Chapter 5

Annabel asked the Governor, "Do you mind if I do the phone call? I think I can handle them okay, I really do."

"Perhaps, but what would you say to them on this call?"

"Just that things happened here, nice things, and that we have decided to remain on Rehome for the time being."

Bob glanced over at Ruth, and asked, "Ruth – are you fine with this line?"

Ruth looked thoughtful, then said, "Yes, I do believe that might be effective, if Annabel keeps her call simple and to the point."

Bob turned back to Annabel. "Right. I trust Ruth's judgment. Don't let me down, Annabel." He gestured for her to get her phone out. "Make the call now, and let us hear it." She switched it to speaker phone.

Annabel dialled her parents' number on Earth, and the Personalia's connection recognised it and put the call through to Earth. They could hear the number ringing. It was picked up. "Hello?"

Annabel, recognising her mother's voice said, "Hi, Momma. Is Daddy around?"

"Annabel! How wonderful to hear from you. Are you having a great visit? When do you expect to be back?"

"Momma, answer the question – is Daddy around?"

"I am sure he is through the back somewhere. Did you want to speak to him?"

Annabel rolled her eyes. "Of course, Momma. Why else would I ask for him? Would you fetch him, then put the phone on speakerphone, so we can all hear?"

About a minute later, she heard her father's voice, "Annabel, is that you?"

"Daddy, Momma already told you it was me! Is the phone on speakerphone?"

"No. Did you want that on? You should have told your mother."

"I did, Daddy. She forgot. It is all right, Momma, I forgive you."

Her father spoke again, "So to what do we owe this call, Annabel. It must be costing a fortune."

"No, it won't. The Colony will pay for this call. I just wanted you to know that we have had a great time here, but things have happened that we did not expect, and as a result, we will be staying on Rehome longer than we anticipated."

"I see," said her father, "Nothing serious, I hope."

"It depends on what you think of as serious, Daddy. I regard it as nice serious. I am speaking to you from the Governor's Mansion, where we spent last night. He and his family have been very helpful. They would like you and Momma, or just yourself, to take a trip to Rehome for a discussion with the Governor. He says there are complications that can only be resolved by speaking to you face to face."

"Really? The Governor? And who is going to pay for my round trip, may I ask?"

"Daddy, I am sure the Governor will make sure you are not out of pocket. I can put him on, if you want. He is nearby."

"Please do, Annabel. Can I take it that Tracy and Dinah are fine, too?"

"They are, Daddy; perfectly fine. Here is Governor Kempe to speak with you." She handed the phone over, and Bob took over the conversation.

"Mr Montford? Governor Bob Kempe here. Delighted to be able to speak with you. You have a wonderful family, I have to say."

"Thank you, Governor. Now, can you tell me what is going on?"

"It is a delicate matter, sir, and not conducive to discussion over the phone. That is why you are invited to visit, at our expense, so that we can discuss this matter man to man."

"I shall be happy to oblige, Governor. It is most mysterious, and very generous of you. Will your people be booking my travel tickets?"

"I shall arrange for your trip via the Personalia, who will provide the space travel part of your journey. All you have to do is fix up your travel to the Montreal launch site, the one your girls left from. We shall of course refund these costs, and any accommodation you require if you have to wait for a Landership. I apologise for being mysterious, but this delicate matter concerns our Colony's future well-being, and therefore we have to be circumspect. I shall reveal all when you get here. Is it just yourself, or does Mrs Montford wish to accompany you?"

"Mrs Montford is shaking her head. She does not fancy space travel, Governor, so she will not be coming. I shall speak for both of us, at our meeting, sir."

"Excellent, Mr Montford. I shall hand you back to Annabel, to say her farewells."

Annabel let her father know she was back on the line, and he responded, "Do nothing that would besmirch our good name, Annabel. As the eldest, you are responsible for your sisters."

"Daddy, you know that I always do that. I am a grown up woman, as you very well know. I have led our trip here, quite successfully, until this ... difficulty ... for which I was not responsible. Is that not so, Governor?" Her query could heard being answered, "Quite correct, Miss Montford. You are a good example of your family's high standards. Tell your father I said so."

She relayed these sentiments, and rang off. Putting the phone into her dress pocket, she sat down, shuddering. "Thank God that's over," she declaimed. She sat up and looked around, "Trevor, where are you? I need to be held for a moment or two."

He came over and gathered her in his arms. "There, there, my darling. Everything will be fine."

"Trevor, I felt like I was telling lies to my parents! I know I said nothing but the truth, but it was evasion, and I didn't like it. Tell me I didn't do anything wrong."

"You know deep down that you did nothing wrong, Annabel. You simply persuaded your father to come to Rehome and talk with the Governor. The Governor will explain to him that the three of you getting married to me is all right, as far as Rehome is concerned. Now, our new home: I haven't seen it yet, and we need to buy furniture for it; a lot of furniture. Do you think Mary will arrange a line of credit at the furniture store here?"

