Chapter 13

Charlie and Tiff sat at the small coffee table and two chairs in the corner of the hotel room. As soon as we got back from mum’s we’d tried to get served in the hotel bar but it was a no-go so we’d gone straight upstairs. I wondered if we were allowed to drink anything from the room’s minibar? Surely nobody would say anything? The night was still young.

Charlie was tapping away rat-ta-tat-tat on her laptop keyboard and Tiff was looking over her shoulder and dictating quietly. They were working on our plan. I just watched them lovingly.

It still hadn’t really sunk in just how lucky I was. Oh, I knew it, kind of ... abstractly. But I sensed that I was even luckier than I felt. Would us three be together forever? It felt like that was really possible. Nothing else felt probable. I studied them in the faint glow of the computer screen.

Charlie’s bob hair was so smooth and shiny and straight and perfect, and her complexion so clear and pure, and her boobs so humongous but not at all saggy, and ... god, I fancied her! How could she be at all interested in me?

And Tiff, her hair back in a bun like she’d had when she’d done ballet - my favourite style that suited her so well. The chiseled hollows where her strong, sinuous shoulders stretched to her thin, elegant, kissable neck and her hard nipples poking defiantly through the dense padding of her bra ... god, I fancied her too! How could she be interested in me, either?

But it wasn’t just their bodies. It was their company, their support, their devotion. They cared so deeply about me. I cared so deeply about them. They were my best friends ever. They were so much more than friends. Was this love? I was sure, now, that this is what true love feels like.

Eventually, I turned to my own work. I fished out my laptop and connected to the hotel Wi-Fi to check on the computer systems at BigSaver. Everything was ticking along nicely. Only one incident had occurred, and that was that the computers in Lichester had become sluggish. But the IT company we retained had gone in and upgraded them and I hadn’t had to be involved at all! Everything ran itself. Charlie was right; we were getting rich doing nothing.

“Ms Duncan, Mr Graves, thank you for joining us as such short notice.” Charlie smiled and put the gavel down.

“Call me Jim, please,” Jim Graves pleaded. He always wanted to use first names.

“Jim,” Charlie nodded at him apologetically, “we’ve had a busy few days!”

“Too right, the press is all over me!” Jim exclaimed. However he defined ‘all over’, it probably was a shadow of how it’d been for us three, though. Everything is relative.

“The good news, actually, is that there really is no such thing as bad publicity!” Charlie held up some spreadsheet printouts triumphantly. “We couldn’t buy this kind of advertising! We have more than doubled our sales in the last two days!”

“That’s all very well, dears, but I worry about the future,” Ms Duncan interjected quietly. Everyone turned to her. “I mean, you three, what they say about you in the press,” she faded.

“It’s pretty tame, what they print, compared to the truth,” Tiff mused.

“Be that as it may, the things they say can’t be unsaid.” Ms Duncan sucked in a deep breath before continuing, “BigSaver is just your beginning. No matter what you try and do with your future life, you’ll always be remembered and recognised everywhere as social deviants! Really, I’m afraid people can be quite bigoted. Especially to you two girls. When one of you wants to find your own boy, I mean.”

“What’s wrong with the one we’ve got?!” Tiff retorted.

“Well, really, Tiff, you’ve got to see it’s impossible for Sam to marry both of you?”

“We’re sixteen, we aren’t really talking marriage yet,” Tiff sounded slightly nervous. Charlie was looking guilty.

“The future, I mean. People aren’t going to forget. You’re notorious now. You’ll have to change your name and everything.”

I cleared my throat to cut into the awkward silence that followed. We hadn’t really been ready for Ms Duncan and her conventional thinking to burst our bubble like that. “I marry them both, or I marry nobody!”

Ms Duncan and Jim just exchanged a meaningful glance, like adults disappointed in children. Suddenly I felt very young and stupid.

“I don’t want to get married. Not in a church. You know what I’ve been through, you know that,” Tiff said very quietly. Ms Duncan immediately looked horrified at herself and leaned forward across the board-room table to grasp Tiff’s hand. Her mouth moved to say ‘sorry’, but no words came out.

