Transition

Harley Lovegrove

TRANSITION When trying to save a business gets personal‌

linchpin-books

Transition

Harley Lovegrove is an experienced interim manager and Chairman of The Bayard Partnership. He is also the author of two books; ‘Making a Difference’ and ‘Inspirational Leadership’. Catalogued as management books, they were instrumental in laying the foundations of his current writing style which has now fully evolved into one of story teller.

With Transition, his first novel, Harley has brought together a collection of fictional characters formed from a lifetime of experience in business. He has painted a picture of a company so real you can almost believe you are a part of its management team.

Transition has been translated into French, Dutch and German.

HARLEY LOVEGROVE

Transition

www.Linchpin-books.com

Transition Harley Lovegrove www.Linchpin-Books.com Š Harley Lovegrove & The Bayard Partnership, 2013 Editing Team: Manuel Bollue, Gwendoline Cleven, Katrin Derboven, Michael Freytag, Candy Lovegrove, Laurie Miller, Philippe Verborgt Design: Jurgen Leemans Front Cover: Jurgen Leemans & Harley Lovegrove ISBN 978-0-9566157-1-8 All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted by law, without either the prior written permission of the author and the publisher.

All Characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Publishing house Linchpin 26 High Street, Rochester, Kent, ME1 1PT United Kingdom info@linchpin-books.com

This book is dedicated to the life and work of Mabel Cooper (1944-2013)

TRANSITION

Foreword

A

tlantic Lighting Ltd. was founded by David’s father, Roger Watson in 1951 on the perimeter of a disused airfield in South East England. He was offered the opportunity to take over some of the old wartime buildings to house his newly formed office lighting manufacturing business.

Starting out by employing injured ex-service men Roger mixed philanthropy with common sense business acumen. During its early years the business saw rapid growth and his angle poise lamps became popular across the UK and even in the US. As demand grew Roger took on many more staff, a significant percentage of which held disabilities of varying kinds.

Over its history, Atlantic Lighting struggled back from all kinds of adversity, not least of which was the collapse of the mass desk lamp business in the sixties (due to the emergence of neon and fluorescent strip lamps in offices).

David took over the business in late 1974 when his father’s health began to fail. Roger Watson died shortly afterwards in February 1975.

In recent years Atlantic Lighting Ltd. has been under enormous commercial pressure, desperately trying to keep production in the UK while remaining competitive on a global scale. It has been losing money year on year and its board of directors is split on their vision for the future: John Denham, the sales director, wants to expand 7

FOREWORD

the product range, Peter Meyhew, the production director, wants to slim it down dramatically, Samantha Littleton, the marketing director, wants to stop all production and re-brand white label Asian products with the Atlantic name and to switch from a traditional sales operation to purely online sales, and lastly Mathew Palmer, the finance director wants to keep everything the same but invest in new machinery for the factory.

Today is Tuesday the seventh of September 2010. Just over a year ago Simon Fuller, a local interim manager, was recommended to David to help him get his business back on track. At three o’clock this afternoon David will hold a board meeting to announce the outcome of Simon’s assignment and his plans for the future of the business. The board meeting will be followed by an all company meeting at four.

8

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Tuesday 7 September, 2010

04:35

I

t wasn’t the faint sound of rain falling on the tiled roof that woke him up but the steady thud of water drip, dripping onto the bedroom carpet. The temporary fix that he had hoped would have lasted until at least the spring wasn’t working.

Simon turned onto his back. ‘Should I take off the whole roof and start anew, he asked himself. ‘How much would that cost? What if it needed a complete new ‘A’ frame? English Oak, the conservation authorities would insist on it. It’s going to cost a fortune. Far more than the few thousand pounds I have managed to save from the Atlantic assignment. Why did I buy this damned house? It needs someone rich, someone successful, someone with a constant flow of income. Not an ex-estate agent pretending to be a high flying interim manager. Where did all my assignment money go? After twelve months of high rate earnings what have I got to show for it, eight thousand pounds in the business savings account and a leaking roof that would eat up at least ten times that amount?’

Simon turned onto his side again. He could hear his cat Eliot purring from not so far away. Somehow he had snuggled himself nicely between his legs making it impossible for him to get into a comfortable position.

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‘I wonder what time it is?’ he thought. His mind raced out of control darting from one topic to another. ‘Those damned new curtains make it impossible to know if it is light or dark outside. I wonder if it is still the middle of the night or if I am way too late for my first meeting. It’s no good I am going to have to check.’ But even though his mind wanted to, his body rigidly refused to move.

‘Oh my God, the contract. Did David sign the contract?

I can’t remember giving it to him to sign. Why did I waste so much time getting it to Margaret personally? What must David think, me speaking to his wife behind his back? She said she needed to be fully briefed but when he finds out that I was in his house explaining the details of the contract line by line, would he ever understand that?

If the contracts were missing his signature, then surely one of the clerks would have called me, wouldn’t they?’

His left leg was beginning to fall asleep but he could not manoeuvre his hand to massage it so he rolled ever so gently onto his back trying not to wake Jennifer. Eliot immediately stopped purring and began scratching at the duvet instead. When he had finally had enough Eliot stretched himself out to his fullest extent, sending a gentle vibration through the bed as he did so. Then he proceeded to walk up Simon’s legs finally stopping at his groin where he sat down and began pounding his front paws rhythmically into Simon’s full bladder. Simon tried to prise Eliot off by twisting his legs in such a way that he would jump to the floor. Instead Eliot slid into the space 10

TRANSITION

between himself and his wife, pulling the quilt with him as he did so, causing a shaft of ice cold early morning air onto Simon’s back.

‘It must still be night time,’ Simon thought to himself. ‘The heating hasn’t come on yet. What time was the thermostat set to? Have the clocks gone back? Maybe the clocks went back on the weekend and I missed it? Although I wasn’t late to work yesterday and no one said anything to me about the time.’ He also couldn’t remember it being cold in the bathroom when he took his shower yesterday morning so everything should be fine.

He could hear Jennifer’s breathing. Every so often she seemed to stop and when he thought that it wasn’t possible to stop breathing that long without choking she would start again with a kind of groaning sigh that made him think she was having a sad dream.

‘I wonder why Samantha didn’t show? She’ll never hear the words I had so carefully prepared for her, no one will. What I ended up saying was not what I meant to say at all, it sounded so hollow, so ungrateful. It wasn’t much of a leaving reception. There were no ‘goodbyes’ or ‘we will miss yous’, in fact it was all a bit flat and not at all what I had imagined, no surprise gift or even a good luck card.

‘What time is it? I really must know.’ Simon turned onto his left hand side again, holding the quilt down with one hand while arching his head upwards and backwards as far as possible from his bedside clock to get a clear view but it was no good. Without his glasses all he could see 11

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were some very blurred green numbers. ‘It could be a four or possibly a five.’ He couldn’t be sure; ‘perhaps it was an eight?’ He twisted himself nearer and stretched out his arm to grab his glasses.

‘Simon for goodness sake lie still!’ said Jennifer, turning over and thumping the pillow in a single action.

Simon slumped back down accidentally dropping his glasses with a loud crash onto the bedside table.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Can’t sleep.’ He grabbed the opportunity to put his glasses on. ‘4:48am, phew, no worries, plenty of time. Now I really must get a little more sleep, I need to be at my best, today of all days.’

Simon never understood how it was that Eliot could move around the bed and make a noise without ever disturbing his wife. He, on the other hand, only had to twitch a muscle and she was wide awake and bad tempered. If there was anyone on the planet that he was ever envious of, it had to be his cat, Eliot. Eliot had no worries, no cares; food whenever he wanted and all the comfort, fuss and luxury that any man could ever dream of.

12

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06:00

P

eter put on his best jacket and checked the right hand pocket for a clean handkerchief but, failing to find what he expected, his fingers curled around some business cards instead. ‘That’s strange,’ he thought to himself.

‘Why would I ever put business cards in the pocket that only has one function, to hold a handkerchief?’ It was then he remembered leaving the seminar in a hurry and grabbing the cards with his right hand while drinking up the last of his coffee with his left. He remembered, too, that he had used the handkerchief earlier that day when someone had clumsily spilt orange juice over him. He checked the left lapel in the mirror; there was no sign of the stain, his emergency intervention had obviously been successful. He removed the cards and fanned them out as if he was playing a hand of bridge. He paused to reflect on the people he had met and then picked out his own ‘Peter Mayhew, Production Director, Atlantic Lighting Limited.’

He snorted out a short breath of sarcastic air and wondered what title he would come home with later on, if he had one left at all.

The battle had been long and it had taken a lot out of him. He and John had clashed since the day they first met but today, the day of the big meeting, he was deeply hoping that any decision taken would not only be favourable to him and to production but to John too.

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When Simon stepped into Atlantic Lighting ‘to help me sort out what’s what’ as David had told him, he felt at last that he had an independent listener that understood his point of view. It was Simon that had, indeed, helped him see beyond John’s facade. And whether he liked it or not, according to Simon, John represented the very stuff that the general public liked and that was the basis for his success in sales. Simon had persuaded, or rather let Peter see for himself, that John was a good man; honest, loyal and true to himself and to Atlantic Lighting, and that companies like Atlantic Lighting couldn’t have survived without fashions and fads and sales people like him.

Although he never wanted to admit it earlier, over the last twelve months Peter had begun to see John as a brother. He had grown up in a household of sisters and he thought of John as the twin he had always wanted, someone who was more daring than he, someone with ambition and dreams. He found that after so many years of taking a contrary position to everything John suggested, the two of them had, indeed, several things in common, not least of which was that they both loved and respected their wives, albeit in very different ways, and they both only ever spoke highly of their parents-in-law.

John was not him and he was not John. He was educated and meticulous, appreciative of fine things and engineering that could be relied upon. Unlike John, he disliked cars because they were designed to fall apart. He liked traditional, handcrafted, finely made mechanical 14

TRANSITION

things; high quality Swiss watches, the very best British built Hi-Fi and all kinds of technical equipment. He liked suspension bridges and the great train stations of yesteryear, anything that was well designed and built to last.

Peter was a local man; he had met his wife while in secondary school and later went on to study engineering at the local technical college on the hill. He wasn’t smart and he knew it. But he was methodical and had an incredible eye for detail. He could take an artist’s impression of an object and break it down into component parts, so accurately drawn that the lathe operators could get straight to work on making prototypes. ‘Nowhere,’ would he proudly proclaim, ‘can you have a quicker turnaround from an artist impression to finished product than in my production lab.’

David’s father, Roger Watson, recruited Peter after he had completed his apprenticeship scheme in 1968.

What Peter brought to Atlantic Lighting was everything it needed. He turned the production facilities from an ad hoc workshop into a well-tuned industrial unit. In fact, Simon had said, only last week, that he had done such a great job that it could have potentially destroyed the business because it only fuelled John’s insistence for new products even more! Peter had taken offence at first but Simon managed to help him see the truth of it. The very fact that he could make prototypes so quickly and efficiently spurred on John’s desire for more and more, bigger and better product ranges.

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John would return from his business trips with photographs, not of all the wondrous countries he had visited but of all the lamps he had seen: ceiling lamps, table lamps, lamps in streets, in restaurants, shops, subways and airports, in fact, everywhere and anywhere. John’s photographs of lamps ran into the tens of thousands. Peter filed them all away in a logically structured, wall-mounted filing system, far away from the noisy production area in the companies archive room. He indexed each of them according to type, size, colour, function and country of origin; everyone of them right from the early days in 1967 up to the present day. In fact it was only yesterday that John had e-mailed him a new batch with the words ‘some more prototype orders for you…’ with a smiley at the end.

Today was Tuesday the 7th of September, 2010 and he shouldn’t have been in the factory at all. For the last fifteen years, since Joanne, the last of his three children, had left home he and his wife had taken their annual holiday in the first two weeks of September, always at the same cottage, in the same village in the Beaujolais area. When John teased him about it he always answered, ‘When you have found paradise, there’s no point in gambling on trying to find it again elsewhere in something unknown.’

This year, Peter, like all of Atlantic’s directors, had been asked by David to be available in the first two weeks of September. This interruption to his routine annoyed him but he knew that David would not ask if he didn’t think it important. Cancelling the cottage booking worried him 16

TRANSITION

in case they would not get it back next year. Despite the owner’s protestations that the cottage was always available for him and his wife for the first two weeks of September, he knew that a chain had been broken that might never be re-linked.

Peter straightened his tie, pulled down the corners of his collar and fastened them neatly to their buttons and went downstairs for breakfast.

Meanwhile on the other side of town, Samantha was stepping out of the shower, tiptoeing around her flat, trying not to be heard.

17

TRANSITION

06:45

S

amantha noticed Peter’s car coming in the opposite direction just a little too late and had to make a small swerve to be sure of not colliding with him as she turned right into the factory gates. Then she took one hand off the steering wheel to wave an apology which in turn made her momentarily lose control of her car as its little wheels bumped over the rubber speed ramps in-front of the security cabin.

‘Good morning Miss Littleton. In a hurry, are we?’ said George the security man as he stepped out of his shed to inspect her car. First the front passenger’s seat then the rear seats and finally the glove box. ‘Do you need to check the boot as well?’ she asked with a beaming smile. ‘No, no,’ he replied ‘not this morning. You may proceed’.

The Atlantic Lighting Security team were one of the first things she liked about the company when she came for her series of interviews. The two security guards George and Brian were both so serious, so polite, so thorough. Arriving at AL was like stepping back into one of those black and white wartime propaganda movies that she had seen with an ex-boyfriend in an art school film society cinema.

They always followed exactly the same routine: a polite welcome, a quick inspection, and sometimes, just sometimes a comment on the weather or snippet of news from someone in the factory; the birth of a baby, a wedding or 19

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even the sad loss of a relative or retired employee. George and Brian were the first contact any visitor ever had of Atlantic and they set the tone of the place.

‘Good morning Samantha,’ Peter called out across the yard ‘Have you got time for a quick coffee? I want to show you something.’

‘I am in rather a hurry, Peter,’ she said.

‘It will only take a moment. I know you. You’re going to make yourself a coffee anyway, so you might as well have one with me. It will only take a minute,’ he said with a smile.