Annabel perked up. "Leave that to me, Trevor. I shall speak to Mary. She is a tough businesswoman, but a nice lady, and I think she could be persuaded to help us out with the furnishings. We need beds for each of us to sleep in, and a VERY big bed for fucking you in!" She laughed as she said this, and he kissed her tenderly in response. She set off to have a chat with Mary.

Mary was amenable to fund the furniture. "It is the least we can do for you folks. Just don't expect a wedding present as well, when you get around to marrying!" she said with a disarming smile.

Stepping through into the kitchen, Mary got her phone out and immediately spoke to the Lownies about this furniture requirement. "Sye Lownie, the Governor tells me you owe him a few favours, so what I want you to do is make sure this Defreitas family group gets the best furniture items that are available for their requirements, and that you knock ten per cent off the prices you would normally expect to get. I am paying you cash for this so Bob wants you to be generous. He claims you already have a high profit margin on furniture. Okay?"

Sye threw his hands up in the air, though she could not see this. "Mary, your husband really imposes on our friendship. He won't let me have a retail monopoly in Metropolis. He seems to have had a sneak look at our profit margins and now he expects a special deal for his friends!"

Mary lowered her voice, and said, "Sye, these are young people we have sympathy for, setting out on their life's voyage, so we want them to start with SOMETHING. The Colony is renting them a big house at a reduced rent (though they don't know it), and now you are going to help by offering a discount on their furniture. They don't need to know exactly what. Just tell them that Mary Kempe is paying part of their bill, but I will actually pay 75 per cent of it. Next time you need a favour, speak to me first."

"All right, Mary. On the basis of that promise, you win. Send them in as soon as you want. I'll brief the staff."

"I'll bring them tomorrow. Depend on it."

She did, and the girls, accompanied by Trevor, roamed through the entire stock before settling on what they wanted. Trevor agreed to the king-size bed, declaring "Just so I can get space to be alone for a while!", whilst he approved the choices each girl made for a personal bed. The bedroom extras were bedside cabinets, dressing tables, chests of drawers for their underwear and other small garments; and a wardrobe for each bedroom for the long dresses and skirts. Trevor demanded a wardrobe for his suits, shirts, and for his dressing gowns (one for summer, one for winter, though the climate did not vary that much).

The girls jointly chose the furnishings for the dining room, lounge, nursery, and at least two study rooms. There was agreement that the two youngest girls should share a study for their homework, and the other would be used by Trevor and the older girls as the need took them.

The kitchen furnishing was delegated to Mary, as the expert, so she selected what was best. A utilitarian table, stools, and a set of wheeled kitchen steps for reaching to heights. As she said, looking at Tracy as she did, "When you are very pregnant, these steps with broad treads will make reaching up for things so much easier. The minute you put your weight on the first tread, the wheels retract and the steps become stable. I found it very worthwhile for myself in these awkward circumstances."

There was some discussion about items in their bedrooms back on Earth, but apart from a few keepsakes, none of them felt very attached to the contents of their rooms. They phoned their mother and told her which selected keepsakes to pack in their Dad's bags for coming to Rehome.

Within days, Trevor was officially appointed Chief Executive Officer for the new company. It had yet to be officially named, so Trevor considered that a priority. He kicked round possible names with Mary and Pam, until they decided on "Rehome Deliveries", as a general statement of their principles as well as a title.

Trevor pointed out, "This does not restrict us in what we can deliver, so we can branch out to any type of delivery, such as distributing large quantities of supplies to retail shops; transporting livestock from and to farms, hauling bulk supplies to a railhead from a quarry. "You name it, we aim to deliver it", is my approach to the business.

We shall start off with the courier and small parcels business and take it from there. I expect that people will come to us to ask whether we can deliver specific goods for them."

Mary and Pam were delighted with his go-getting attitude, and asked him how he saw the finances of the business.

"In order to know how to set our charges for parcels, it requires an overall view of the company costs: our expenditure levels, then calculate how many parcels we expect to ship per year. Then we divide our costs by the number of parcels we expect to go through our network. We need to collate all the agents' salaries or fees and central staff salaries together, as a basic oncost, plus the costs of buying or renting any buildings we use. Other costs include transport charges and the equipment costs to enable transferring phone IDs on to the surface of parcels, and suitable code readers at the agencies. We must check whether a phone app could do this last task, as that would be much cheaper.

We shall have to arrange that the Rail network can also read our IDs, so that any parcel that inadvertently goes astray can be quickly routed back to where it was supposed to be. The simplest way to do that would be to have one reader kept with each train, so that the driver has it available for use by any rail staff. That may make it easier to gain a discount on the carriage charges on the rail network. I am envisaging a gradient of charges from them.

