Lessons in Love

Out in the High Street, and still around five minutes’ walk away from Lorenzo’s, Jane took a quick look in the window of a bookshop, which was the only one on the street with a window display dark enough to let her see her reflection. What the hell did you wear to a potential dot com job with a self-made woman and her right-hand man?

The suit Jane had bought in Next was great for the library but for Lorenzo’s? Nope. After Jayne’s phone call she’d spent what remained of the morning soaking away her hangover in a warm bath, plucking her eyebrows, rootling through her wardrobe, pressing things, lifting cat hairs off other things with masking tape, trying on endless combinations, knowing full well that whatever she chose it would feel wrong the minute she stepped out of the door.

And Gladstone—having missed his breakfast—was nowhere in sight, which also felt like a bad omen. And despite Lizzie’s phone call there was no time to go through the folder of email she had forwarded from the library—not that Jane thought there was anything in there, whatever Lucy or Lizzie thought.

As the day was warm and sunny, the sky Wedgwood blue with not a hint of a cloud, Jane had settled on a blue and cream linen skirt, T-shirt, short fitted cardigan, straw bag, and ballet pumps as her final choice. It had looked perfect when she left the house. She stared into the shop window and tried to get a real sense of whether it worked or not. Did it make her look ditsy? Too Doris Day, too Amelie? Too young? Too casual? Maybe she should have worn heels. Did heels say sexy and confident, or did flats say sensible and reliable? Horribly aware that she was running late, Jane tried standing on tiptoe to gauge the effect—maybe there was still time to nip into Stead and Simpson and buy a pair of high-heeled sandals—while forcing herself to calm down as she reminded herself for the umpteenth time that Jayne had already offered her a job.

She didn’t have to impress anyone, except she felt she had to make Jayne feel she had made a good choice and make Ray feel…feel…what was it she had to make Ray feel? Jane grimaced. God, this was awful.

Jane turned left and then right to check her profile, and her bum, then sucked in her stomach and fluffed up her hair. Behind her two Chinese people watched intently—presumably they thought she was some kind of provincial street theatre. It was nearly one o’clock already.

Lorenzo’s was set halfway along Brewer Street, up a flight of well-scrubbed steps, the front door flanked by two cone-shaped bay trees in terracotta pots, which made Jane wonder if the chef popped out first thing to pick a few leaves for the fish. Unlikely.

Inside the restaurant the walls were palest yellow, the black-and-white-tiled lobby giving way to plush duck-egg-blue carpets and an air of expensive tranquillity.

‘How can I help you?’ said a woman on the desk, whose expression suggested she could spot a Primark T-shirt and the wrong shoes in her sleep.

‘I’m meeting someone.’ The woman glanced down at her bookings list. ‘Jane Mills?’ Jane said

Like open sesame or shazam the name had the most amazing effect. ‘Certainly, Miss Mills is already here,’ she said. As she spoke the woman’s smile warmed and she waved a boy in uniform over. ‘Could you take—I’m so sorry I didn’t catch your name?’

‘Mills, Jane Mills,’ Jane said quietly.

The smile faltered. ‘Oh, so sorry, I thought you were here to see Jayne Mills.’

Jane nodded and blushed although she wasn’t quite sure why. ‘I am. Same name, it’s all a bit confusing, sorry.’

The smile snapped back. ‘Not at all. If you’d like to follow Terry, he’ll take you through. Miss Mills is in the bar.’ Jane did as she was told.

‘There you are,’ said a voice Jane recognised. Jayne Mills was on her feet before Jane was halfway across the room. She and a man in a suit were sitting at a table in a little bar area adjacent to the main dining room.

‘I thought you might have had second thoughts,’ Jayne said smiling broadly, catching firm hold of Jane’s hand. ‘Come and join us. Ray’s already broken out the champagne to celebrate me finally buggering off and leaving him in peace.’

A waiter appeared with a third glass as Jayne made the introductions. ‘Jane, this is Ray Jacobson, my right-hand man. Ray, this is Jane—’

Before anyone could come up with a definition of what Jane was, Ray clasped her hand in a firm presidential handshake. ‘Hello, Jane,’ he said warmly. ‘Nice to meet you. Welcome aboard. I hope you’ll be very happy with us. Jayne has just been telling me about you. We go back a long way, Jayne and I.’

‘Let’s not bother working out how long exactly,’ Jayne joked. Jane smiled and nodded as the waiter filled up her champagne glass.

Ray was small—no more than five foot five or six, his broad shoulders giving the impression he was almost square. He looked as if he was in his fifties, hair thick and grey, combed back off strong features and a deeply tanned face. He wore a tight professional smile.

‘I thought we’d break you in gently. I’m not sure how much Jayne has told you about her organisation but I do most of the hands-on administration, turning Jayne’s bright ideas into reality and generally oiling the wheels of the corporate machine. We’ve never had anyone with us on the front line before but I’m sure we’ll both rise to the occasion. Jayne suggested you might be able to start Monday morning. Maybe you’d like to spend a few days in the office to get the feel of the place before you hit the road.’

‘Hit the road? But I thought it was Jayne who was hitting the road?’ said Jane, looking from face to face, panicking, realising that the champagne was already rippling through her bloodstream like quicksilver, rehydrating the previous day’s wrinkly dried-up alcohol molecules and that she hadn’t had any breakfast and that she had no idea at all exactly what it was she had signed up for.

‘True, but you’re off to see new suppliers,’ Ray was saying.

‘I am?’ Jane hissed.

