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‘So these are new bottles?’ Poppy reached out and picked one up. ‘I thought they didn’t look much like they used to. Does anyone have one of the old ones?’

  ‘There’s a display in the foyer of our scents through the ages,’ Duncan said. ‘You’ll see the old bottle there.’

  ‘Could you get one please?’ Tara said sweetly, and watched as Duncan hauled himself to his feet and went out of the room, clearly unaccustomed to doing such a thing himself. ‘Well, it’s obvious that the operation is being run on a shoestring. We won’t be able to save ourselves much there – it’s already cut to the bone.’

  ‘I’m very glad you said that,’ Bill Haverstock said, clearly relieved. ‘I thought I was going to be sent back with the task of sacking yet more staff and cutting yet more costs. To be honest, I just don’t know how it can be done. We’re all already running as cheaply as we can.’

  ‘Could I say something?’ asked Simon Vestey.

  ‘Yes … Simon – you’re the finance director, aren’t you?’ Tara asked. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Cutting costs has been the only way we’ve been able to reverse our decline.’

  ‘Reverse it?’ Tara asked coldly.

  ‘Well – stop it.’

  ‘You may have slowed it down but you certainly haven’t stopped it. And as for reversing it – please. It’s quite clear that every time you’ve cut costs, sales have also dropped. It’s been a relentless fall.’ Tara shuffled through some papers in front of her. ‘Now, I’ve done my best to learn about the fragrance industry in a very short time. It’s not something I knew anything about. But one of the things that’s abundantly clear is that it’s a huge market, and the top perfumes and scents make millions. The market for fine women’s fragrances is worth over five hundred million in the UK alone. Men’s fragrances are close behind at around three hundred and fifty million. In this area of retailing, quality always does better than the mass market. We’re a quality brand, so why is Trevellyan doing so bloody badly? We got a tiny amount of market share, and it’s dropping.’

  The door opened and Duncan Ingliss came back in holding a small glass bottle. He returned to his seat and put the bottle on the table.

  ‘Oh, it’s lovely!’ exclaimed Poppy.

  They all looked at it. It was about ten centimetres high, a cylindrical bottle of clear, silvery glass with a faint pleat in it. The round lid was silver, flaring out prettily at the top.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I remember,’ Jemima said, picking it up. ‘That’s the bottle I know. Why on earth are we using that one?’ She pointed at the current bottle with its blunt angles and bland design. ‘It looks cheap and nasty, nothing like this. This is the kind of bottle I’d like to see on my dressing table.’

  ‘We’re using the new design precisely because it is cheap,’ Duncan said stiffly. ‘The new bottles are mass produced and therefore the quality of glass is lower than the old style.’ He gestured at the bottle in Jemima’s hands. ‘That bottle costs an awful lot to manufacture. We couldn’t go on using such an expensive product.’

  ‘But isn’t that part of what you pay for when you buy a Trevellyan scent? The beautiful bottle? You can’t charge people for a premium perfume and put it in that bottle. It’s obvious that it only costs a few pence.’

  With great respect, Lady Calthorpe, you don’t have the first idea about this business –’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Jemima shot back, ‘but I know something about buying scent and I can tell you that the packaging is absolutely key. What’s blindingly obvious is that when it comes to perfume, a woman is as much attracted by the bottle it comes in as she is by the way it smells!’

  Tara intervened before Duncan could reply. ‘Let’s leave that for a moment, though you’ve made an excellent point, Jemima, and one I want to come back to.’ Tara leaned forward on her elbows and stared Duncan in the eye. ‘You haven’t yet told me who is in charge of product development.’

  Duncan looked uncomfortable. ‘Well … The truth is – we don’t have anyone.’

  Tara stared at him, surprised. She frowned and took her glasses off. ‘What? There had better be a good explanation of why not.’

  Duncan sat up straight. ‘Listen, I’m beginning to get a little tired of this. It’s a strange and unpleasant interrogation by people who don’t know anything at all about our business. Mrs Pearson, we are not like the big fragrance houses. We don’t launch new lines every year. We have an established set of very famous scents and we don’t see the need to add to them. To be quite honest, we cannot afford to add to them. Launching new fragrances costs a great deal of money and we simply don’t have it. We have instead put our resources behind promoting the perfumes we do have. After all, we have Trevellyan’s Tea Rose. Very few perfume houses can boast a name as famous and resonant as that.’