‘Peter you really are a charmer, how can I resist you?’ she replied. She took her laptop bag off the back seat and pressed the button on the remote. Her car let out its usual high pitched double bleep which rang out across the yard. She loved this time of day; everything was quiet except for the faint hum of the ventilation fans coming from the factory.

Peter opened the door for her. ‘I have something to show you,’ he repeated.

‘Oh, really?’ Samantha replied. ‘I can’t wait.’ Samantha loved teasing him and he loved it too. Sometimes he would remind Samantha that he was a happily married man and she would reply, ‘All the better’. He never quite knew what she meant by it and he didn’t dare ask, so he just smiled along in his usual fashion.

Peter’s office sat in the middle of the two main factory buildings just at the point where they met. In fact you 20

TRANSITION

couldn’t really call it an office in the conventional sense.

It was more like a lookout cabin. It was made of wood, almost square in shape and had glass windows all the way round. It had a door at each end and four little steps to get up to it. It even had a little pitched roof. From inside one could see the entire length of the production lines, two and three from the right and production line one from the left. Samantha had the feeling that it had never been re-decorated. It was painted cream and green, probably in lead paint she thought, and it looked exactly like the signal box she saw in the Thomas the Tank Engine videos that her grandmother would put on for her on rainy days when she was a little girl. But that was long ago and today she was far away from her past and the sun was shining through the windows in the roof of the east side of the factory, sending shafts of light down on to the assembly workers and machines below.

‘What time did they start this morning?’ Samantha asked, once they were in the quiet of his cabin. ‘I didn’t know we were back on three shifts?’

‘We’re not,’ Peter replied. ‘We are still on two, this is the early shift, five ‘til one but we’ll need to consider it soon.’

‘Oh I see,’ she answered ‘So what is it you want to show me?’

‘Not so fast,’ Peter replied as he hung up his coat on the peg by the door. ‘First, some coffee’.

She followed him out of the cabin and down the steps towards the kitchen area. ‘They used to repair Spitfires in 21

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here during the war,’ he said. ‘They took up most of the width of the building. The Spitfire looks so small in photographs and films but in real life they were pretty big.

The Mk 14 had a wingspan of over thirty six feet, that’s eleven metres in your modern-day language. There used to be one parked right at the end of the factory. It was covered in sheets when I first started here. Enthusiasts came down every weekend to restore it. We weren’t supposed to, but sometimes we would lend the volunteers some tools or even make a few parts for them on our lathes.

Nothing important, just a few clips and fasteners here and there but we couldn’t resist it. We would have got into terrible trouble if we were caught. One day, just before the bypass was built, they pulled the old girl outside through a pair of giant sliding doors that used to be located at the end of the building and someone from the RAF flew her away. It was one of the saddest and most beautiful sights I have ever seen. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.’

Just at that moment there was a loud wolf whistle from across the factory floor and one of the workers shouted out: ‘La, la lovely Samantha. Get yourself over here and give me a rub. Peter won’t mind!’ There was a great whoop of laughter and Peter spun around red in the face and, taking two steps away from Samantha, called back, ‘Now, now Daniel. Get back to work, that’s a good man. We’ll have no more talk like that while there are ladies present. The rest of you back to work. The fun’s over.’

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TRANSITION

Peter turned back to Samantha to make sure she was alright.

‘I am terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘I think you know Daniel don’t you? He tends to get a bit excited but he’s perfectly harmless and he’s usually very well behaved. There’s been a strange atmosphere in the air these past few days. It’s almost as if they can feel it.’

‘Not to worry, forget it,’ Samantha replied, ‘Really it’s nothing at all. It just came as a bit of a shock, that’s all.

They’ve never shouted out before, a few giggles but that’s it. Should I say something?’ she asked.

‘No, no. It’s fine’.

‘Maybe they know something’s wrong because you’re not on holiday. John told me you’re always on holiday at this time of year,’ she said.

‘Good point, perhaps that’s it, perhaps that’s what they are picking up on.’

Peter found one of the best mugs that he set aside for VIPs and poured Samantha a coffee. He knew exactly how she liked it. He had watched her carefully the first time she visited the floor.

When they got back to the quiet of his cabin he said, ‘This is what I wanted to show you’. He pulled out a large piece of water colour paper from under a cloth and turned it slowly over. It was a pen and ink drawing of the latest Platinum and Gold Classic AL D26 desk lamp. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

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‘Peter it’s wonderful, truly wonderful. I just love the detail. You’ve even got the light reflecting in the screws that secures Roger Watson’s signature plate on!’

‘Yes, that was a bit tricky,’ he said. ‘It took me a while but I must say I am very pleased with it’.

‘And so you should be,’ she answered. ‘Have you asked Jeremy to scan it in yet?’

‘No, not yet,’ said Peter ‘I wanted to show it to you first.

I don’t know why but none of our photographers have managed to capture the real thing sufficiently so I thought I would give it a try.’

‘Peter, it’s going to look absolutely great on the website.

We really must frame it and put it on the board room wall, if you could ever part with it. It’s about time that we got rid of those awful faded posters.’

‘I’ll tell you a little secret, as long as you promise not to tell anyone. They’ll only think I am big headed.’

‘What is it? I promise.’

‘Well, if you look carefully at the screws with a magnifying glass you can see my reflection in them – here take a look.’ He handed her a large magnifying glass that was hanging up above his head.

‘Peter that’s amazing; it even looks like you! You’re smiling!’

‘Tell me,’ she added, changing the subject. ‘I have always wanted to know – who are these people?’ She pointed to an old black and white photograph in a small wooden frame that hung on one of the cross bars from the 24

TRANSITION

cabin’s window, making it difficult to see against the light.

It was of two men standing in the main doorway to the Atlantic Lighting office building.

‘Ah, that photograph, yes indeed. It has always hung there. I believe that the tall man is a Ministry of Defence official, I am not sure who, and the young man to his right is David’s father, Roger. If you look closely you can see that he is leaning on a stick due to the wound he received in his left leg during the war. I don’t exactly know when it was taken, never took it out of its frame but I guess it was when Roger started the business in the late forties, early fifties.’

‘We really should scan all these things and build a history page on our website before they get lost forever,’ Samantha said. ‘Oh my goodness, look at the time. I really must be going. David will be arriving any minute and I am way behind schedule!’ She gulped down the last of her coffee and gave Peter a small peck on the cheek and said.

‘Thanks!’ Peter blushed. He was hoping that none of the workers had seen. ‘I love your drawing, Peter, and I promise not to tell. You really are so brilliantly talented.’ And with that, she left.

He watched her walk confidently over towards the entrance. As she opened the front door her slender figure was momentarily silhouetted in the bright light of the morning sun and then she was gone.

Peter looked around his office. He pulled out some papers from the dark green metal filing trays that had been 25

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on the same metal desk since the factory began. He liked them. He liked the feeling that they could function for another hundred years and still never wear out. Nowadays the production orders came in on his computer but the trays still proved useful for trade magazines and the occasional letter. He didn’t like IT; he appreciated what it did but he could not find any passion for the wonders that its supporters got so excited about. He saw modern PC’s as a poor combination of plastic and metal that after the IBM 286, seemed to be built with an almost obscene sense of obsolescence. A software program that perfectly met his needs was never left alone. It always had to be fiddled with, upgraded and ‘improved’, even if it meant that the factory had to stop working for a while – causing all kinds of havoc along the way, and the servers that the software gave life to, were nearly always still in a perfectly usable condition, long after the upgrade demands of their operating systems had made them redundant.

He looked at his watch – 07:01. He reflected on his meeting with Samantha. She was amazing. She was the only person who had really appreciated the elegance of the design and craftsmanship of the original AL D26 angle-poise lamp. It was she who had seen it on his desk, the very first one ever made. She understood the importance of it, the fact that it had been designed by David’s father, long before he had joined the company. He had wanted something elegant and functional, something that echoed the precision engineering of the aircraft he flew during 26

TRANSITION

the war. She had become so excited by it, she had persuaded him to re-make it and it was from there that the ‘classic’ range was born.

He wondered what Flight Commander Roger Watson would have made of Samantha, whether her modern ways would shock him to the core or whether he would see her like he did, a charming, talented, intelligent and very beautiful woman who seemed to have touched down into AL from nowhere. He wondered how long it could last, how long she would stay. He was worried that the Classic range hype was getting out of control. He was worried that her marketing campaign would become a passing fad and that one day the world would become bored with the AL D26 and sales would cease along with it. He was also upset that some customers, mostly interior designers, had the wrong motivation towards their customisation possibilities and were taking it all too far so they could earn undeserved fat commissions. Only last week he saw the retail price of the platinum version bought by a Russian oligarch – twenty seven thousand British pounds- for an AL D26 desk lamp!

Whoever could ever have imagined that?

Peter found himself drawn to Samantha. When she looked at him, all his resistance and doubts about her crazy ideas faded away. He was scared of the hold she had over him and he became jealous when she appeared to flirt with others, especially with that young upstart, Tom. He had warned David about him and John, too, but they wouldn’t listen. Tom was married, he had no right to look 27

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at her the way he did. Even Simon, the one person that David listened to, didn’t seem to notice it.

28

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07:15

T

om turned onto his side and stretched out to find his watch, but instead of his hand landing on the bedside table, it fell helplessly to the floor. The table had gone! It was then he recognised the softness of the pillow and the lightness of the quilt that covered his shoulders. It was coming back to him – where he was and the importance of the day ahead. He rolled over to the middle of the bed expecting to find her but it was cold and empty. He lay on his front, buried his head in her pillow and filled his lungs with her perfume.

Samantha was gorgeous, by far the sexiest woman he had ever slept with. Her skin was soft and perfect; her eyes were so mysterious and dark that he became completely lost in them. Sometimes in the office he could not help but stare at her. He was sure that someone would notice but he couldn’t help himself.

Samantha was firm about that. ‘No one must ever find out, Tom. My career comes first. Be very sure about that.’

He knew she was not joking and it was plainly obvious to them both that she was a lot smarter than he was, though he would never admit it. She was so funny and as fast as lightning on the rebound but sometimes her remarks were so sharp they cut him like a knife. She was in control and he knew it.

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He imagined her in the entrance of the sales area, wearing the see through cotton blouse she often wore, the one with the matching bra that he had the privilege of removing on one occasion. She hadn’t been working at Atlantic for long at the time, probably less than a year; he couldn’t quite remember, it must have been sometime after David’s secretary, Barbara, retired.

The first time he saw her, she was talking to David in the corner of the board room. When David noticed they were being watched, he immediately interrupted her. ‘Ah, Tom. Come in, please. Here is someone I would like you to meet.’

‘OK, so you’re the boss’s new PA?’ ‘No, not really,’ she said.

‘Tom, Samantha is our new marketing director,’ David said, with an air of annoyance in his voice. ‘Tom is our Sales Representative for Southern England and the Benelux.’ Tom hated it when people referred to him as a sales representative. His correct title was ‘Regional Business Development Manager UK and the Benelux’ and was soon to become ‘Vice President Business Development Europe.’

It annoyed him most of all when colleagues got it wrong and David was, after all, one of his colleagues; his being the owner of the business didn’t change that. ‘Actually, I am the Regional Business Development Manager UK and the Benelux. He’s always getting it wrong!’ Tom said with a wry smile on his face. ‘So Samantha, tell me something interesting about marketing…’

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Tom turned over onto his back and finally dared to open his eyes. She still hadn’t painted that purple ceiling. ‘How many times have I slept here?’ he wondered. He didn’t know if she hadn’t bothered to have it re-painted because she was only passing through or if she genuinely was not upset by the colour. He imagined her in one of his shirts, a paint roller in one hand and a sandwich in the other. Samantha had not mentioned any desire to buy a place of her own or of moving on. As far as he was concerned everything looked as if she was going to be around for a while. The more he realised this, the more he felt that he was possibly becoming a burden to her.

Her love making was not as passionate as at first; he knew it was not to be expected but still he wished it was.

Tom’s thoughts turned to his wife, a hundred miles away.

Most likely she would be wide awake, shouting up the stairs to the girls, trying to get them down for breakfast.

‘Shit, what time is it?’ Tom asked himself. He jumped out of bed and paced around the room trying to find his watch – her bedside clock said 07:30 but he remembered that she liked to keep it fifteen minutes fast. ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ he thought, ‘there’s still plenty of time. Where the hell is Samantha?’

The bedroom was freezing and though the first signs of autumn were setting in Samantha had not yet seen the need to turn the central heating on. Looking round for something to wear, he grabbed her dressing gown and draping it over his shoulders he wandered into the kitch31

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en hoping to find her there. Instead he found a note secured with adhesive tape to the fridge door: ‘Gone to the office, Lots to do, S.’ Tom pulled it off, read it a few times and then opened the fridge door.

He was starving but, as usual, Samantha’s fridge only contained the kind of produce that he had seen in dark corners on supermarket shelves; always wondering who on earth would buy it, let alone eat it. There was eco yogurt with added fruit and nuts; there was a strange looking object that he couldn’t decide whether it was a fruit or a vegetable, whether it could be eaten raw or if it needed hours of boiling. In any case Samantha’s fridge was a barren waste ground compared with his fridge at home. Luckily, his wife Jane never bought that kind of stuff. Brand label ready-mades and healthy takeaways was more her style.

He remembered what Jane had said the time he suggested that she should try cooking a traditional Sunday lunch like his mother always did. ‘With a busy job, the girls and you, I can’t be bothered to cook. It takes too long, Tom, and cleaning up the mess afterwards is a chore I can do without. But if you want to, be my guest. But remember, he who makes the mess, cleans the mess!’ Tom could do without that kind of chore too; after all they could afford to bring in takeaways or to eat out, so why would anyone want to waste time in the kitchen? He happily accepted the compromise that at home it would be microwaved lasagne but out with clients it would be Chateaubriand and 32

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a bottle of premier cru. His expense account at Atlantic Lighting was almost bottomless and that aspect of the job was one of AL’s key attractions, although he fully realised that it didn’t help him pay the mortgage. That was what his basic was for, right?