I see it as full charges for the first thousand parcels carried, and ten per cent discount for the next 5 thousand, then another ten per cent off for the next ten thousand, and the same for each ten thousand down to forty percent of the original charges. If the Railways want to make things simpler, and have less administrative costs, we could do a deal for an annual fee based on a thousand parcel throughput, and another fee based on 5 thousand, then 10 thousand throughput, all worked out on the number of parcels we place on trains at Metropolis station. Of course, that simplified annual fee would have to bring down the cost per parcel to about 30 per cent or so, of a standard charge, to reflect their reduced costs.

Once we have these costs established, we can fix our standard parcel fee for delivery anywhere that is on the rail network. Our agents' salary includes them collecting daily from the rail station and delivering to the rail station at the same time.

All the parcels, no matter where they are intended for, come to our central depot, where we allocate them into bags according to the rail destination where our agent will collect. That keeps it simple: one journey in, one journey out for each parcel; no attempts at short-circuiting the system, as that will lose us control of the process. I am aiming at a 3-dollar basic charge per parcel, to anywhere in the colony, if we can keep our costs down to around 2 dollars. If the costs are higher, then 4 dollars or even 5 dollars may be the charge. We have to maintain a profit margin, but the lower we can keep our costs, the cheaper our parcel charges. We have to think in terms of competitors in the future, so we must run a tight ship.

When it comes to other types of delivery, we analyse them separately, and charge accordingly.

How does that sound to you, lady bosses?"

Pam and Mary were awestruck. "Genuinely great, Trevor. You have clearly thought this out well. I say go for it, as said. What do you think, Mary?"

"I agree. Is there anything else we need to discuss, Trevor, or are we finished?"

"There is something that was mentioned in connection with the agents: publicity. We must tell the population that the service exists, and how to use it; and how cheap it is. I say we use the Colony online newspaper for advertising, as everyone looks at it. If we speak nicely to the editor, and tell him how much advertising we propose to pay for; not only will we get a good price on the deal, but he will be persuaded by me do a story spread on the opening of the new service. Do you think we can get the Governor to cut a ribbon to inaugurate the start of Rehome Deliveries, Mary?"

"He will do it, if I have to drag him there myself! Seriously, as long as you keep the date and time flexible, I am sure he can fit it in around his other responsibilities. It is only a few minutes of his time, I am sure."

At their new home, which the girls had christened "Freight House" in honour of the new deliveries business, and a reflection of part of Trevor's surname, they were becoming more and more a family group. The girls found it fairly easy to fit in with each other. Even coping with scheduling their time with Trevor had only a few blips. Annabel decided one day she fancied a cuddle with Trevor, and went to his study, only to find him with Tracy on his lap as he fondled her breasts. "Tracy! You are not due for time with Trevor!" Annabel declared, only for Tracy to retort, "Spoilsport! I didn't try to fuck him. He was interested in a little something just now, so I let him feel me up for a few minutes."

Trevor intervened: "It is true, what she said. Girls? Really, I don't mind, in fact I enjoy, the odd cuddle and feel, for a short time, if any of you feel the need for that, as long as that is all it is. If someone is here with me when you want something like that, let me know, and I will be ready for you in a few minutes. Is that not reasonable?"

They had to accept his rationale, and so the matter subsided.

The only problem they had to resolve was where to meet with Daddy Montford. They did not want to short-circuit his "education" by showing that they all already lived with Trevor. They solved this by asking the Governor if he would host the meeting. He said "Yes".

Mary insisted that his arrival be timed to coincide with a meal, to put him in a good mood. He was welcomed at the beach by the Governor and the official limousine. This impressed Mr Montford a good deal. They drove through the streets of Metropolis so that the newcomer could see a little of the city before the meeting. Finally they arrived at the Governor's Mansion. The three Montford girls were in a line at the door, having been sent a warning message by Peter the driver.

"Welcome to Rehome, Daddy," said Annabel, kissing him on the cheek. Tracy and Dinah in turn welcomed their father in the same way, then the Governor ushered them all in, and took them straight to the dining room.

"Your arrival happily coincided with lunch, sir, so you must eat with us before we have our meeting."

By the time lunch was over, and they had all retired to the lounge for a cup of coffee and a biscuit, Mr Montford was feeling quite mellow, but determined to start off with his demand for information.

"Governor, I must insist on being told what this is all about! You have left us wondering what may have happened to our girls, and the lack of clarity has been disturbing. As a father yourself, you must appreciate my concern for my family."

Bob was reassuring. "Mr Montford – May I call you Daddy Montford, because that is how you are known to us? Many thanks. The situation was have is one of public perception of our Colony by the people of Earth, and it may also seriously affect our finances.

Something unexplained happened to your girls, to their official guide – Amelia Cross - and to Annabel's former teacher, Trevor Defreitas. The circumstances left us wondering what the consequences might be for our Colony, should it become publicly known."