  ‘I’m sorry you’re not enjoying this process, Duncan. I’m afraid it’s going to get a lot nastier for you before it gets better. I can quite see the reasoning behind what you’ve done. But it’s also clear it’s not working.’ Tara gestured at the bottles all over the table. ‘Now, it’s precisely because we don’t know anything about the business that our opinions are worth having. We’ve smelt the products and there are a lot of them we don’t like. They’re too old-fashioned. They don’t smell right. We need to do something about that – it’s the core of the entire business.’

  ‘That’s the funny thing,’ put in Poppy. She had taken the old-fashioned bottle from Jemima and was examining it. ‘They don’t look right in these horrible new bottles – but you wouldn’t expect that to affect what they smell like. And yet, they don’t smell right either.’ She reached for the bottle of Trevellyan’s Tea Rose and sprayed it, this time on to her skin. She gave it a moment and then inhaled strongly. ‘It doesn’t smell the way I remember.’ She turned to her sisters. ‘Do you remember Mother wearing this?’

  ‘I always hated it,’ Jemima said frankly. ‘And I still do.’

  Tara leaned over and sniffed her wrist. ‘I’m not sure. It does make me think of Mother. But I know what you mean, there’s something not quite right about it.’ She looked at the directors. ‘Any reason why that might be?’

  There was a feeling of tension in the air. ‘Ladies,’ said Duncan Ingliss at last, ‘this is Trevellyan’s Tea Rose, I do assure you.’

  ‘There’s no one here I trust to tell me the truth, I’m afraid. And I’m getting very tired of all this hostility and resistance.’ Tara got gracefully to her feet. ‘Now, I’m calling an end to this meeting. Might I remind you, gentlemen, that all of your jobs are now on the line. Unless we’re completely satisfied with your performance, we will have no hesitation in dismissing you. Jemima, Poppy – I’ll see you in my office in five minutes.’ She stalked out of the boardroom, leaving them all gazing after her.

  19

  TARA SAT DOWN at her desk, boiling with rage and frustration.

  Keep calm, she told herself. It will get easier. It has to.

  She was used to a slick operation, where enthusiastic young people jumped to answer every question she had, to find her information she needed or to prove their dedication.

  I’m used to a can-do culture, she thought. I can’t bear all this negativity. It’s as though they’re happy for this company just to die on its feet. It’s obvious it needs some radical work to get it going again.

  Her office door opened and Poppy came in.

  ‘Jemima’s just getting some water,’ she said, and sat down. ‘Whose office was this?’

  ‘I don’t know. They’ve made three of the directors move out. I think there’s been a bit of a reshuffle down the corridor. Some poor secretary has no doubt been moved on to a fire escape or something. I’ll look into that in due course. Frankly, at the moment I’m tempted to sack them all.’

  ‘They do seem a little … slow,’ Poppy said tactfully.

  ‘Poor old Trevellyan.’ Tara made a face. ‘Anyone decent must have left long ago. We’ve got some hard decisions to take, Pops. We’re going to h
ave to decide how much of our own money we’re going to risk to prop this place up.’

  ‘I don’t mind putting everything in,’ Poppy replied quickly. ‘You know how I feel about that.’

  Tara shook her head slowly. ‘I appreciate the gesture, love, but I don’t know if I can allow it. It’s looking less and less likely that we’ll be able to turn this place round. All of my initial ideas for cost cutting have just been thrown out. What we need to do is put money into this operation. I think it could be the only way to save it.’

  Jemima came in, smiling broadly, clutching a water bottle. ‘That was jolly good fun!’ she announced, tossing back her fair hair. ‘It’s quite a revelation seeing you at work, Tara. You’re really scary! I can tell that being head girl was excellent experience for this kind of work. It was like you were carpeting the prefects after you’d found them smoking behind the boarding house. Terrific stuff.’