Finally he settled for a bowl of cereal that vaguely resembled Crunchy Nut Cornflakes but somehow had had the fun taken out of it. There was no normal milk so he filled the bowl to the brim with a healthy dose of soya ECO low fat milk from a re-cycled carton that looked like a brown cardboard box. Tom didn’t give a monkeys about recycling or the environment, but even he could see that printing plastic to make it look like cardboard was a pointless waste of effort and resources.

Tom had been a lonely child, craving attention from people who always seemed to be busy. He would often ask them questions even if he knew the answer. He liked to be entertained, to have other people fill his head with interesting things. If the house was empty, then so was he.

Right now he was completely empty. Today was his special day, the day of the big announcement. The only disappointing thing about it was that his new car would not be delivered in time and that Samantha was not around for an early morning shag. He had placed the order for his Merc weeks ago and it was in stock so the delay bothered him. Why was it taking so long? At first it was the Atlantic Lighting ordering process, then it was Mathew, the stupid finance director’s insistence on waiting for the 33

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expected drop in interest rates. ‘Next month the bank is going to announce a much more attractive leasing plan, which will save us a fortune – I am sure your Mercedes will not depreciate too much if we have to wait just a few weeks more,’ Mathew had said. ‘I have discussed it with the garage and they’re fine about it.’ Mathew was annoying; he didn’t understand about passion and drive. His life was filled with numbers and spreadsheets. ‘I bet he hasn’t had sex since the night he got married – no tax advantages in it,’ Tom mused to himself.

Tom thought of his father whom he very rarely saw, imagining the look on his face when he drove up to his house in a brand new E class Mercedes. His father refused to see his BMW 3 series coupe as a serious car. He had teased him about having to drive across Europe, doing business out of a car that really wasn’t big enough to go shopping in. Even Tom’s mother would chip in that it was time that he bought something more suitable now that the girls were growing so fast. His wife already drove a tin box with a sliding door on the side, conveniently placed so that all the children’s junk and the shopping spilled out on the street every time he opened it. He wasn’t going to buy another one like that; he wouldn’t be seen dead in it especially by his clients and colleagues. Tom had laughed at the time but he was annoyed that his Dad could not see that he was progressing – today a 3 series for the thrill of it and possibly one day a Mercedes for the prestige. He had told himself that he wasn’t ready for a Mercedes but 34

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his father had once teased him across the dining table in front of the whole family, ‘Son, you might drive a BMW but one rides a Mercedes.’ Tom found it irksome, especially as his father had never progressed beyond a Renault Laguna.

To tell the truth he had to admit his Dad’s statement was kind of cool, he might even re-use it to his friends when the Merc arrived.

The surprisingly good taste of the combination of the cereal and the eco milk partially compensated for Samantha’s hasty departure. He was disappointed that she had left without a word but he realised that it gave him a unique chance to have a sneak around her flat and to discover things about her that he didn’t yet know. She hadn’t told him anything about her past and avoided it every time the subject came up. He guessed there were stories to be heard. All he knew was that she worked insanely hard. On the few occasions that he managed to pull her, by the time he actually got to drag her away from the office to her flat, there was only time left for a large glass of wine, some uncomfortable chit chat, a rampant bout of sex and then sleep.

Tom showered and spent closer attention than usual to his ablutions; he wanted to look perfect for his big day. He knew the meeting was not until four but at least he should start out as best he could in the vain hope that he would still be looking sharp by then. He carefully picked up the shirt that Jane had packed for him, crisp and white in his overnight case. She had popped in a handwritten note 35

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saying, ‘You’re the best’. There was also a picture painted by his eldest daughter that her sister had also signed with her name in crayon in the corner. It was of a tiny house with a neat wooden gate and a path down to the front door. He couldn’t understand why she would paint such a thing because their house didn’t look anything like it – but, hey, the house she painted was detached and even though it didn’t have a garage like theirs, at least she was producing paintings that looked like something he could recognise.

Back in her office, Samantha checked her watch nervously. 07:15, she had so much to do.

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07:30

‘D

avid, your breakfast is getting cold! Are you coming down or not?’ Margaret called up the stairs.

‘Yes, dear. On my way. Just looking for my blue striped shirt. I can’t find it anywhere.’

‘It’s down here. I’ve just given it a quick once over. It’s been hanging up for so long it needed a rinse and a quick iron,’ she said.

‘OK.’ ‘OK,’ David repeated to himself. ‘That’s typical Maggie always so practical and supportive. Where would I be without her?’

He’d loved her from the very first moment he set eyes on her. She was sitting on the lawn at Exeter University. It was the summer of 1971. She was with a group of friends.

They were reading poetry to one another, each with a small pile of books beside them, grabbing one in turn to find a natural follower to the poem currently being recited. It was just like when he and his friends were making music compilation tapes for college dances! She was radiant – the sun was shining through her long golden hair that trailed down her back over an Indian printed cotton dress.

David slipped his silk dressing gown over his vest and trousers and went downstairs.

‘I thought you were never coming down. I popped your breakfast back in the Aga to keep it warm,’ she said.

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‘What’s the special occasion?’ he joked. ‘A cooked breakfast in the middle of the week. You haven’t cooked me that since…’

‘Never mind all that nonsense now David. Come on, sit down!’

He had tried to give her a hug but she had her oven gloves on and she was irritated. She wanted the breakfast to be perfect for him.

‘I just don’t know how I am going to get through all this. Do you really think I am doing the right thing? I mean, what would my father say?’ he said in a deadly serious voice.

‘Oh! David, David. Sweetheart listen to me. We’ve been through this so many times. Of course you’re doing the right thing. Times have changed, the world has changed and right now we’re all going through a prolonged period of transition. Your father would understand that. He was a very pragmatic man. If he could see you now, I am sure he would be very proud of you. Why wouldn’t he be? You’re not only saving the business from almost certain collapse, you’re breathing new life into it, taking it on a new journey, the like of which neither you nor I could have even imagined a year or so ago.’

‘But, am I? Am I really? I mean, isn’t it more Simon and Samantha – aren’t I just following them? If you look at it logically, I have been following John’s advice for so long, all I have done is switched sides! What is he going to say when he finds out? What will he think of me, I who have 38

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supported him for so long, and he me, since the first day I stepped into the firm?’

‘David, it’s going to be fine. You’ve done your homework and Simon’s done his. He’s assured me that everyone will come on board with the new plan. He and Samantha are a great team. You really need to speak with Simon this morning. You can’t leave it any longer, not a single day. He needs to know before all your meetings today. It’s important, David. What about when the Atlantic Lighting story hits the Gazette, what then? Simon will be the hero and another local company will snap him up.’

‘You’re right, of course, you always are. I don’t know what I would do without Simon. But when did you talk with him about other people coming on board?’

‘When he came round the other night needing me to countersign the sale contracts. You were at your Rotary do. We had a little chat then, I thought I told you.’

‘Oh, I see,’ David replied. ‘But what did he say about John, and what about Peter?’

‘We didn’t really discuss John or Peter. It was more in general and a bit about Tom but, come to think of it, he did say that he thought that John and Peter would probably be upset at first but they would understand, especially in the circumstances.’

‘I am just worried about John, what he’ll do when, you know, when Barbara’s not around anymore,’ David said.

‘That’s something that only he can get through. He will need to do it alone. There is nothing any of us can do 39

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about it. Anyway, Barbara may have years to live yet. You know Barbara, she’s tough and these days ‘the big C’ is not always as big as it used to be. Now come on, stop all this nonsense, it’s going to be fine, eat up. Your breakfast is getting cold.’

David looked down at his plate. He didn’t really want it anymore. It felt out of place on a Tuesday. Where was his cereal, toast and cup of coffee like he always had? It was an unwelcome reminder about the day ahead. Maggie was right about Simon and she was right about Tom, about everything, she always was. It both annoyed and comforted him at the same time. She was also right about his breakfast – it was getting cold. He cut into the stiffening piece of bacon, looked up, smiled at her and began to eat.

Today was going to be OK he told himself. Today was the beginning of a new era and, yes indeed, he would talk to Simon, just as soon as he had checked on Samantha.

He needed to be sure, to be very sure, that there were no mistakes in her calculations, that she was completely confident in not only her numbers but also his idea about Simon. He was still scared that something would go wrong with the deal, that there might be a glitch in the sale contracts and the buyer would suddenly pull out. He admitted to himself that it was highly unlikely and he would be compensated in one way or another but it could happen, even if it was a hundred to one chance and if so what then?

Tom opened the door to the spare room of Samantha’s flat. There was a narrow single bed with a blue bedspread 40

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on one side, a vacuum cleaner behind the door and a small Ikea type office desk with matching pedestal on wheels pushed into the corner. Above the desk were some rickety shelves piled high with books. The desk was covered in papers and post-it note reminders and spreadsheets with graphs and books on E-marketing and other boring topics. He searched for clues to the secret world of Samantha Littleton but found nothing of any interest whatsoever.

He was surprised to discover that the drawers to the pedestal were locked. ‘Ah ha,’ he thought, ‘finally something for you to hide and for me to find out,’ he said to himself. He felt around under the desk top, nothing; no key secured by adhesive tape, no dangling string with key attached. Then he noticed it, the old biscuit tin on the shelf above. ‘No she wouldn’t; surely she’s cleverer than that.’ He carefully took down the tin, propping up a loose book as he did so. It contained a bent up photograph of a young girl, probably in her early to mid-teens. She was sitting on the beach in the sun, staring directly into the camera. She was wearing a lime green bikini and by her smile he knew it was her. Her breasts were pretty well formed and he could faintly detect her left nipple peeping through the tight fabric. He returned to her face and wondered who she might be smiling at. He didn’t think it was the kind of smile she would give to her mother, but what would he know? He rummaged around further in the tin. Apart from a few coloured pencils and short ruler there was almost nothing else in it apart from a paper clip 41

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with two small identical keys attached to it. ‘Eureka!’ he said out loud and put the photo carefully back in the tin and bent down to unlock the pedestal.

The top drawer revealed very little. There was a white leather communion bible with gold edged pages, a small cigar box containing a lock of hair held together with a severely perished rubber band. But for the rest there were only a few instruction manuals for various kinds of electrical appliances, most likely lost or broken long ago. He tried the main drawer. All it contained were hanging files.

Only three of them had labels: ‘Option One’, ‘Option two’, ‘Varia’. All the rest seemed empty. In the Varia file there was a neat A4 envelope containing all her bank statements. Wow she was pretty loaded! Every month money came in and almost nothing went out. Her net was more or less the same as his, when he took into account his expenses tricks but her outgoings were non-existent. ‘My god, the apartment is cheap,’ Tom thought to himself.

‘Five hundred and ninety five per month, that’s nothing!

How the hell did she get it at that price?’

Then he discovered it. It was nothing to do with her private life but it was a valuable prize, none the less. It was an e-mail from Mathew tucked between some spreadsheet projections and was marked ‘Highly Confidential’.

‘What a fool, Tom thought to himself.’

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Dear Samantha, I just wanted to come back to you after our meeting today. I could see all the effort you were putting into predicting the cash flows for the last quarter of this year and I simply could not let you continue as you were. David swore me to absolute secrecy but I feel you need to know. He is planning to sell the land and buildings. He has a buyer willing to pay a great deal of money. For goodness sake, do not tell a living soul, no one, but it is likely to be excess of ten and a half million pounds.

The only slight concern is that the person buying is a developer with a not so good reputation and there are still questions as to whether the land is really David’s to sell and if the developer will get planning permission but it is looking pretty promising to me. If it goes through it could be done and dusted by the end of September and that will bring us back on track again. But one loose word and the whole deal could be off. We must not let the planning people know, or even worse, the general public.

Samantha, you know I don’t know much about emails and stuff so please, please keep this confidential by deleting it once you have read it.

More news as soon as I have it. I trust you, Samantha and I am only doing this for the benefit of David and AL. Mathew

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Tom checked the date: Wednesday the 4th. of August, 2010. ‘Well, well, the crafty old fox. Had I known that earlier I would have gone for a much higher specification car!

Maybe it’s not too late after all.’ Tom put everything back and carefully re-traced his steps. ‘Ten and a half million, my God I could do a lot with that!’

Meanwhile Samantha was still only half-way through double checking the first spreadsheet of her projected earnings for the scenario where Atlantic Lighting would release the on the road sales team and only sell online.

She had added the recent numbers from the ‘Custom Classic’ range. There was no doubt about it. Flight Commander, Roger Watson’s signature in its flamboyant script was definitely adding bottom line profit above even her ambitious projections. She had checked everything thoroughly yesterday and had been going crazy with numbers, even taking into account the fluctuations of the Platinum and Gold prices over the last decade.

She was cross with herself for giving in again to Tom’s powers of persuasion. There was still so much to prepare.

David would be in any minute and she wanted to be able to reassure him that her numbers were flawless. He had a way of being able to see right through her when she showed even the faintest shadow of doubt.

This was by far the best job she had ever had. It was far more fun than at the advertising agency. Everyone had been so serious, especially towards their clients and their brand. There had been no space for healthy criticism, no 44

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chance to open up and show who she really was. If she thought of a really great idea over the weekend she would discuss it with her boss on the Monday and, no matter how good it was, it somehow always got stuck deep within the line organisation by Wednesday. Blue chip corporates were not for her.

But here at Atlantic she felt like a swash buckling pirate, using every ounce of her intellect to find a way of out manoeuvring any obstacle that could possibly stand in AL’s way. The bigger the competitor the better. She knew their weaknesses; she knew their fear of embracing any kind of serious change. To her they were like giant dinosaurs, built on past achievements that somehow the current management teams made claim to. With most corporate giants, as far as she could tell, their entire structures had been put in place to ensure that everything stayed just as it should be – predictable and safe. To them, dying imperceptibly day by day was way better than risking failure brought about by trying to achieve some kind of fabulous success. To Samantha, the multinationals of this world were like giant ocean liners; clumsy and almost impossible to manoeuvre. They relied on their networks to keep them safe until they thought of a strategy that could be implemented with zero risk. ‘That’s it!’ she thought.

They are paranoid about risk. No one got sacked for bringing in IBM or Accenture to advise on solving a problem but you sure as hell would be sacked if you stepped out of

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line as an employee and the organisation decided not to follow you.

