Playing Her Cards Right

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Riley’s face dropped.

‘And what did he say about deliveries?’ I said smiling to myself.

Riley helped me off with my coat, fussing over me as if it were a state visit.

‘He said he would deliver them personally.’ Riley beamed.

‘I bet he did,’ I said heading for the stairs. Riley followed close behind carrying not only my coat but the leather handbag samples that Clara had given to me as well. I needed to get in touch with Clara to get the ball rolling. I had Shearman Bright – “The ReBrand” – on my mind and I was raring to go.

Along with everything she was carrying Riley was still able to push past me and open my office door.

Since becoming the owner of Shearman I had taken over the larger office that once belonged to my former boss, Anthony. He’d started out as a rather hopeless CEO. I never understood why his father had retired and left the running of his business to a son who was far more suited to painting Italian sunsets than he was to running a boardroom meeting.

It made me smile to think back to those days, glad that Anthony’s father did trust him with the business, otherwise we would never have met and I wouldn’t be walking around with the amazing secret that only Anthony and I knew about.

My new, improved office had undergone a complete makeover. The office was huge and only ever consisted of a large desk, a couple of office chairs, and a cabinet. Within a month of taking over Shearman I’d filled one corner with a two-seater sofa and matching armchair in a sexy shade of red. There was a low, mahogany coffee table between them with a vase on top. Riley replenished it with fresh flowers each week.

I’d replaced the old desk with a mahogany one from the same trendy furniture designer shop the coffee table came from. It was wide and deep and, as I mentioned before, covered with every project I was working on. Behind it was my big purple chair, so comfortable I could tuck my feet up and fall asleep in it.

One look at the desk and I knew I had to completely clear it and make space for my newest projects: wedding dress designing, handbag designing, planning the rebranding of the company, and my parents’ wedding. I had this; I knew it.

‘I need to sort this mess out, Riley. I need space for all these ideas I’ve been having.’

I filled Riley in on my plans and she helped me go through the piles on my desk and completely return it to the time I first redecorated. It looked like it belonged to the CEO of a thriving company.

When we’d finished I stood back and inspected the office.

‘If you’re going to be drawing and designing now I should order you a proper table,’ said Riley. ‘The office you used when you were the PA is just sitting there doing nothing.’

‘So I should use it as my design room,’ I enthused. ‘Riley, that’s perfect. Come on, let’s go and look at it.’

In just two weeks my former PA office had become an amazing design studio. My old desk and chair had been pushed aside to accommodate my drawing desk and chair. A new standing lamp and shade looked down over me as I drew into the night.

The weeks went by, the chilly autumn became an even chillier winter, and I had dedicated more hours than there were in each day to consulting on materials for bags, looking into fabric for Mother’s dress, and filling every sketch pad I had with drawings.

Of course, I felt very rusty and lacked confidence as a designer, binning lots and lots of my ideas and only showing them to Riley when I thought I had something decent. I’d spoken to Clara via Skype and she’d kindly agreed to walk me through some aspects of working with different grades of leather. I had never gone to ground level with my bag designs before.

My current designers, along with Clara in Paris, helped me to start from the very basics until I was gradually up to speed on what it took to produce a bag design that was ready to go to production. I knew I wasn’t perfect; I knew the professionals were making exceptions but I was learning all the time.

I was on a roll, excited about the company and excited about the secret piece of joy growing inside me. At home, I had started to accumulate a pile of pregnancy books. They sat beside my bedside table when they were piled too high to sit on the table itself. I read them as the weeks counted down to my first hospital appointment. I was exhausted a lot of the time and often fell asleep before I could finish a chapter. According to one of the many books I’d bought, the baby was approximately the size of a walnut.

So many times I wanted to break the news to everyone but I had my first antenatal appointment scheduled and I was saving the announcement for a better time. A time when my news wasn’t going to fade into the background for one thing. A lot was going on with everyone around me.

For example, my best friend, Anya, was out of the country again. She was in the middle of shooting another film. She had more lines compared to the role she’d had in last year’s shoot and although not the leading lady, her reputation alone was causing a storm of attention in the media and totally putting the movie’s female lead in the shadows.

From what I could tell, the trained actors resented singers or models who landed roles in films based on the popularity of a song or an appearance in a perfume commercial. I could imagine the resentment they felt but I saw Anya in the last film and she was talented as an actress.

Anya had a way of putting all the women she stood next to in the shade. Her tall, slender, and intimidatingly icy presence saw to that. If you didn’t know Anya you’d suspect she was made of ice. She rarely smiled (she feared the Botox needle), she never frowned (same reason as before), and I’d only ever known her to cry full-on tears once in the ten years we’d been friends. I loved Anya.

‘I can’t believe my best friend is a Hollywood star,’ I said to her on FaceTime one evening. I had been working late in my studio. Anya and I had spent the last two weeks just missing the other by nanoseconds.

‘It’s not so much of a big deal, Madge. You meet von film star, you’ve met them all. All self-absorbed and self-important. Not like models.’

I stifled a laugh because I was pretty sure Anya was being serious.

‘So when will you be back in London?’ I asked.

‘Vell, ve have finished rehearsal and filming for my scenes should be over in a month. Then I plan an extended holiday vith Henry. I feel as if I haven’t seen him in a long time.’

‘Maybe because you haven’t.’

Anya’s boyfriend was a lot older than she was, an ex-politician who left the government under a cloud of gossip and accusations, he had since returned to his original profession in law. He’d been busy setting up his own practice. I knew Anya was looking forward to moving into the new house they’d bought together.

‘Vell, I don’t feel as if I’ve seen you either,’ said Anya. ‘Not in the flesh anyvay and not since you led that ring of pushers into France vith their handbags.’

‘Don’t joke about. I still have nightmares.’

‘I’m not surprised, darling. I saw an episode of Orange is the New Black and I know I could never do prison.’

‘I know, right? You know they wear jumpsuits in prison? Those things never suited me. The cut isn’t right for my shape.’

Anya laughed and asked me what else was new in my life.

My hospital appointment was two days away, just forty-eight hours to the announcement of the century. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her the news but I had this overwhelming feeling that I wanted to give my friend the news in the flesh to properly see her reaction. Who knows, I might have been treated to a very rare – and therefore very valued – Anya hug.

So I told Anya all about the designs for my Every Woman handbag, as I was calling it, and that the designs were very close to going to the manufacturing team.