by feel. We need to choose a shortlist of not more than ten, I say. We can interview ten, surely.'

‘Can we?' said Jo faintly. ‘When?'

‘We'll clear a day. Somehow. Look, we have to do this. We need this person.' Holly took the pile of CVs and split it roughly in the middle. Be brutal. Be judgemental. And go totally with your gut.'

On their first pass, they managed to lose thirty-five of the sixty. Jo felt dreadful. Most of those purged were excluded for the most minor reasons: they lived too far away, they didn't actively mention children in their application letter … Holly eliminated one girl because she'd inserted a photo into her CV. ‘Nothing against her face – just think it's weird to include a picture if you weren't asked for one.'

‘Now what?' said Jo. ‘We can't interview twenty-five people. Not in a day. And we don't have more than a day. We don't even have a day! We have a fictional day, which you have
invented, which doesn't exist in my diary. The thirty-second of something.'

‘Okay,' said Holly. ‘We need a method. But first, we need coffee. I'll get some from next door.'

‘We might need cake as well. This decision needs cake. In fact, here's a better idea. Let's go next door. It's a new environment. Fresh energy. Clear thoughts.'

‘Genius!' said Holly, hopping up and grabbing her bag and the pile of CVs.

They went over to the coffee shop, where they ordered lattes and slices of lemon cake and sat at a corner table.

‘I think we're going about this the wrong way,' Jo said. ‘We're looking for something wrong, a way to exclude people. We should be looking for something right. Something exceptional. A yes, not a no.'

‘And that's why you're the boss,' said Holly, grinning. ‘Let's read them all again, looking for a yes. For whatever reason. Let's each write down the people we think have something special, even if it isn't something we can define.'

They each read every one of the twenty-five CVs, passing them over as they completed them and making notes on their pads. They didn't speak for over an hour, except to order more coffee. When they had finished they each had a list of names.

‘How many do you have?' asked Jo.

‘Seven. You?'

‘Nine. Let's swap and look.'

They exchanged pads. They both had five of the same names. ‘Well, those are definites,' said Jo happily. Then they each went through the others they had chosen and explained
why. They decided to lose two of Jo's and one of Holly's, leaving a total of eight.

‘Job done!' said Holly, leaning back in her chair, satisfied. ‘Now I need to get out of here. I'm on a total caffeine and sugar buzz. I'm shaking.'

They went back to the half-completed shop without speaking. But as Jo unlocked the door, she turned to Holly and said hesitantly, ‘Any obvious favourites?'

‘Oh, totally. You?'

‘Yes,' said Jo, pushing the door open. They hesitated, and then said simultaneously, ‘Mel Grey.'

‘So … Mel,' Holly said.

‘I know. She's the one, isn't she?'

‘We need to do the interviews, but she is. I feel it in my waters.'

According to Mel Grey's CV, she had trained at Goldsmith's as a performer (Jo was thrilled – ‘My alma mater!'), then worked with a children's theatre company, touring schools with a variety of educational programmes, before retraining as a nursery nurse.

‘I bet she had a baby then and didn't want to tour any more,' said Jo.

‘She did,' said Holly. ‘She mentions it under “personal” at the end. Serena. Aged fifteen.'

After the nursery-nurse section, Mel's CV was all clothing retail – and mainly children's clothing. She'd worked in big department stores and boutiques, and she was currently the office manager for a clothing import firm in Finchley. She had experience of every aspect from stock control to service and fitting. Her covering letter was appropriately formal, but
still warm and funny. It seemed like a small thing but she'd begun it ‘Dear Jo and Holly, Re: Staff position at Jungletown'. Holly, ever the perfectionist, noticed that she had researched their first names, even though they weren't in the job ad, and she had got the shop name absolutely correct, noting that it was one word, not two. She was one of only three candidates who did.

They found a day to conduct their interviews among all the mayhem. Of their eight shortlisted candidates, two had already found other positions and one was away on holiday and couldn't make the interview date, so in the end they saw five people.

As a test, they decided to hold the interviews at Jo's house and have Zach and Imogene in the room with them. Mel burst into the interview with sparky energy, humour and warmth. She was short – just five feet tall – and wiry, with the compact, athletic build of a gymnast. She wore her sandy hair cropped short, and looked younger than her age, which Jo and Holly knew from her CV was forty-one. She greeted them formally and correctly and answered their introductory questions well, and when Zach bounded over to show her his new pride and joy, a Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver, she politely excused herself to Jo and Holly and turned her full attention to Zach. She appeared to know a terrifying amount of detail about the gadget, and about Doctor Who in general, and she pitched her chatter just right for an enthusiastic but not very well-informed three-and-a-half year old. After a minute or so, she asked Zach's pardon, explaining that she had to speak to his mum, and turned her attention back to Jo and Holly. She answered all sorts
of technical questions about running a shop, and when Imogene, who was teething, began to fuss, asked if she might hold her, and stood bouncing her on a hip while she talked. She was perfect, but most of all, they both really liked her. As Holly said, once she was gone, ‘I don't know how to put it into words, but … she's our tribe.'