Samantha was an only child, cared for and doted upon by two very sensible and very middle class professional parents. By the age of sixteen she could endure the suffocation of small town suburbia no longer, so she ran away to begin her search for something new, something completely the opposite; an adventure, dangerous even. Safety, predictability and the thought of knowing what she was going to do for the next thirty years filled her with dread.

Since then she’d seen many things; she’d worked her way around the world, had lots of strange affairs with men of every walk of life. She’d even had a brief relationship with a woman Professor while she was at college. Even though the sex had been so-so, she couldn’t stand the hassle, the emotional tantrums, the jealousies and the intense interest in her. She liked being alone, having her own space. Relationships needed to be on her terms, in her own way. The great thing about having sex with men was that afterwards all they wanted to do was to have a beer or watch a movie. She didn’t have to share her feelings or pretend to be any more involved than she was.

She would decide when a relationship started and when it ended and that was how it was going to be, at least for the time being anyway.

The irony of working at AL was that for the first time she felt that the business was too fragile and too precious

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for her to take careless risks; gambling with her unproven strategies was not an option. David was right.

He had told her, ‘Samantha, I love your crazy ideas.

Don’t ever stop them coming. You will find no barriers to innovation here. You can implement every single one of them if you want – but be sure, be very sure that they are well thought through. They need to work, not just in theory but also in practice, with the people and the resources we have. Our assets are our assets, you’ll have to make do with what we have and right now, sorry to say, there’s not much cash left in the bank.’

He was sincere and she knew it. This new kind of power scared her. She understood the value of the pearl in her hands, formally referred to as Atlantic Lighting Ltd., and she had decided there and then that she wouldn’t do anything to let David down. Her ideas would work, she knew it, but how far could she push the envelope of AL’s fabric, its way of doing things, even its very culture? She realised that if she wasn’t careful she could end up destroying the very thing she loved about AL, about David; his sincerity and his unpretentiousness.

‘My God, what am I thinking about?’ Samantha scolded herself. ‘There’s work to do, young lady!’ She used this phrase to tell herself off whenever she allowed herself to become side-tracked. It was something her mother would say to her when she interrupted her homework, telling stories about her life before she met her father. Samantha knew that she was leaving out the important bits. She 47

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knew that there was far more to her mother’s stories than she ever let on, but she also knew that as long as her father was alive, these stories would never come out. Her mother was old fashioned and – no mistake – she didn’t want to end up like her.

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07:40

‘W

ell today’s the day,’ Simon thought to himself as he closed the front door behind him. He hadn’t felt this excited since the signing over of his estate agency business to Barlow and Wicks. The amount they had paid him was absurd, he knew it and they knew it but it was company policy and the deal needed to go through quickly.

He had never planned to sell, least of all to a building society. Hardly able to believe his luck he piled all the money he got out of it, one and a half million pounds, into a single deal. He had always dreamed of owning a spectacular house, it was every estate agent’s ambition and curse. So on the very day he sold his business, he signed a purchase contract for a spectacular 16th century farmhouse in a beautiful part of the Kentish countryside; a dream home set in an idyllic location. And it was the image of himself driving up its gravel driveway to the hand carved oak front door, not as a tradesman but as the rightful owner, that inspired him to play tough during the final stages of the negotiation process.

When Mathew called him, suggesting that perhaps he could offer some help to David and the Atlantic Lighting management team, he jumped at the chance. He was bored and looking for a challenge and, although he had no mortgage, the costs of purchase and subsequent upkeep of his new house and classic car was eating up the 49

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last of his precious reserves. He badly needed some kind of job to cover his day-to-day expenses. His wife, Jennifer, was a painter and her commissions barely covered the cost of her materials and expenses, let alone contributed to the financial demands of the household budget in any serious way.

Twelve months later, looking back on the year, Simon felt that he had been focusing far too much on AL’s buildings and their potential value, rather than detailing the business plan in order to make the most out of the money a land deal would bring in. He had, however, been very successful in the one area where Mathew was helpless and the main reason Mathew had persuaded David to have Simon join Atlantic in the first place; the constant arguing between the management team.

Today everything was calm and Simon knew that after the official signing at lunchtime his assignment would be as good as over.

He was good with people, always had been. When he was growing up and there was an argument at home, or later on when he was at Uni with his friends, it didn’t matter how deeply embedded the argument was, how intense and aggressive it had become, he always found a way of splitting it up and diverting people’s attention in other directions. The Atlantic Lighting’s Management team’s problems hadn’t proved any more difficult than anything he had witnessed before. The only blocking issue had been David’s indecisiveness and lack of vision. He had tried to 50

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help David but he felt that perhaps he had tried too hard, been a bit too quick to support Samantha’s vision for the future. What if it was false? What if it proved unrealistic?

However, on the plus side, the Management team were now working together pretty well – not perfect but much better than before. The first phase of Samantha’s plans was being implemented, albeit hesitantly and the business was showing signs of picking up from the crevasse he had found it in a year earlier. There was still the question of Samantha’s big project. No matter how many times he had tried to persuade David that it was sound, he could not see him being ready to take such a giant leap of faith and even if he did, they would need specialist expertise to implement it – looking at it logically an unemployed estate agent would not be the wisest choice for David to take on board to secure the future of his business.

The land deal he had put together with his architect friend and local developer was actually coming to fruition and this should be reason enough for him to celebrate.

He could end his assignment with his head high, mission completed. But he was worried that he would become typecast as an estate agent. His first venture into manufacturing had been a success and he was hungry for more.

Working for Atlantic Lighting had made him realise that he liked working for a company that actually made things.

Having control of the complete chain from concept to production and sales was exciting beyond words.

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He had fallen into the estate agency business almost by accident. It was his father’s idea; it was he who had persuaded him to do an extra year at Uni to study for his conveyancing exams. New agencies were springing up all over the place, property prices were rising and Margaret Thatcher was in the ascendancy. His father saw it as a thriving business potential that he could help his son get started.

Next thing Simon knew Uni was over, he was engaged to his primary school sweetheart and he was putting up a sign saying ‘Simon Church & Co. Estate agents and Surveyors’ over the front door of a rented high street property.

As Simon pulled into Atlantic’s car park, he noticed that Samantha’s Mini was already there. ‘Great’ he thought to himself. A final chance to go through some numbers before meeting up with David and also to find out where she had got to yesterday evening, surely she hadn’t worked all night?

Simon loved working with Samantha. She could be stubborn and tough when he promised something that he didn’t deliver but she could also be funny and charming and very considerate. She was definitely the most intelligent woman he had ever met. He loved asking her questions to which he thought she wouldn’t know the answer, just to see her temporarily out of her comfort-zone. She would tilt her head backwards ever so slightly and close her eyes while that incredible brain of hers processed every corner of its memory searching for clues. She very rarely failed to come up with something connected to the 52

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challenge, a fascinating fact or an angle that he had never previously considered before.

The door to Samantha’s office was half open. As usual she had a pile of papers on her small meeting table, leaving no space for meetings and she was seated at her desk earnestly pounding away on her PC, while verifying her findings on her old Texas Instruments calculator that she took with her everywhere. If she didn’t see the same number in her Excel sheet as she saw on her fading TI screen, then there was something wrong with the Excel sheet, never the other way around.

‘Hi, Samantha. Oh, I see you’re busy. Sorry, I won’t disturb you,’ Simon said. Samantha looked up over her glasses that she only wore when she was intensely busy.

‘Hi Simon. Can’t stop, sorry. David will be in any moment and I haven’t finished what I’ve promised him. Can we talk later?’ And with that her face went back down into her scribbled notes and she continued tapping away on her calculator with her left hand while scrolling through her giant PC screen of never-ending numbers with her right.

‘OK, no worries,’ he said. As he was closing her door he almost bumped into David as he hurriedly entered her office. ‘Morning Simon, bit of a rush, I am afraid – see you at ten?’

‘Yes of course, wouldn’t miss it for the world!’ Simon replied. He looked at his watch. It was still not even eight o’clock so he decided to get out of the way and drive to the mobile canteen parked in the layby of an adjacent 53

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business park. It would kill some time and he was hungry, having left home without any breakfast.

‘Good morning, Samantha!’ David said in a slightly over the top bright and cheerful voice, the kind she had not heard from him since her early days at AL. She really should have shut her door!

‘Samantha, you don’t look pleased to see me,’ he said.

‘Sorry, David. It’s just that I still haven’t finished triple checking through all the online sales scenarios.’

‘How far have you got?’

‘About halfway,’ she replied.

‘And how many errors did your magic calculator detect?’ he asked.

‘None so far,’ she replied.

‘Then, Samantha, it’s time to stop. We have more important things to do and to discuss!’ He looked at her meeting table and said, ‘Why don’t we talk in my office?

We’re less likely to be interrupted there. I see your cup is empty. Why don’t you finish off what you’re doing, I don’t want you to lose any important data, then grab yourself a fresh cup and join me in five minutes max?’ And with that he left, closing the door behind him.

‘What has got into him?’ She thought to herself. ‘What has he had for breakfast?’ This was a new and vibrant David, confident and smiling; not at all what she expected on such a day as this.

When Tom finally arrived at the office he made his usual pass at Tamara, the receptionist and immediately went to 54

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find Samantha. Unusually, her office door was closed. He didn’t want to knock in case she was in a meeting and he had no special reason for interrupting, so he made his way to the open plan sales area to read his emails and to grab a coffee. Hopefully John wouldn’t be in yet. He couldn’t bear to hear one more time how he had set him up with David to take over the European role, or how he had prepared the way for him to become global sales director in five years’ time. Five years for Christ’s sake! He would more than likely be the CEO by then! He could drag Atlantic Lighting out of the mess it was currently in; he just didn’t understand why no one else could see that.

He had told Simon what needed to be done and Simon had acknowledged that his vision was clear and comprehensive. It was a vision where David could step back and he, Tom Richards, could take over the strain. ‘He needn’t give me the title of CEO at first, especially if it will unnecessarily upset other colleagues,’ he had told Simon. ‘But it is the logical way forward that our customers would applaud and our suppliers would come to appreciate.’ Annoyingly Simon had never got back to him on the subject and so he settled for the offer that was going to be announced by David to everyone this afternoon. It was a role that finally his father could be proud of, a serious step in the right direction.

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08:00

‘G

ood morning. This is John Humphries and Justin Webb. It is eight o’clock, Tuesday the 7th. of September: here is Corrie Corfield with the news.’ John liked the ‘Today program’. It made him feel important and well-educated; it reminded him of just how far he had travelled in life. By learning to mimic the timing and pace of his favourite presenters, he found the confidence to communicate with all levels of people. He became familiar with the intricacies of not only the political situation of the country but also of business, share values and business law.

At home Barbara preferred to listen only to light popular music stations, which suited John fine. Over the last 25 years or more, BBC Radio had provided him with his own, secret, free of charge MBA course. From Namibia to Brazil, from stocks and shares to government law and corporate takeovers, he learnt it all in his car every morning and evening. And during the day when he was on client visits he broadened his mind with plays and short stories and programs on the arts and science and the great lives of people that had gone before him. From his children’s home past to his present day executive lifestyle, he had proved the establishment wrong. He had become a model citizen. He had not strayed off into crime or spent his life bearing a grudge, stuck doing menial work in a factory,

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to shops any more. The world is changing, John and we have to show your customers that it is not about a lack of respect or loyalty, it’s just the way forward. If we can retain forty seven percent of your customers, it will provide enough cash to keep AL alive while it continues to develop its new business model. Did you know that we have an online order for a Platinum D26 for 27,000EUR? It’s unreal, John, it is completely unreal, but it is happening.’

‘The world’s gone mad. Sometimes I hardly recognise it anymore. I like your plan, David, but I think you underestimate the number of visits we will have to make. It would take at least three to six months to see them all.

‘Indeed it would.’

‘And with Barbara the way she is right now, we might even need to spread it out over a much longer timeframe.’

‘John, I hope you don’t mind but I have been speaking with Margaret about this. She knows that you have always wanted to take Barbara with you on your trips but that it was never really practical, apart from that time to Mexico.

Well I think Margaret has come up with a great idea. She suggested that she and Barbara could join us for some of the trips, as soon as Barbara’s intensive treatments are behind her and she feels well enough. Margaret is even happy to stay with Barbara until she is ready, when we are away. At least neither of them will be alone. Margaret has always wanted to go to Hong Kong and China and now there’s a chance. She wouldn’t travel alone with us because she would feel in the way of our business and besides she 108

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wouldn’t want to leave Barbara behind. Think about it, the two of them could go sightseeing during the day, nothing heavy, just a few outings and trips, maybe a bit of shopping. Later they could join us for dinner if we’re not out entertaining clients. Just give it some thought, John. We could make a plan according to the climate, making sure we avoid the cold and damp places when the girls are with us. What do you think?’

‘It’s a really crazy idea, David. It’s completely crazy, but I like it. I remember when you first joined us when you were still a student, when you had long hair over your shoulders. I remember taking you on customer visits in the old Austin your Dad bought for me. Those were fun days, weren’t they, David? I remember I was dating Barbara at the time. Your father knew, of course, but he never let on. He was a great man, your father. I miss him terribly.’

‘I do, too,’ David said. ‘But our lives are not over and our wives’ lives, neither. Barbara is still with us and I am sure when the treatment has had time to work its magic we can still have some fun times. That’s the whole point; it’s time to hand over AL to the next generation and our role is to make the transition as easy as possible for them.’

‘I like it, David, I like it very much. I don’t want you to think me disloyal but I am getting a little tired of doing the same thing over and over again, year in year out. The thrill of it is fading and I am too young to run out of energy, everyone tells me that but AL is simply not enough for 109

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me anymore. I never wanted to admit it before. You know yourself that once upon a time AL was everything to me. I used to put my job before Barbara’s needs, even when she had her last miscarriage and the doctors finally told her that she could never have children. I feel bad about that.

But I promised your dad, God rest his soul, and I stick to my promises, David.’

‘I know you do, John. He would be very proud of you.

Without you AL would have gone to the wall long ago. You have paid back your debt a thousand times over. However, I would like to ask you to do this tour with me one more time, not for him but for us, for Peter and Samantha and Simon and all our production workers, then you can stop forever, I promise. I know Barbara, too, and I know how she never held your travelling for the firm against you.