  ‘I suppose that’s a compliment,’ Tara said grimly. ‘But I’m afraid it’s a hell of a lot more important than I supposed.’ She stared at her sisters for a moment. ‘I don’t know about you two, but I’ve got alarm bells going off all over the place. I have the distinct impression we’re being lied to.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Jemima said, frowning. ‘You could cut the atmosphere in that boardroom with a knife.’

  ‘I’m going to bring some new people in,’ Tara said decisively. ‘We can’t work with this lot.’

  Poppy gasped. ‘You’re really going to sack them all?’

  ‘No, not yet. I may need them around for a little while longer. But I’m going to bring in some people I know and ask them to start going through this place with a fine-toothed comb. The answers have to be here. I want every filing cabinet opened, every scrap of paper found and read, and every computer accessed.’

  ‘Wow.’ Jemima looked at her with respect. ‘Can we do that?’

  ‘We can do anything we damn well like.’

  Jemima sat back casually in her chair. ‘I don’t know if this is the right time, but I wondered how we felt about possibly selling the company.’

  The other two stared at her. ‘Sell?’ said Tara, surprised. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Well, if we got a good offer for it, perhaps it would be the best way out. After all, none of us want to run this place. You’ve got a career already, Tara, and Poppy really wants to be messing about with paints. I’m certainly much happier shopping than I am sitting in a boardroom. If we sold this place, we could all afford to forget about Trevellyan and just get on with our lives. After all, do we really care about it?’

  Her question, met by stunned silence, hung in the air. At last Tara said, ‘Why are you bringing this up all of a sudden?’

  ‘I met a man at a dinner party on Saturday night – a very successful man, who is building up his company in this country. He owns luxury brands and he pretty much said that he was interested in buying Trevellyan.’

  ‘Who?’ Tara jumped to her feet. ‘Who said that?’ She stared down at the table. ‘Christ, I might have known the sharks would be circling already,’ she muttered.

  ‘His name is Richard Ferrera and he owns a company called FFB.’

  ‘Yes, I know him,’ Tara said grimly. ‘At least, not personally, but I’ve heard of his business interests. He’s been phenomenally successful in the States. He seems to know exactly where the market is going and how to exploit it. I knew he was keen to go shopping for new companies – he’s just had a massive cash investment, no one knows where from. What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing really, it was almost social chit-chat. He just said something about us being able to help each other and that we should talk about it sometime. But I didn’t talk to him after that – Emma Bonnington kept him to herself for the rest of the evening.’

  ‘That was it?’ asked Tara. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Nothing. I just said something like, “What if we’re not for sale?” and that was that.’ Jemima took a swig from her water bottle. ‘Honestly, Tara, don’t get your knickers in a twist. He didn’t make me sign anything, even though he was so handsome he could have wrapped me round his little finger if he’d wanted. Sultry Mexican looks. Yum.’

  ‘I’m sure he could. Right. Just what we needed.’ Tara sat down again and sighed. ‘I don’t know about you, Poppy, but I don’t want to sell. Not yet.’

  ‘Are we even allowed to sell?’ Poppy asked. ‘I mean, Mother’s will said we had to turn the company round –’

  ‘Yes, her motive there is becoming clearer and clearer,’ put in Jemima.

  ‘– or it all goes to … to Jecca.’ The name came out as though Poppy had to force it. ‘If we sell the company, does that mean she can’t have it?’

  ‘Hmmm. I expect Mother will have thought about that. We’d better talk to Victor about the will.’

  Jemima burst out. ‘What I still don’t understand is why she picked Jecca! I mean, she could have picked Aunt Daphne or Uncle Clive or any of those pathetic Boyle cousins. She hated Jecca more than any of us – but she was willing to risk giving her Trevellyan. Why?’

  ‘I think it’s obvious,’ Poppy said in a small voice. ‘She wanted us to move heaven and earth to save Trevellyan, so that we’d stop Jecca getting it. And I, for one, don’t want to sell. I’ve got faith in Tara, in all of us. I believe we can do this. Perhaps this man, Richard Whoever, might be useful in other ways, but I don’t want him to have our company. It sounds like he collects them as though they were stamps and I don’t want Trevellyan to be something else he just sticks in his album.’