“I think we can shelve the marriage motion,” Charlie tried to lighten the mood by banging the gavel. “Sam hasn’t even proposed, yet.” She looked at me intently for a moment. “Now, on to other business.” She glanced down at a small list in front of her. Everyone straightened and tried to compose themselves.

“So, expansion! Here’s what we want to do. Rather than approaching each BigMarket franchisee individually, we want to get BigMarket Corporate to form a joint venture with us. It means giving them a cut, but I’m surprised they haven’t been chasing us already, claiming trademark infringement, et cetera. Mostly, we just want to expand quicker and get someone else to do all the leg-work. Jim, you get your five percent commission on everything for one year if you make that happen before Christmas!”

“Six percent”

“Four”

Jim smiled, “Sure you shouldn’t lead the negotiations yourself, Charlie?”

“Really, we’re offering you easy money. The only hard bit is the timescale. Christmas is only weeks away. We want the deal signed this year, and we want every single BigMarket to be offered a BigSaver with the usual percent markup on retail prices and subcontracting their staff and everything! Just like Lichester.”

“Why the dreadful hurry?” Ms Duncan asked.

“Because right now everyone is too wowed to think it through properly. Every single BigMarket franchise could just do their own BigSaver and call it something else, or BigMarket head office could get in on it. We have to hit them so quickly they don’t have time to work that out for themselves. Right now, it feels like we have this juggernaut momentum and if we can harness that, we can push this through and win! Else, with time, we’ll fade and people will have time to spot that we’ve done nothing special.”

“I think you’ve done something pretty special,” Jim laughed.

“That’s very kind of you, Jim, and you get a handsome cut for selling. Oh, and Ms Duncan, we’ll match what we pay Jim, just for goodwill.”

“You don’t have to buy my help,” Ms Duncan looked indignant.

“Oh, eh, yeah,” Jim seemed suddenly embarrassed and conflicted. Charlie cut him off before he could carry on forming whatever he was going to say to explain himself.

“Well, you two can share the four percent between you, then, hmmm?”

Jim choked and laughed, “This is surreal! How can you negotiate with sixteen year olds? It’s like there’s no rule book! Charlie, are you sure you aren’t going to negotiate with BigMarket Corporate yourself?”

“Jim, we’ll work together, you and me” Charlie smiled. “And Ms Duncan will be getting a cut, non-negotiable. It’s not about need, it’s about want. Tiff and I...” Charlie paused to glance at me apologetically - I hadn’t heard the plan they’d come up with last night: they were working on it long after I’d gone to sleep - “have talked about this. And don’t forget, you also have forty percent of our first BigSaver, Jim, and you double-dip that with the higher prices we pay your BigMarket, too,, and that’s all okay. Right, Sam?”

“I don’t know if this is naivety or greatness,” Ms Duncan muttered.

“Can’t it be both? We are only sixteen,” Tiff joined in, having been as quiet as I, while Charlie had outlined our expansion plan.

“So, all in favour?” Charlie asked, her gavel held over the small block of wood she’d bang. Everyone put their hands up, although I wasn’t really sure what exact terms had been agreed. Charlie banged and then looked down at the agenda again.

“Okay, Jim, that’s all for BigSaver. I’ll email you the minutes. Can you go get onto BigMarket head office ASAP and arrange a meeting? Now, the rest of the agenda is T C S business, I’m afraid, so can you leave us and send in Sam’s mum, who is waiting outside, please?”

Ms Duncan had got up to follow Jim out but Charlie had reached out and stayed her. She sat back down as mum and Sarah filed in.

“So, you just explained how BigMarket never really needed us? That’s a bit too obvious, isn’t it? Charlie, if Jim puts two and two together, he’ll realise he’s never needed us, either!” Tiff chastised quietly.

Ms Duncan leaned forward, “Oh yes he does. He’d never have done any of this without you pushing, and he knows it. He absolutely needed you, still does, and BigMarket Corporate needs you, too.” She smiled warmly, proud of her proteges.

Mum and Sarah sat down at the boardroom table and looked around with interest. They were enjoying the novelty of us being super powerful business people. Mum looked out of the far window intently. From this, the BigMarket meeting room, you could see the BigSaver car park. And it was packed.