She loved my father, she understood the importance of what he started. Everyone did. When you stop, I’ll stop.’

‘But you’re far too young to stop now,’ John said.

‘I don’t want to stop completely, not just yet. I will stay another year or so and take on the role of Chairman and let someone else run the show. If Simon does all the dayto-day stuff and I can see that he and Samantha are having fun and that the business is making money, that will be fine. And between you and me, after today I will not have any worries at all about money from a personal point of view. But that’s a secret. I will share it with you, fingers crossed, and the board later!’

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‘It all sounds very intriguing.’ Not that long ago John would have pushed David mercilessly to know more but his mind was spinning. It had been a long morning and he needed to get back to Barbara.

There was a tap on the door and Simon entered without waiting for an approval.

‘Sorry to bother you both but I just wanted to let you know that Tom has gone. Jeremy has taken care of things.

There were no scenes worth mentioning and the staff all seem pretty quiet, those that know, anyway.’

‘Thanks, Simon,’ David said. ‘We’re nearly done here.’

‘Shall I pop back in a minute?’ Simon asked.

‘Don’t let me stand in the way,’ John said. ‘David, if you don’t mind, I would like to pop back to have lunch with Barbara. I want to see how she is and tell her about what we discussed and see how she takes it.’

‘You do that. Send her my best wishes,’ David said.

‘From me too,’ Simon added.

John stood up, placing his right hand in the small of his back as he stretched upright. ‘None of us are getting any younger,’ he said looking at David. Then he gave Simon a gentle pat on the shoulder and left the room closing the door behind him.

‘How is he?’ Simon asked.

‘He’s fine, he’s fine. He’ll be ok. But more importantly; what about Tom, how the hell does he know about the deal? If he blabs now we’re doomed!’

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‘I know. I have been thinking about nothing else. It doesn’t make sense. I haven’t told a soul and I know it can’t be from you or Mathew. It really is incredible. The only thing I can think of is that he snooped around and found something, but where and when? Perhaps he overheard us, he’s so sneaky. The thing is, the number’s wrong.

Ten and a half million is not the right number, well at least not any more. So whatever he may or may not know, it’s out of date.’

‘But he said ‘I will end your little game, just see if I don’t!’ what could he mean by that? He must know, Simon, he simply must!’

‘I think if he had known anymore he would have said something. Tom’s not that smart and he was so angry I think he would have blurted it all out.’

‘Well, I hope you’re right. For once Atlantic Lighting has a bit of luck come its way and if something goes wrong now, well I really don’t want to even think about it. Remember he said ‘any day now’. What are we going to do?’

‘David, you and I are not going to do anything. We are going to keep cool and have some lunch and then in a little over one hour from now we are going to sign the contracts and then come back for the board meeting as planned. Nothing can go wrong, it’s too late,’ Simon said in the most reassuring voice he could muster.

‘OK, you’re right, or at least you had better be right for all our sakes.’

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‘David, Tom’s gone. He’s left. I saw him drive off in his car. Right now I think he’s more concerned about what he’s going to tell Jane than anything else. I must say it got a bit heavy in the hallway.’

‘Really? John and I didn’t hear anything. I thought you said there were no issues worth mentioning?’

‘I didn’t really want to go into details with John in the room. He seemed pretty upset already.’

‘Good point.’

‘But, no worries, everything is calm now. Tom just made a bit of a fool of himself. Jeremy handled it perfectly. He had to get a little tougher than one would normally like at one point but Tom was out of line and needed a firm hand.

Luckily Samantha was out at the bank so she missed it all.

He got pretty personal about her. It was all a bit weird.’

‘Really?’ David said but Simon could see that his mind was elsewhere. This leak of information was distressing him. It was upsetting him too, but right now he thought the best thing to do was to keep David focused and acting as normal as possible. Silence filled the room.

David broke it first. ‘Simon, can you see if Tamara can sort out some sandwiches for us and Samantha? I thought we could have a bite to eat in my office before you and I leave for our meeting.’

‘Good idea, sure, no problem.’ He knew that David was creating a diversion. He probably needed some time alone to think and possibly to phone Mathew.

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12:10

S

amantha joined them in David’s office.

‘Sorry I am late gentlemen. Jeremy told me about Tom. He said he’s gone and is not coming back. Can I take it that this is now public knowledge?’ she asked timidly.

‘We haven’t announced it officially yet. David will do so in the three o’clock meeting and then to everyone else at four,’ Simon said.

‘Come, sit down and have some lunch with us. You still look a bit pale. I am worried about you,’ David said.

‘I am fine David, really I am.’

The three of them sat together around David’s small meeting table in the alcove of his office on the top floor of the building. Once upon a time air traffic controllers would search the skies from here for returning aircraft. But that was long ago. Today sheep grazed where once upon a time airplanes taxied and turned. There was an unusual stillness in the air. The conversation remained on a trivial level, just like before an important customer presentation.

‘Not long to go,’ said Simon, almost saying too much.

‘Until what?’ asked Samantha.

‘Until it’s confirmed,’ David said, jumping in to Simon’s defence.

‘So you said ‘yes’ then, Simon?’ Samantha asked. ‘I suppose, between us, it’s no secret anymore?’ She looked nervously at David.

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‘No it’s no secret anymore,’ he said. ‘No, no it’s fine Samantha, there’re no secrets between us,’ he said with a grin. ‘Simon said yes!’

‘Oh! That’s wonderful news. I am so happy you’re staying on Simon. Congratulations! I think we make a good team, you and I.’ ‘Indeed we do Samantha – your ideas, our strategy and hard work!’ he said with a smile.

‘Sorry to change the subject but Jeremy told me that Tom had been cheating his expenses. It must have been a pretty serious amount; I am a little surprised that I didn’t know beforehand.’

‘Yes indeed, it was serious. It wasn’t just his expenses; he was doing one thing and reporting another. We wanted to discuss it with John first. We thought it only fair that he be the first to know and, anyway, it was not confirmed from Tom’s clients until late yesterday afternoon and you were so busy with other stuff we didn’t want to disturb you,’ Simon said.

‘How are you feeling, David?’ asked Samantha.

‘Me? I am feeling fine, just fine. Pleased to finally see the back of him. I feel sorry for John mostly. He’s taken it hard. He feels that it was all his fault and that he has the whole of Atlantic Lighting’s sales responsibility upon his shoulders and he was barely coping before.’

Back at home John was explaining to Barbara about the crazy morning, about how the COS figures were way too high and how Tom got fired and about David’s idea of 116

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the two of them going back on the road together for one last time. He told her about Margaret and how she would like to accompany David and him but only if she would go with her to keep her company.

Barbara sat in silence watching her husband describe it all with the fire and enthusiasm that had been missing for the past weeks and months. The sacking of Tom seemed to be a weight off his shoulders. She had seen the effect that her illness had had on him and she was more worried for him than she ever was for herself. She was afraid of being alone while he and David were away. She knew there would be many lonely nights over the next months. She thought about her friend Sally and wondered if she might stay with her if she were not feeling too well. She knew that Margaret’s offer to stay with her was probably unrealistic. They were not the same, she and Margaret. Margaret was cultured and sophisticated. Margaret had been to university and she had only attended Pitmans. And all the time John was talking about plans for the future, about their being together, about him taking early retirement and their buying a place in Spain; a villa just outside Malaga with a swimming pool and a golf course nearby.

How much fun it could be, what could they have to lose?

Barbara watched and smiled at John intently as he spoke. She wanted to make her husband happy. Once upon a time she had wanted all those things he talked about but right now she just wanted to be with him the whole time, to not be on her own. She knew that the three 117

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months he spoke of visiting his clients with David could easily become four or five, or even six or seven and that if this was going to happen, which it probably would, then it needed to have a definite end date, a date she could hang on to. She wasn’t sure about living in Malaga. They had often talked about it, even gone villa hunting once upon a time. They could afford it. There was nothing or no-one to stop them. It had been their dream for so long but now she wondered what the nurses would be like at the local hospital; whether they would speak good English; whether she could learn Spanish well enough in the meantime; who could teach her all the Spanish medical terms she was just learning for the first time in English and who would look after John when she wasn’t around anymore?

‘This all sounds splendid, John, really splendid, how exciting! But you know David, darling, once you two have got your heads around something, there might be no stopping you! I would like to have a definite end date when I know that you will stop with Atlantic Lighting for good. A fixed date from when we can begin our lives together for real.’

‘Of course, my darling, of course. And if you are not comfortable having Margaret over, maybe Sally could spend some time with you while David and I are away in the meantime? In any case we will mostly be no more than a day away at any one time, if you ever needed me,’ John said.

‘I know, I know I am not sure if Sally would want to spend so much time with me but I could ask her, I sup118

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pose. I just don’t want to be a burden on her. But don’t you worry about me. You go back to work and tell David that I think it is a splendid idea. Tell him, too, that I would love to travel out with Margaret to visit you both in Asia.

I would love to see Australia; you know I have always wanted to go there. To be honest, going with Margaret, well, I’m not sure how we will get along, but why not? We can always give it a try. Just as long as the doctors don’t ground me, then you can consider me in on your scheme!’

‘You’re so sweet. You are my hope and inspiration, Barbara. You know I love you more than anything in the whole wide world. I have told you before haven’t I?’ ‘Yes dear, you’ve told me a thousand times. Now, get back to work. You’ll be late for your meeting. I’ve got a nice piece of brisket and the home help is popping over this afternoon to cook it for us. So don’t be late back!

John bent over and kissed her on the forehead. ‘You’re so lovely.’

‘Get on with it, you soppy noodle, you’ll have me crying in a minute.’

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13:00

‘S

hall we take my car?’ asked Simon. ‘I’ve still got a pass for the car park.’

‘Where are we meeting, then?’ asked David. ‘I thought the signing would be at the solicitors’ office?’

‘No, they suggested we meet at Barlow and Wicks.

Something to do with the fact that they need to be there afterwards, anyway, on another matter.’

David was rather disappointed. He had imagined signing away his father’s land in the formal meeting room of the solicitors’ office in the High Street. Time was when you always had to go to them. These days they seemed to prefer coming to you. How much that profession had changed, he thought to himself. Old Mr Harvey had gone, his son too. The last time he was there, the building was cram packed with youngsters. The place was a mess. There were ugly computers and cables strewn everywhere; there were piles of dossiers on desk tops, scattered around like model skyscrapers, one employee even had piles of them stacked almost knee high on the floor behind his desk.

In the old days, the only documents you ever saw were your own. The waiting room had gone, its walls lined with books being replaced by a rather flimsy rack of scruffy brochures on divorce and financial subsidies for family litigation. He wondered if, indeed, the large meeting room still existed. That was probably why the meeting was at 121

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the estate agents. They still had a meeting room, though nothing could be as grand as the tapestry and oak lined walls of the old Harvey and Crouch he had once known.

He wondered where on earth he would put his old meeting room table in the new building. He couldn’t bear to see it go but it was far too large for the new office or indeed his home. Margaret liked it but not enough to want to knock down a wall to extend the dining room into a ball room, as she had once commented on his crazy idea of accommodating it in their house.

Simon skilfully steered his car into the narrow entrance between the two High Street buildings. He had driven into it a thousand times before. It all seemed scruffier now than it did when he rented the building. He wound down his window at the barrier and put his pass card in the slot and pushed the big green button. The barrier opened and he guided his car forward into the bright sunlight that filled the car park behind.

‘Your car’s a bit wider than modern cars I guess?’ David said, trying to break the ice. But just then his attention was broken. ‘My God, Simon, I don’t believe it!’

‘What?’ Simon replied startled.

‘It’s Tom, it’s Tom’s car.’

‘Where?’ asked Simon, not believing what he was hearing.

‘Over there in the corner, see. I’d recognise it anywhere!’ David jabbed the windscreen with his finger in

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the direction of the car. Sure enough, Tom’s BMW3 series coupe was positioned right up close to the far wall.

‘Phoenix Yellow Metallic,’ David said. ‘Such a hideous colour. I remember him ordering it and me having to sign the purchase order. I said then, ‘What if this boy leaves us? We’ll be left with a Phoenix Yellow car in our car park!’

‘But how does he know? I haven’t told anyone! Did you check with Mathew?’

‘No, his phone went straight to answer phone. Even so, it’s too late now – we’re screwed!’

‘David, David, how can we be screwed? We’re doing nothing illegal. We’ve already signed all the preliminary contracts. Wainthorp’s solicitor has done all his checks; I can’t see how Tom can make a difference right now!’

‘Well, why is he here then?’

Just at that moment, a young mother with a buggy passed in front of them walking in the direction of Tom’s car. The hazard lights flashed and she squeezed herself between the car and the wall to open the passenger door just far enough to put her child in its seat on the back seat of the car.

‘Is that Jane?’ Simon asked.

‘No, I don’t think so. I think Jane’s taller and I think she’s quite a bit older too,’ David answered.

‘Well, whoever it is, I think we can safely say that Tom is not here and that, my dear David, is not his car.’

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‘Thank Christ for that!’ said David and the two of them looked at each other and gave off an almighty roar of laughter.

Signing away the land all went pretty smoothly. It was conducted in masterly fashion by a young solicitor who didn’t seem at all out of place in someone else’s office.

There were a few pleasantries, a very short explanation of the proceedings and details on the money transfer. The buyer, Mr. Wainthorp, insisted that David call him Richard or, even better, Dicky for short. David could see at a glance that this man was rich, very rich. He had heard about how he had worked his way up from almost nothing to being the largest property developer in South East England. It was not so much his Rolls Royce Ghost parked on the pavement in front of the office that reinforced the rumour but the heavy jewellery around his neck and wrists. Looks-wise, he reminded David a little of John but John was much more understated. John could be tough sometimes, very tough, but when you got to know him he was as soft as a peach on the inside. This man, Wainthorp, looked like he was tough through and through. A heart of stone, David thought. I wouldn’t like to mess with him.

‘Mr Watson, if you wouldn’t mind signing here and here,’ said the young solicitor.

‘David, is everything OK?’ asked Simon quietly in his ear.

‘Yes, sorry gentlemen, yes, everything is fine, just fine.