  ‘That’s two against one.’ Tara smiled at Poppy.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Jemima said irritably. ‘I was just making a suggestion. Christ, is it a crime to want an easy life now and then? So, we don’t sell the company. Where do we go from here?’

  Tara tapped her pen on the desk. ‘What we need is someone who knows something about perfume. Someone who’s got experience in the perfume industry. I just don’t know who that someone is. But it will be my job to find out. Poppy – I want you to go to Loxton and get that bottle of Trevellyan’s Tea Rose from Mother’s dressing room – and any other Trevellyan scents you can find. Jemima …’

  ‘Yes? What’s my mission – should I choose to accept it?’

  ‘I want you to be our eyes here. I want you to start going through the company files; most importantly, the ones in the sales, marketing and publicity departments.’

  ‘What on earth will I be looking for?’

  ‘I don’t know. But you’ll know it when you see it.’

  ‘Very helpful. Thanks. That’s about as appealing as a bucket of cold sick. Why does Poppy get to go to Loxton while I have to scrabble around in dusty filing cabinets?’

  Tara frowned at her. ‘No more complaining. Just do it.’

  ‘All right,’ said Jemima grumpily. ‘Honestly – you’ll be giving me a hundred lines next. I think you missed your calling as a school mistress.’

  ‘That’s enough. Let’s get to work.’

  20

  GERALD WAS RUTTING away on top of her, gasping and panting. His face was a violent red and his eyes were shut tight with his exertions. A bead of sweat dropped from the end of his nose and splashed on her eyelid, making her eye sting.

  Please, please, please, Tara begged silently. Please hurry up!

  She wasn’t sure how much longer she could stand it. Soon she might just have to scream at him to bloody well stop and push him away from her. She tried to help him along by running her nails up and down his back, the way he used to like it, but she wondered if he could feel much now through the great layer of fat that lay under his skin, soft and putty-like below her fingertips. She moaned in a pretence of pleasure, hoping it might spur him onwards, but really it was a groan of exhaustion and growing discomfort. She could feel herself drying up as his penis jabbed into her – soon she would be so completely unaroused that he wouldn’t be able to enter her at all, her body would reject him altoge
ther.

  Gerald huffed louder, increased his pace and then he opened his eyes and they rolled upwards in his head, his mouth stretched in the bizarre grimace he always made at the approach of his climax, and he tensed.

  At long bloody last! Tara thought with relief.

  He gave a few final thrusts as his orgasm spent itself, then rolled off her, sighing heavily.

  ‘Thank you, my darling,’ he said after a few moments. ‘Most delightful congress. I trust you were adequately satisfied?’

  ‘Of course,’ Tara said dutifully, though she wondered how he could possibly believe that she had been any such thing. A rush of sadness engulfed her. Was this really what her marriage had come to? It seemed so strange now to remember what their sex life had been like when they’d first got together; it was hard to imagine desiring Gerald as fiercely now as she had then. He had been less fat, certainly, but even then he’d been stocky and well rounded. Nevertheless, she’d found his fleshiness attractive – it was different from her own skinniness and seemed to indicate Gerald’s sensuality, his love of life, and his predilection for pleasure. He certainly cared more for her satisfaction back then – he would always delay his own orgasm until he was quite sure that she had already reached her own climax. The first years of their marriage had been very happy in that respect. She felt wistful just thinking about it.

  ‘How is your grand enterprise at Trevellyan proceeding?’ Gerald enquired, sitting up in bed and drawing the sheet up below his flabby chest. His cheeks were losing their hectic red as he recovered from his exercise.

  ‘It’s more challenging than I anticipated.’ Tara pushed herself up so that she was sitting, trying to ignore the warm trickle of Gerald’s spending creeping down her thigh. Only a few minutes more and she could decently escape. ‘But I’m confident we can all rise to it.’

  ‘Even those feather-headed sisters of yours?’ Gerald snorted. ‘Jemima is designed to be looked at and admired, to be a magnificent hostess. She could be a great lady in society, bringing together the most important men of her day for parties and modern salons, like the wonderful grandes dames of the past. It’s a crime to put her in a boardroom – like keeping a beautiful panther on a chain when it should be roaming free in the jungle.’