Jayne grinned and patted her arm. ‘Don’t look so worried. It’ll be fine. Come round to mine tomorrow morning. I’ll talk you through my diary and explain what I do.’ She giggled; obviously Jane wasn’t the only one affected by the champagne. ‘Actually, I suppose that as of now it’s what you do.’

Ray smiled wolfishly ‘And then you can come and see me first thing on Monday morning and I’ll show you how we make order out of madam’s high-octane chaos.’

Jayne laughed, Jane didn’t.

When Jane got back home at around three thirty the house was quiet, the cats sound asleep in the sunny garden. She put her bag on the kitchen counter and plugged in the kettle. Lunch hadn’t been all that bad. And at least working for Jayne would give her something to tide her over until she worked out exactly what she wanted to do next.

Picking up the local paper Jane turned to the situations vacant column, slipped off her shoes, padded through to the sitting room and settled down on the sofa. Sunlight filled the room. She thought she might just close her eyes for a few minutes, not long…

When she opened them again it was almost nine. She yawned. No phone calls, no Lizzie, no Lucy, no Steve, no Mother. Maybe there was a God after all.

‘So, what do I have to do exactly?’ asked Jane the following morning, staring at the exquisite Apple G5 perched wirelessly on a slab of toning grey slate in Jayne’s office, upstairs in the house in the Close. There was a picture of a tropical beach hut on the edge of an azure sea as a screensaver…and a date from a digital camera on the bottom right-hand corner.

Jayne slipped into the seat alongside her. ‘First of all, try not to look so worried. It will give you wrinkles. The company is like a cross between being a landlord, owning a farm and running a department store. I collect rent from people whose websites I host.’ Jayne clicked the mouse and the screensaver and straw huts dissolved into something altogether more work-ish. ‘At least my company does. I employ a posse of geeks to keep that up and running. Then there is the purchasing department, various call centres to handle the ordering, and then I have a few sites of my own.’ She clicked again. ‘Here we are.’ A pale cream page rolled across the computer screen with links to various companies. ‘We sell all kinds of things—last-minute trips, organic produce, meat, wine and cheese delivered to your door. There’s a catering company, kind of dial-a-decadent-dinner.com—your dinner party is just a mouse click away. Then there are flowers and plants. Animal sitting,’ she looked across at Augustus, who was currently curled up on the windowsill, sound asleep, ‘oh, and housekeeping. That’s how I first met Gary. He applied for a job. Two or three guys showed up, all with great references. I took Gary at face value, working out the mileage in having an inscrutable oriental housekeeper for hire. I hadn’t thought about him working for me. Anyway, as part of the interview I asked them all to cook me something. Comfort food after a long day, I said. Something that reminded them of home. I can’t remember what the others did, but they missed the point completely. And then Gary whipped up a plate of pie and mash.’ Jayne laughed. ‘He said, “Ever been to Southend?” as he slid this tray in front of me.’

Jayne’s smile held. ‘And then he said, “And you want to get those shoes off, girl. I can see from here they’re killing you.” I hired him on the spot on a month’s trial; we’ve never looked back.’ Jayne paused and sighed. ‘All seems a long time ago now,’ she said. Jayne turned her attention back at the screen.

‘OK, right, well, there are a couple of property sites, mostly executive houses and apartments, dealing with people who’ve been relocated by their companies and don’t want the hassle of finding somewhere suitable either to rent or buy. We have a company that sorts out everything including the move, redirecting their post, setting up their utilities, the whole nine yards. Then there is an online furniture store and one that does really nice rugs, bed linen, and towels. Think of it as problem-solving for strangers.’

Jane stared at her. ‘I thought you said this was simple.’

‘It is when it’s going all right. All the companies are more or less self-contained. Over the years it occurred to me that everything I have ever struggled with, everything that has been a total pain in the arse, is probably just as big a pain in the arse for other people, and so I set a company to sort it out, make life simpler and see how it worked. Some flew, some crashed and burned, some made money, some scraped by. Some were ahead of their time, some past their best-before date.’ Jayne grinned as she scrolled down the screen. ‘Oh, one thing you might be interested in…’ She clicked the mouse. ‘Here we are.’

Jane read over her shoulder. ‘A dating agency?’

Jayne nodded. ‘Uh-huh, men on tap.’

‘If you’ve got access to all this how come you’re still on your own?’

Jayne winced. ‘To tell you the truth it’s a bit like working in a chocolate factory. You stuff yourself silly for the first few weeks but after that the last thing you want is to pick anything off the conveyor belt, however tasty it looks.’

‘You did to begin with, though?’ asked Jane, running her eyes down the rows of thumbnail profile photos staring back at her from the computer screen.

Jayne nodded. ‘Oh, yes, I completely pigged out.’

‘Is that where you met Carlo?’

Jayne sighed. ‘No. We met at a gallery owned by a friend of mine. It was only once I got Carlo out in public that I realised that he wasn’t quite what he appeared—nice to look at but, my God, the running costs.’ She laughed. ‘Enough of that. Have you got any questions?’

Jane felt a wave of panic as she sat back. ‘Only, are you stark staring mad? Are you seriously expecting me to run all this? I mean, it all sounds fantastic, it looks great—and I’m impressed—but I’ve had no real commercial experience.’

‘It’s not as complicated as it looks. Most of the companies are headed up by people who’ve worked for me for years. People I trust. Every six months we get together for a strategy meeting. I’ve just finished doing the rounds. Ray keeps his hand on the tiller—and a lot of my income comes from the servers, which are no trouble at all, and property, and there’s an estate manager to deal with all that, so unless there is a huge crisis most of the work is really simple—and fun.’

‘And if there is a crisis?’

‘I’ll be a phone call away.’

‘Promise?’