Ok, where do I sign exactly?’ David asked.

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‘Just here and here,’ repeated the young solicitor with no sense of irritation at all.

‘And if, Mr Wainthorp, you could sign here and here, then we are all done.’

And that was that. In less than fifteen minutes, the contracts had been signed and hands shaken. The young solicitor handed David a bank cheque for the largest number he had ever seen written down. Attached to it was a simple balance sheet typed onto an otherwise blank piece of A4 paper. ‘Nine million, four hundred and fifty thousand pounds, less purchase of 123-125 Hollerton Court Road and all related taxes, costs and sundries, leaving five million, nine hundred and seventy five thousand pounds and sixty two pence,’ he read out loud without realising at all.

‘I think that’s the sum we agreed, isn’t it David, Mr. Watson?’ asked Wainthorp.

‘Yes, indeed,’ David answered, ‘indeed, it is.’

‘In the contract we agreed a site vacation date of 31 December, Mr Watson. But considering it’s Christmas period then, I am happy to turn a blind eye until 09:00 on the 3rd of January 2011. I’ll have my man put it in writing. Good day to you gentlemen, please excuse me but I have another appointment. I hope you don’t mind.’ And with that he left the room, no entourage, no time to celebrate, just a firm handshake and a polite nod of the head.

‘Mr Watson, David,’ said the solicitor once Wainthorp had left the room. ‘We just need you to sign the purchase agreement for the industrial unit. The seller has already 125

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signed so there’s just your signature and it is done. I must say, I don’t know how you got it for that price; it was almost for free!’

David reflected on the solicitor’s statement and wondered when the change had taken place, when exactly solicitors had begun saying what was on their minds? They never used to when he was younger; that was the last thing they would ever do.

‘Indeed, I am quietly satisfied with the deal,’ David said in a tone of voice of solicitors past. ‘I believe I have Simon here and the good folk of Barlow and Wicks to thank for that,’ he said. He looked at Simon and the other onlookers in the room. Everyone smiled, and nodded their heads in agreement and shook hands in a nervous way, as though they were in church. Someone opened a bottle of cheap champagne. A toast was offered to David and a young woman passed around some crisps in a couple of china bowls and then almost as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. An awkward silence filled the room and David took it as a cue to leave.

As soon as David got into the privacy of Simon’s car he said ‘Jesus, did you see the chains around Wainthorp’s neck and wrist? He had more gold on him than Margaret has in her entire jewellery collection!’ Simon laughed.

They both laughed and as they entered the Atlantic Lighting building, the glass doors squealed and creaked as they slid their way slowly open. ‘We really must get around to fixing those damn doors,’ David said.

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‘Yes, we must, I’ll get on to it right away!’ They turned and smiled at each other and gave out a loud laugh.

‘You two look happy,’ Tamara said.

‘I suppose you can say we are Tamara. Indeed, we are,’ David answered.

‘Hi, Tamara,’ Simon said, trying to suppress his laughter out of politeness. ‘See you at four?’ he asked David as they reached the top of the stairs.

‘I wouldn’t mind going through your new contract with you, if you have a moment?’ David said, ‘but I just need to make a quick phone call first.’

‘Sure, no problem. Call me when you’re done.’

David slumped down into the familiarity of his office chair. He had owned it for over twenty years; its blend of aluminium and leather showed no signs of wear and tear.

The salesman had told him it would last a life time and he hadn’t lied. Its combination of Swiss engineering and elegant design made it look a bit like the Barcelona chairs he had in reception but it was far more comfortable and better built. No matter what happened or where he would go, he vowed to take it with him. He picked up the phone and called Margaret.

‘David! How did it go?’ she asked.

‘John, the sacking or the land deal?’ he asked.

‘All three!’ she replied.

‘Tom behaved rather badly, swore a lot and was condescending as usual but for the rest, everything was fine,’ he

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replied. ‘The strange thing is, he seemed to know about the land deal!’

‘No!’ ‘Apparently. It was not a problem though, just had us worried for an hour or so but it’s done and dusted. It was all a bit weird to tell the truth.’

‘And no problems with Wainthorp?’ Margaret asked.

‘None whatsoever. Everything went as clockwork. The estate agents even opened a bottle of Tesco Champagne, so it must have been a very special moment for them!’

‘And did you see the cheque?’

‘Only very briefly but yes, it was a bit less than expected but still enough to see us through!’ he laughed.

‘How so?’ Margaret asked concerned.

‘Well there’s always the solicitors’ costs, stamp duty and the agents’ fees and VAT. They never add the VAT on the original calculation sheets, apparently. But I saw the cheque – five million, nine hundred and seventy five thousand pounds and sixty two pence, to be precise! One million seven hundred and twenty five thousand of which Mathew will deposit into our savings account today. And the beauty is, Mathew confirmed that Mike said that there’s no tax to pay on it! Apparently we had paid it each year, even though I never actually received my bonuses.

Good eh?’ he said.

‘That’s fantastic, David, well done! Never mind about Tom, you’re best rid of him. How about Simon? What did

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he say? Did he take the job and what about Mathew’s option plan, did he go for it?’ she asked.

‘Yes, he took the job, no problem. However, we only looked at the option plan briefly; it’s been a bit hectic this morning. He seemed delighted with it. We’re going to go through the details in a minute; in fact I think he’s at the door right now.’

‘Well never mind about me, darling. You see to Simon and we’ll open a bottle of our special when you get home tonight. Just give me a call when you’re about to leave,’ she said.

‘Will do.’ ‘Come in!’ David said.

Simon was as excited and nervous as a schoolboy on the day of the school play.

‘So, have you had any reflections on the option plan?’

David asked.

‘Well, obviously I haven’t had a chance to go through it in fine detail yet but I do see one potential problem’ Simon said. ‘I am a bit strapped for cash right now. The recent repair costs on the house have set me back a bit, I am afraid. It’s very generous, don’t get me wrong, but I couldn’t see anywhere in it when I would have to come up with the cash for the stock options.’

‘But that’s just it, you won’t need to. Mathew knew you were a bit short so he structured it in such a way that it entitles you to acquire shares each year upon the board approving your annual bonus payment. You can either

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take it in cash or shares, but we would rather you took all shares or at least a mixture of both.’

‘Yes, I read that part but there’s still the first tranche that you are planning to offer me on signing my contract renewal.’

‘Ah, yes indeed, we haven’t written it down because it’s a bit tricky but the nub of it is that Margaret and I have decided to pay you a one-time bonus on the land deals and Mathew is in full agreement. None of us saw this as part of your original assignment with us and therefore we do not think it fair that the estate agents should take all the credit, especially as it was you who found the buyer and it was you that found the new property and negotiated such a massive discount on the purchase price. The figure we have in mind is 0.5% of the sale price paid in cash and the equivalent of 1% of the purchase price paid in shares.

So if you take this into account you shouldn’t need to find any cash at all. You don’t need to decide now but please let me know by the end of the week so we can finalise the paperwork ready in time for the official AGM,’ said David.

‘Wow, what can I say?’ Simon said while trying to work out exactly how much that added up to.

‘You don’t need to say anything,’ David said. ‘You earned it fair and square and no one can complain because the shares are legally mine and I am free to do with them as I wish. As you know, the dividend pay-out will only be after the AGM in November and because of the extraordinary income this year, we will pay a dividend, not massive 130

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but at least enough for you to pay for a new roof!’ David laughed. ‘We just need to watch out for tax. According to Mathew, the payments and bonuses must not been seen as a gift but, you know Mathew, he’ll come up with a neat way of organizing it.’

‘I really am speechless but if you don’t mind my asking, will Samantha have a similar option plan too? If we’re going to work so closely together I would like to feel that we are equal partners in some way.’

‘Indeed, she will. Her model will be an extension of her existing one. It will be adapted to be an exact mirror of yours, except that you will always be entitled to at least ten percent more than she, because we want it to be clear that, once you become CEO, you will be the majority B share-holder and decision maker in the boardroom. I will keep a chunk of my shares, just in case you ever get into trouble, so you can be sure you will have my vote to support you. But one day, depending on what finally happens to AL, half of those too could come your way or be spread into the business as we see fit at the time. The other half will be held in trust for my children, but you will always have the voting rights upon them in the event of my death or absence. Your consulting fees will be frozen at today’s rate plus the official cost of living indexation, in the expectation that your dividends and bonuses will more than compensate for any actual fee increase,’ David concluded.

‘That’s fair.’

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‘Mathew did a great job. He worked tirelessly with the lawyers and tax specialists. He never ceases to amaze me when it comes to this kind of thing. He’s got such a level head and he seems to know as much, if not more, than the experts. He only ever insists on consulting them, to be sure he is not making a mistake but sometimes I think he just likes to see the surprise on their faces when he comes up with something that they have not thought of!’

‘You’re putting a lot of faith in me, David. I just hope that I do not disappoint you.’

‘Don’t worry about that, Simon. Things will be fine and I will still be around for a while. And anyway, I have no intention of running off or getting hit by a bus just yet! I’ll only be a phone call away.’ David smiled and Simon saw for the third time that day a glimpse of a new David. His smile was the smile of quiet satisfaction. He had never seen it before. He liked this new David and the happiness he radiated.

‘We still need to go through some details before the board meeting,’ David said, ‘Mathew will be joining us shortly. Can you call in Samantha? I think we should discuss her share option together with her before the others join us at four. What do you think?’

‘Good idea, but it feels a bit strange to suddenly be in the room with you both when discussing her options.’

‘There’s no time like the present to start assuming your new role,’ David said lightly.

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Down the hallway John was busy phoning Tom’s key customers. He was worried that Tom might decide to contact them first to give his side of the story. Jeremy hadn’t taken away his phone and he was worried that Tom might still have his client list on it. However, so far there were no signs of Tom speaking with anyone.

When Simon entered Samantha’s office, Jeremy was with her checking to see if she was OK. ‘Hi. Sorry for interrupting, Jeremy, I was wondering Samantha, do you have a moment? David and I would like you to join us in his office.’

‘No problem. Jeremy and I are almost done here. Thanks again, Jeremy, you’re very kind. I’ll be right with you, Simon,’ she said.

Peter looked at his watch and decided he had just enough time to pop over to the sales area and try to catch up with John before the meeting. ‘Wow, what a day,’ he said when he found him. ‘The whole company is talking about Tom, speculating on what he must have done to get sacked. You won’t believe the rumours flying around. It must have been pretty bad for David to get rid of him just like that.’

‘I sacked him, actually,’ John said. ‘I cannot say it was my idea but once Simon and David told me what they had found out, they asked for my approval and I gave it.’

‘That must have been pretty tough.’

‘It was. I had so many hopes for him but he was rotten through and through. If you ever saw a nice side of Tom 133

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Richards, I can assure you it was a front. He was a liar and a cheat. He cheated on us and I am sure on his wife and family, on everyone. I hope he learns something from this. He was really shocked when it happened. I think it was the last thing he ever imagined. I have never seen anyone as shocked as he was this morning.’

‘What actually did he do?’

‘I think David wants to go through it in our meeting at three, but I guess it won’t do any harm and it is not as if I am going behind David’s back. Tom was caught speeding in the UK when his daily report said he was in the Netherlands on customer visits.’

‘That’s all?’

‘No, there was more. He said he had given out brochures to clients when he hadn’t, not just once but many times. Then there’s the question of his expenses – they were spiralling out of control. But to be accurate, he wasn’t sacked, he resigned instead.’

‘I never liked the guy, couldn’t stand him to be honest.

I know David is a man of principles but it still sounds a bit harsh. It reminds me of the time I caught an apprentice stealing a screwdriver from the factory. Perhaps you remember him, Nigel Dawson?’

‘Nigel Dawson, now that was a long time ago,’ John said.

‘If I remember correctly, David reacted just the same, then.

I warned Tom, time and time again. You can do anything, but never lie to me or to David because I can never defend you. But Tom was so cocky, he always knew better. ‘Lie,’ he 134

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said, ’I never lie.’ The more I discover about him, I begin to think that his whole life was one big lie; one big game where reality had no place. I am so angry and upset with him at the same time. I am so disappointed, Peter; you can’t imagine. He had the sales director role on a plate if he could just have been true to himself and to us,’ John said.

Tears started to well up in John’s eyes. Peter felt enormous pity for him. His career-long rival had always been so tough and strong, like nothing could ever touch him.

But now he was slumped in his chair looking tired and broken. Peter deeply regretted the wasted years of fights and arguments. They both had had Atlantic Lighting’s best intentions at heart. They both had tried to support David as best they could. They just saw the business from opposite points of view and both of them were so passionate about being right that neither of them ever considered that they could ever be wrong.

‘You’re not going to leave us are you, John?’

‘Why do you ask that?’

‘I don’t know, just a hunch, you know, with Barbara the way she is and all that.’

‘No, not yet. You know me. I’ll never let David down, I promised his father and a promise is a promise. Although I will level with you, Barbara wants me to and I think her views come first, right now. Who knows? We’ll see.’

‘Come, it’s time for the board meeting,’ Peter said. ‘Let’s grab a coffee before we go in. The coffee that David pours from his pump action flask is not healthy, really it’s not.

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Let’s see if Tamara has a Nespresso capsule or two for us.

She can book them out as a ‘customer visit’, Mathew will never know,’ Peter said, regretting the irony of his deceit.

John gave a little smile but kept his head low trying to hide his eyes.

‘Thanks, Peter, nice idea. I’ll be with you in a minute. I just need a sec. I’ll be right there.’

‘Sure, John, you take your time. David can wait, we all can wait. What the hell!’

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15:05

‘C

ome in, come in,’ David said. ‘Where’s John? Has anyone seen him?’

‘He’s on his way, he just needs a few moments,’ Peter replied.

‘Is he OK?’ asked Simon, detecting something wrong in Peter’s voice.

‘He’s fine, just fine. He’ll be here any minute but this Tom business is upsetting for everyone,’ Peter said.

‘We really need to get started, Simon,’ said David quietly in his ear. ‘We’ve so much to get through.’

They were seated around the same boardroom table where only hours before Tom had witnessed his untimely demise.

Samantha was in her usual place by the window, Peter to her right and Mathew to her left. David sat in the middle, with Mathew and Simon either side of him. There was such an air of tense anticipation in the room you could feel it pressing your chest almost making it difficult to breath. Samantha had never witnessed anything like it before at AL. It was so unlike their normal meetings.

Everyone knew that this meeting was special, for a start it only had one agenda topic: The Path Forward for Atlantic Lighting: The CEO’s conclusions.

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The words were so simple and yet so melodramatic after the pettiness of all their previous meetings with their squabbles over the repair estimates for the production lavatory block and such like. Finally Tamara opened the heavy boardroom door and John entered, a thick pile of papers under his arm and a cup of espresso coffee in his free hand.

‘Sorry I am late, David. Sorry everyone,’ he said.

‘No worries,’ David answered. ‘Sit down and grab yourself a biscuit to go with your coffee.’

‘Chocolate biscuits!’ Samantha joked nervously. ‘Can we afford them Mathew?’

But Mathew didn’t answer. His eyes, like everyone else’s, were on David and his trembling hands.

‘My friends – I think I can call you my friends,’ David began. ‘This is a special day for me, for the company and indeed for all of us. You mentioned Tom. Peter, it was not my intention to start this meeting by discussing Tom but I feel it best to get the matter out of the way, so that we can move rapidly onto other, more important matters.’

David explained Tom’s dismissal; his betrayal of loyalty, his lack of respect for the business that they had all worked so hard to build and protect. He explained the details, the minutest details. He shared with them the impossible situation that Tom had put John into and how he, David, respected John for all the timeless dedication and energy that he had invested in his prodigy over the years

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and how Tom had sadly proved himself to be so unworthy of his time and affection.

‘Are there any questions?’ David finally asked when he felt he had concluded the topic.

‘What’s the communication strategy?’ asked Samantha.

‘Good question,’ answered Simon. ‘David will announce Tom’s resignation in his all-company address immediately after this meeting.’

‘Yes, but what reason will he give?’ asked Peter.

‘The reason I will give is that Tom decided that he felt that he no longer fitted into this organisation and has therefore decided to look for opportunities elsewhere,’ David replied.

‘With all respect,’ Mathew said, ‘I think Samantha’s got a point. The employees will see straight through this and will need to know more. How about suggesting that there had been a meeting on the strategic way forward and that after a great deal of discussion, he, Tom Richards, decided that there was no longer a fit in the organisation and that he took voluntary redundancy to avoid a conflict of interest while seeking other opportunities,’ said Mathew.

‘That sounds perfect,’ Simon said.

‘Yes, indeed, thank you Mathew, would you mind jotting that down so that it is captured correctly?’ David asked.

‘A pleasure,’ Mathew replied.

‘Now, I need to move onto a much more important topic. I have an extremely important announcement to 139

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make but before I do I want to tell you how sorry I am that I could not have shared any of it with you beforehand. I don’t think you need me to tell you all just how serious our cash flow position had become in the last few months.

However I must admit that the very latest figures, thanks to Samantha’s marketing approach, do show some real signs of improvement, though, as Mathew rightly reminds me, this will take a while to show on our bank account.

My biggest concerns have been how we are going to pay the staff. Mathew has done a great job, with all your help, to find ways of cutting back on costs and we must continue to be very vigilant wherever we possibly can.’

Peter looked at his coffee and looked at John. But John was staring blankly at the desk in front of him.

‘My friends, I have to tell you, however, that I have some exciting news,’ David continued. ‘It will come as a shock to some of you and I am deeply sorry to have to tell you like this but I promised Simon and our lawyers that I would not tell a soul. Both Simon and Mathew knew because they were a part of the project and the lawyers had given all of us affidavits to sign. Samantha, Peter, John, as of 13:30 today Atlantic Lighting entered into a binding contract to handover the freehold of all its buildings and land to a property developer. We have also entered into a binding agreement to acquire brand new premises located just outside the town on the new bypass. You may know it, it’s the fancy new green and white glass office with industrial buildings attached on the bypass in the direction 140

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of Tonbridge. Now, before you barrage me with questions: Yes, it is much smaller than our current premises and yes, it will need extending and some alterations but, I can now announce that Simon managed to negotiate a sale deal that was so extra-ordinary, the final result of the sale and purchase is that it has supplied Atlantic Lighting with enough cash to pay off all its debts; including the personal one to me that, as you know, has been growing bigger and bigger over several years. In fact, the back-to-back deals leave us with enough cash to re-finance the business for the foreseeable future and also to carry out all the changes that I will present to you during the rest of the meeting.’

‘David, so sorry to interrupt but really, with respect, how come we didn’t know about this before? What’s with all the big secrecy? I would like to think that after all these years you could trust us with this critical information,’ Peter said, his face red with anger and disappointment.

‘OK, OK, I can understand how upset you, Samantha and John must be feeling right now,’ David said.

‘It’s not just us,’ Peter said, ‘the Unions will go mad when they hear this.’

‘Indeed, indeed,’ Simon said coming to the rescue, ‘but please, Peter, hear David out. Let him continue, this topic is not easy for him either.’

‘Thank you, Simon,’ David said.

‘The sale of our land and buildings was very politically charged. You must remember that they were ‘given’ to my father for almost nothing in return for his prom141

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ised support of the war wounded servicemen and their families. There were serious questions as to whether they were even ours to legally sell. Many people could have laid false claims to them and could have jeopardised the whole deal. But I am pleased to say that, thanks to Simon, Mathew and our amazing lawyers we raised a great deal of money for the freehold by selling it to Wainthorp and Wainthorp,’ David said.

‘You did what?’ Peter asked, even more angrily. ‘You sold it to that bastard Wainthorp! He’s the one that engineered the compulsory purchase on my mother’s home, nearly ruining her in the process! He’ll tear this lot down and he’ll build plastic mock Tudor houses and offices with plastic wishing wells and parking lots for gas guzzling four-by-fours!’

‘Peter, please, I understand that Wainthorp is not the ideal purchaser but you need to see the big picture. We were facing the door of bankruptcy and we raised nearly ten million pounds!’ The room fell silent and David paused to catch his breath. ‘With ten million pounds,’ he continued, ’Atlantic lighting can survive for another generation.

We can protect our investments and become more efficient in everything we do; new machines, new IT structures, new ways of working, new ideas built upon a solid tradition of durable quality and values we can be proud of.’

‘But first, I want to go through the five point plan that Simon and I, with Samantha’s help, have come up with,’ David continued. ‘Some of the points will not be a sur142

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prise because we have been discussing these topics for several years now. The only difference this time around is that there are to be no more discussions about the ‘what’ but only about the ‘how’. I have made up my mind. I don’t expect that all of you will agree with me but I have come to realise that there is no way forward without going in a direction that some of you would have preferred otherwise. I am sure you must be tired of my constant deliberation. With Simon’s insight I can see that I haven’t really made a single strategic decision in all the thirty plus years I have been CEO. All I have done is attempted to follow the trends while at the same time trying to take on board your best intentions in the vain hope that everything would come good. But it didn’t come good. Change is happening, it’s happening all around us whether we like it or not and radical decisions need to be taken if any of us are to survive.’

David stood up and went over to the flip chart that Mathew noticed had a new, full pad of paper on it. The tatty recycled block, with its curled up corners, that had every square centimetre of space covered with text and diagrams in every colour of ink in order to try and avoid confusion had finally been replaced. It pleased him to see that it still had its Staples’ dust cover, which he found reassuring from a cost point of view. David flipped it over and wrote on it Production 143

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‘Firstly, I want to announce that we will focus production solely on our ‘Classic’ range. When we move at the end of the year we will reduce from three production lines to one main line and one small, newly tooled ‘specials’ line for the really high-end orders – the kinds of which we have been receiving recently, those of over one thousand pounds per lamp. The main production line, for which Peter, you can order completely new machinery, as you see fit, will focus on all the variations of the Classic range in the one hundred and twenty five to three hundred pounds category. There will be no more discounting of prices from now on. Basically we will only make to order and if you are wondering, the numbers I am sharing are all retail prices because we are going to gradually move to retail only. We will still have some distributors but they will have to buy online and they will only have access to certain items; only the standard ranges where we can afford to give away a margin. However, it will be reduced from the current forty to fifty percent to thirty percent maximum on their product lines. No exceptions. We will never under-cut the distributors and re-sellers or eat into their margins. Just like Nespresso and many other companies we will introduce limited editions. Samantha has even come up with the idea of working with a number of celebrities that we could partner our lamps with. They will endorse our products and will receive royalties in return.’

David turned back to the flipchart. He was telling it all in the wrong order but Simon was pleased to see him 144

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so confident and self-assured. He turned over the sheet and wrote: Sales ‘Sometime after Christmas, the exact timing is still to be worked through with John, we will no longer have any on the road sales people at all. Over the next few weeks and months, John and I will be travelling together to visit all our key distributors and retailers world-wide. Together we will try to convince them to stay loyal to us and our brand.

We will take with us an online demo and marketing support plan and try to convince them to feature our products in their online catalogues, offering them dedicated areas on our site. Their buyers will never know this but they will actually be in our IT environment and not in the retailer’s site at all. They will therefore buy our lamps using their retailer’s loyalty cards etc., remaining loyal to the retailer while building an identity relationship with us at the same time. Have I got this right, Samantha?’

‘More or less,’ she said. ‘It’s correct in a nut shell. I can give more explanation if anyone needs it.’ No one responded.

‘Can Jeremy handle this kind of special IT stuff?’ Peter asked.

‘No, Peter, he can’t,’ Samantha said. ‘I have been speaking with him about our proposed way of doing online business over the last few weeks and he is very interested 145

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in it but he admits that it is far too complex and specialised for him. He has kindly agreed to let me bring in a specialist consulting company that not only can work with us on our enterprise IT architecture, aligning it with our new strategy, but also project manage the complexity of making it happen. Jeremy will manage the standard IT contracts and focus on data security and our desktop PC environment. Peter, we expect there to be some impacts on production too, especially in order generation etc. But it will only mean one thing for us and for you and your team. Far less paperwork and much easier stock control.

Production planning, too, will be mostly automated, if we can believe what the Chairman of the consultancy group says. He’s got a good track record for delivery and his team’s references are impeccable.’

‘If you can take away my production planning, that would be great,’ Peter said, trying to show an air of positivity. ‘I bloody hate it. It’s the one area I am not so good at and no matter what I come up with, I either upset you or John or David or indeed, all of three of you! In all my forty three years here I think the only times I got it right were purely by mistake! All I have ever wanted to focus on is the production process, product quality and product design. I have never been interested in anything else if I am totally honest.’

‘Well, I am afraid that you will need to continue to disappoint us for a while yet,’ Simon added, trying to lighten the atmosphere. ‘The guys we’re bringing in are good but 146

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they have already warned us that it will take at least a year to eighteen months before everything is up and running and fully automated. We will need to sit together to agree on priorities; which processes we automate first but with this kind of dramatic change we may have to run our existing processes and systems in the foreground while designing and building the new ones in the background.

The specialists are even suggesting that we will no longer need to have our own servers in the new building, moving everything to ‘the cloud’, whatever that really means.’

‘What I still don’t fully get is how a company can actually survive without sales people?’ John said.

‘It can’t,’ replied Samantha. ‘Every company needs sales people supporting some kind of sales process, even if it begins with marketing driving traffic to a web portal.

There will always be human sales intervention to close deals. You should check out companies like lightinthebox. com; it’s very basic looking, not at all like our new site will be but it’s a website that sells all kinds of stuff from wedding dresses to mobile phones. They have literally hundreds of models of mobile phones. You make a selection of what you want and if you get stuck, the system can detect it. For example when it sees that a customer is switching to and fro between products a little pop-up comes on the screen, in the form of a photograph of a happy and helpful shop assistant. She asks you if you need help and via chat she will guide you to the right choice based upon your needs and budget. It works amazingly well in all the lan147

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guages you can think of. It is truly global. You should try it.

We thought if we can fully automate our ordering process then Nigel and his team could be re-trained to handle this kind of pre-sales intervention. Of course, we will need to recruit some people in the US and in Asia so our online shop can be open 24/7 all around the world but there are specialist agencies and e-learning techniques for this.’

‘Thanks for your question John and thanks for sharing that, Samantha, but I am afraid that I must continue with my other points before we go into free discussion. I am concerned about the time. We’re going to run a bit late, I fear. Peter, do you think your guys would hang on until half past four?’ asked David.

‘I am sure they will, David. They are all a bit excited right now and their main break doesn’t start until five. Have we foreseen drinks and sandwiches? If so, we can run a little over, possibly up to six o’clock. Everyone knows this is not going to be a normal ‘all company’ meeting,’ Peter said.

‘No problem, it’s covered. Tamara has arranged something with the caterers,’ Simon said. ‘I tell you what. Just let me pop out for a second to warn Susan & Tamara so they can get a message out to all the employees.’

‘No, it’s OK, Simon, I will go’ Peter said. I need to let them know who the duty managers are anyway. The only thing I want to add, though is that when we say it starts at four thirty we had better not be late,’ Peter insisted.

‘Good point,’ David said. ‘Good point. Now while Peter is sorting out the communication who would like some of 148

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my magic coffee?’ No one responded. ‘Well I’ll just have to serve myself then.’

John lifted his head and raised a smile to Peter as he headed for the door.

‘I’ll join you with a cup,’ Mathew chipped in.

‘Good man,’ David said.

Simon stood up and opened one of the boardroom windows. The sound of production presses drifted in with the chilly afternoon air. The shadows were lengthening on the forecourt. He remembered his first day at AL and the excitement of it all. It seemed such a long time ago and yet only like yesterday. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like for Peter or John and David who only ever knew this world – a world of lamps and electricity. He bent down next to Samantha and asked her quietly in her ear, ‘Everything OK?’ ‘Fine. Why shouldn’t it be?’ she answered rather tersely.

‘No reason,’ Simon replied. ‘I just thought that you would have preferred to have presented your marketing plan yourself today, that’s all.’

‘Oh,’ said Samantha. ‘No, I already agreed with David that it would take too long and that there will be plenty of opportunities in the future. I guessed that it would be best if everyone heard it from David rather than me.’

‘Indeed, indeed,’ Simon agreed. He was beginning to sound like David and rather hoped that Samantha would not take it as patronising.

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‘By the way, I can’t say it enough that it is such good news about your becoming COO and later CEO, Simon,’ Samantha whispered back smiling. ‘I am so pleased you’re not going to leave us. I can see why you would. I mean, after today, you could have worked anywhere, but I really think we’ll make a good team and, to be honest, I have come to rely on your good sense of judgement. I wouldn’t want to be here alone, especially not right now!’ she said.

‘Samantha, let me assure you the feeling’s totally mutual!’ he whispered back. ‘Let’s see how the others take it.’

At that moment Peter re-entered the room. ‘Everything’s sorted. We’re good for another forty minutes. Tamara and Susan have it all under control. They are very anxious though. They both wanted to know what’s happening!’

‘Indeed, indeed, all in good time,’ David said. He went back to his flip chart and turned over another sheet.

People ‘This for me is the hardest part of all: ‘People’. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that moving to our new premises means we’ll need to downsize. Peter, the biggest hit is going to be in production and although we do have a number of employees coming up for retirement, they are not due to leave us until after our moving date. Plus, we will need to lose more. We simply won’t be able to fit everyone in. I will obviously rely on your judgement but the con150

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sulting company we’re bringing in has loads of experience in downsizing and have some specialists that can work with us in the restructuring and training of not only our sales support and administration staff but also our workforce. The big question is how will they react? Except for a few dismissals for theft and unacceptable behaviour, we have never made anyone compulsorily redundant in the entire history of Atlantic Lighting. My father would never hear of it. ‘The whole purpose of setting up Atlantic Lighting’, he would say, ‘is to support people that, if not for us, would never be able to find work. Everyone has a part to play in modern Britain,’ he used to remind me. How can we ever round this circle?’

‘It’s going to be a really tough PR challenge,’ Samantha said. ‘There’s no doubt about that. But I am sure we will come up with something.’

‘With all due respect, Samantha,’ Peter intercepted, ‘I am not certain that you understand the subtlety of what David has just announced. It’s not your fault, you couldn’t know, you’re not from these parts. Everyone for miles around knows Atlantic Lighting. They know about David and his father and they see them as heroes. They see David as someone who not only talks about equal employment rights for the disabled but as someone who actually lives it. As you have seen yourself, more than a third of my entire production team is either physically or mentally handicapped. That’s one reason why I have been slow to modernise production. It’s not just been about the lack of 151

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funds it’s also been about change. Our less able colleagues find any kind of change really tough. If you even try and move a box of parts from one shelf to another, some of them become completely lost. It upsets them. Politician after politician, it doesn’t matter who, Labour, Conservative and even the bloody Lib-Dems have visited Atlantic Lighting and proclaimed it as the very model of what their party supports. If the Unions don’t kill us then the politicians and public opinion will’ Peter said.

‘Peter’s right, Samantha,’ John added. ‘This is going to be tough. I am really worried. You can’t imagine the emotional reaction. Just to give you an example, Samantha; if I go to a dinner party and someone asks where I work, when I say Atlantic Lighting, they always say ‘Oh that’s great.

That’s the company that employs all those poor disabled people, isn’t it? Isn’t your boss marvellous?’ These dinner party people mean well but they are so misinformed and patronising it makes me mad. What we have here is something special. We’ve spent years building a culture where everyone is equally respected for what they do and not how much they get paid for doing it.’

‘Indeed, I fear John’s right,’ David said. ‘We also can’t forget that we’ve received lots of subsidies from all sorts of political initiatives over the years, but I must admit they did stop once Blair went. If this hits the BBC news, I am seriously afraid that it will even get back as far as the Queen. She awarded us our Royal patronage not long after my father died. There used to be a photograph of her visit 152

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in reception. I wonder whatever happened to it. It must have been removed in the last refurbishment I guess.’

‘We will need to come up with a very careful communication strategy, especially towards the press,’ Simon said.

‘Perhaps we should contact the consultancy to see if they could bring someone in in the morning?’

‘The most important thing,’ Peter said ‘is that we stick to our principles. I personally wouldn’t mention it yet but redundancies, if we have to have them, should be handled on a perfectly fair and equal basis. I will not make lists of names based upon ability but on our needs and look to see who could be the best match. But this is surely still a long way off? If we must tool up for modern computerised machinery, with less manual input, then I don’t see why we need to differentiate between our able and disabled employee,’ Peter said.

‘You’re absolutely right, Peter,’ David said. ‘In the past, whenever we have tested it, day in day out our less able staff proved statistically more reliable and loyal to Atlantic Lighting than any other group of employees and they work just as fast and as hard, in most cases,’ David said.

‘I suppose the big problem will be that, if some are made redundant then they will be less likely to find work than their more able-bodied rivals. But I guess we can’t be blamed for that, can we?’ Samantha asked.

‘Lady and Gentlemen I am sorry to say this but we are running out of time,’ Simon interjected. ‘This is a topic we can come back to another day. The important point now is 153

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that we will need to downsize and fairly quickly. We need to move out of these buildings in a matter of weeks. We could try and get an extension but it is not at all certain and it would be extremely costly. The bottom line is that on January 3, 2011 we need to be fully up and running in our new premises.’

‘That’s nowhere near enough time!’ Peter exclaimed.

‘How on earth can we re-structure our production in such a short time? It’s simply not feasible.’

‘How long do you need?’ Simon asked.

‘I don’t know. This is all going way too fast. If I am pushed, I would say six months to a year at least.’

‘Sorry, Peter, no can do. We need to be out by Christmas,’ Simon added. ‘We’ll find a way, I know we will. We simply have no choice.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ David said. ‘I remember my father telling me about how during the war when production plants got bombed out, they managed to rebuild and get them up and running again, sometimes in a matter of days. I am sure we can come up with some kind of plan. That’s why we are bringing in experts, so that we can focus on running our business while making the changes at the same time. I guess it will be a bit chaotic at first but I believe that it will be far better to have a short period of dramatic change than a long drawn out one that ends up costing the earth and never really solves our problems.’

‘However, there are still two more vitally important points I need to make,’ he continued. ‘Firstly, with the re154

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duction of our production to only one line plus ‘specials’, Samantha’s figures show that we will lose too many opportunities for additional, high margin, low effort revenue. Also, I feel there is a big risk that the current trend of finding everything retro as cool might fade away. And anyway, with reduced production, it will make any future growth of Atlantic Lighting almost impossible. You only have to look at the watch business to understand that high end brands cannot survive without owning a bunch of cheaper brands. The turnover from the mass market funds the marketing and sponsorship of the top brand.

In order to reduce these risks and to obtain higher average profit margins, I have decided to follow Samantha’s reasoning and we will immediately begin the search for white label manufacturers of lighting with production facilities in Asia. Obviously, we have no desire to purchase them; we only want to put our logo on fashionable, upmarket products to complement our own in-house range.

This makes perfect sense to me, if we are selling online anyway. Simon and Samantha have convinced me that if we get the logistics right, we won’t even have to stock products at all. Apparently when you buy an iPad online, it goes straight from the factory to your door. Apple doesn’t touch it at all! Of course we will need to make some kind of differentiator between our own homemade products, but the idea is that we will be able to latch onto interior design trends and even instigate some of our own and thereby dramatically increase our range without the risks 155

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that have restricted us before. If Nikon, Mercedes and Jaguar can do it successfully, then so can we. I know it’s going to be tough and the changes painful but we can see for ourselves what’s happening all around us. You probably all know that my son, Jeremy, bought an apartment in Cape Town a few months back. Well, I can tell you, even there he bought all his furniture, even his bedding and furnishings, online. He even buys his food online. We cannot deny this is happening.’

‘I am not sure I get this fully, David. How will this all work, precisely? I mean how will we select suitable products to begin with? Will we have an Asia office with specialist buyers and market researchers?’ John asked.

David looked at his watch, 16:25 and said, ‘I am so sorry, John. I would love to answer that question and believe me when I say that Samantha, Simon and Mathew have a realistic plan and they have gone through it all in immense detail but we don’t have time to go over the details right now. After the all company meeting we will have all the time we need. But please, rest assured, Samantha has kilos of market indicators and financial spread sheets to support her ideas. Please feel free to go through it with her directly later, but for now I am afraid that I still need to raise my last point. It’s important, really important.

Sorry,’ David said.

‘No problem, no problem at all; sorry to interrupt.

Please continue.’

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‘I have, this morning, asked Simon to stay on and take up the full time role as COO for Atlantic Lighting and I am pleased to say that he has agreed,’ David said. ‘He will, as of today, take on all the day to day running of the business so that I can focus my time with John on the road securing the loyalty of as many of our customers as possible. I am excited about our future but I know that the most critical part to carry us through the next eighteen months will be convincing our distributors to stay with us and to buy online instead of face-to-face. Simon has done a fantastic job. Before he came we could never even have had this conversation. We would all be talking and none of us listening. We would be shouting and getting upset with the result that nothing ever changed. It was becoming hopeless. But here we are twelve months further, almost to the day, and we are working together like a true team, like a real board of directors.’

‘Finally, I want to thank you all personally for your patience with me over the years but especially in recent months. I know the frustration you must have felt and are still feeling. As you all know, Atlantic Lighting was never my first choice of career; that’s not an excuse, just a fact.

Atlantic Lighting Ltd. has always been a duty for me. But I have come to realise that innovation in times of change is not born out of a sense of duty but out of passion. All of you have passion and I believe now that, with Simon as a permanent member of our management team, we will grow from strength to strength. It was he that showed us 157

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how to work together. It was he that enabled us to come to an understanding and to harness respect for one another; not by trying to find a compromise or an artificial agreement but by encouraging us to celebrate not only our similarities and strengths but also our weaknesses and differences. He has shown us how to turn our personal failings into strategic advantages. Just look at the way he repositioned Nigel. Just a few months ago Nigel was by far the most annoying person in our company, who, if we are honest, we would have loved to have thrown out! It was Simon who moved him to the position of Order Process Manager. That dramatic change alone has brought us a huge increase in efficiency and a massive reduction in production order errors. It is for these and many other reasons that I have not only asked Simon to stay on as COO but also to prepare the ground over the next twelve months to take over from me as CEO. I will keep the honorary title of Chairman but he will be calling the shots. He will be working with Samantha and you all to turn this business around and to make it the sustainable global flagship my father set out to build but was denied the time to really achieve.’

Silence fell in the room.

It was John who finally spoke up. ‘You know I have always respected you David, the way you stepped in when Atlantic needed you. I have always defended you. I know I have been a pain in recent years in the way I have argued with Peter and Samantha and even sometimes with you, 158

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Mathew. And I apologise for that sincerely. But I just want to say ‘thank you’ for today and ‘thank you’ for everything.

There are loads and loads of questions spinning around my head right now but I want you to know that you and Simon have my full and total support.’ John turned and looked directly at Peter. ‘I am sorry to say, Peter, that I told you a half-truth earlier. I will be leaving, not now, not today but as soon as I can. Barbara needs me, she’s spent too long alone at home waiting for me to return from one business trip or another. We were not lucky to be blessed with children. She has no one else and I need to be with her. When she is well enough, I want to take her to the places we have always dreamed of visiting together. I need to do this while there is still time.’ He looked around the room making no effort to hide his tears and the vulnerability that he had always carried yet had kept so deeply hidden.

‘David, I want to support what John has just shared with us,’ Peter said. ‘I cannot say that all this is not a shock; it is. Nor can I say that I am not a bit hurt about being left out of your decision meetings but I know you had your reasons. Let me just say that I think Simon has done a great job here, Samantha too and I look forward to working with everyone for as long as you want to have me around. I think it is common knowledge that, unlike John, my wife does not feel the need for me to retire. She knows better than I that this place is my first love and always will be. I love her deeply, don’t get me wrong, but Atlantic Lighting is everything to me. I guess that’s why it 159

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hurts so much to hear that we will be cutting back to only one production line and to letting people go, and all that entails. To be honest I just can’t face that at this very moment but I want you to know David, that I respect you and you and Simon have my support, even if my heart does not yet share the logic.’

‘Thank you very much, both of you,’ David said. ‘You cannot know how much your support and loyalty mean to me.’

Just then there was a knock on the door and before anyone could say anything it opened and Tamara stepped into the room. She looked at David and around the table.

‘I’m very sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just that it’s nearly twenty to five and everyone is wondering what is happening. They are getting rather restless.’

‘So sorry, Tamara. Can you just give us another minute?’ Simon asked. ‘We’ll be right there, I promise.’

‘OK,’ said Tamara, ‘but please try not to keep them waiting any longer than you possibly must. I will do my best to placate them.’ And with that she left, closing the door behind her.

‘OK, this is it,’ said David. ‘After thirty six years as CEO I suddenly feel the need for just a few more days of preparation. Whatever am I going to tell them? I need to tell them something before they read it in the press.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ Simon said.

‘Just tell it like it is,’ John added.

‘Hear, hear!’ said Mathew.

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16:45

D

avid stepped onto the balcony at the head of the stairwell. Below him stood what must have been two to three hundred employees. He was comforted by the fact that he was flanked on his left and right by all of his boardroom colleagues. The hall fell silent and he began: ‘Good afternoon, indeed good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I am very sorry to have kept you waiting for so long. Thank you for your patience...’

161

‘I just don’t know how I am going to get through all this. Do you really think I am doing the right thing? I mean, what would my father say?’

Today is Tuesday the 7th. September, 2010 and David the CEO of Atlantic Lighting is facing the toughest day of his career. Told from the view point of each of the company’s management team, Transition is the story of just one day in Atlantic Lighting’s history, a day that will change the company forever.

Cleverly written, this timeless page-turning story unfolds to reveal not only the plans and actions of each of the management team but also their deepest insights and feelings.

Business leader and experienced interim manager, Harley Lovegrove takes his readers on a journey of discovery, painting a fascinating view of a small English manufacturing company and its desperate attempt to survive in an everchanging world.

“Transition is a business story that touches your heart and mind.

The author puts you in the first row, witnessing a company attempting to leap into the 21st century.” Katrin Derboven

ISBN 978-0-9566157-1-8

9 780956 615718

www.linchpin-books.com