Chapter 14

It’s weird, because the lockdown restrictions were gradually ending, and we were slowly but surely heading towards normal life. So why did I feel as though the world was fraying and tearing?

Party because our house had been mostly so idyllic while we were in lockdown. And partly because we had kicked so many cans down the road, things we couldn’t address during lockdown with the world closed.

This included simple things like getting Zach his learner’s license so he could get on the path to driving, and figuring out when Kat could go back to work. Others were trickier, like dealing with the fact that Zara had no way to deal with anything needing parental permission, and she needed to learn to drive too. Or Sal not having any transport, with no public transport serving us. On the business side, I had to figure out what to do about covering for Eleni when she got pregnant, and then, more generally, what were my long-term business plans? Finally, we had to deal with the looming challenge of what Sal’s future is, and where Lem fitted into that - and now that school was going back, what would happen with Jael and Michael? (They were now living two hours’ drive from their school)

It would be really lovely if those problems would just disappear. But they were not going to. Kat and I made a list, and started chipping away at them. Where we could.

My business planning suddenly became an acute problem. Getting through Covid had been a tough problem. It had challenged me, and I had wondered how other equivalent companies had fared. Eventually I got my answer. I really had three other companies competing with me. Two were multi-national consultancies, much larger and way more expensive, but you did get predictability from them, even if service was average. My company competed with another small company based on our efficiency and meeting our customer’s needs in a timely fashion.

One day, I got a call from the owner of the other small company. I knew him reasonably well – our companies had to collaborate on customer projects fairly often, which was always tricky when you compete as well, and we had been joint committee members for many years in our professional association. I knew him as a pretty honest operator, and very good at the work, though I knew he was a bit disorganized and sometimes hard on his staff. About half his staff were on my waiting list, to be honest. After exchanging the usual pleasantries, he got to the point: Lockdown had been a nightmare, and his staff were really struggling. Business had been looking good, but his company hadn’t delivered as well as he hoped. Now, his wife had been diagnosed with a likely terminal cancer, and he just couldn’t go on. Time to cash out. And he wanted to sell to me, because if anyone would look after the staff, I would. Was I interested?

And then he named a shocking price. It was the price that made me sit up and take notice – it was underpriced by at least a factor of ten. He was dead serious about selling out, but there was no way I’d pay that price – it didn’t leave him enough if he had a sick wife, and I told him so. He told me that the price reflected three things – he wanted out now, he’d pulled enough money out already, and the sale contract would include holding all staff for at least a year.

That was certainly a problem – I knew that at least some of his staff had to be out on their ear. But some I didn’t know anything about. A fire sale like this, the assets of the company matter. And the only asset that really mattered to me was the staff. I knew he didn’t know them at all well the way we knew ours. And how could we find out?

Tough call. And I had 48 hours to decide. What to do?

First, talk to Kat. So I did that. We talked it through, and I decided to make a budget for three plans – we buy the company, and honour all its existing contracts, and keep all of its staff, and recruit staff to cover the disaster that would be. Or, we close it up and pay out the penalties, and force everyone to renegotiate with us. Or, we close it up and take all the staff bar the toxic ones. I did this quickly, as rough estimates, and realised that I didn’t have the cash flow, or the cash reserves for any of the options. I’d have to borrow, and I wasn’t borrowing against our home or his business. I rang and told him that I was honoured that I was his first option, but I didn’t see how I could do it, for cash flow reasons. He said he understood, and said he’d think about it and call me back.

A few hours later, Pete, the surgeon husband of Sandi, called me. I kind of wondered what it was about, and whether I should call Kat. And indeed, I needed to. Sandi was on the zoom meeting we started and asked me to get Kat on. But this time, they didn’t want to play games. Pete offered to bank-roll the entire deal with my competition, as a non-managing partner, at unbelievable terms. I blinked. WTF? Why?

Why - because he had money to invest, and, after working with us, this had to be ‘the safest investment he’d ever seen’. And because he was a distant relative of the owner – working in healthcare runs in families, I know. And because of Kat, and what she had done for Sandi.

Kat laughed, and we got to joking around about the past, and so Kat showed him her tits as a gesture of appreciation, which meant Sandi had to get one up on her, and bent over, displaying us her rear end. Kat oohed and aahed over her jewellery that displayed, and the next thing I knew, the two of them were coming for a swim and dinner and business planning the night after next.

Well, that all happened quickly.

Interesting, though: In the last couple of months, Zach had suddenly become much more interested in my business. Instead of seeing it as a sentence, he was increasingly seeing it as an opportunity, and he’d asked to get more involved. I was sure he was starting to get more serious about his life because of Zara. This would give him much more opportunity rather than trying to fit in with my existing tightly interwoven team. Something to think about – I still wasn’t sure which way to jump.

That afternoon, I had a gap in my schedule, and Sal had asked to talk to us.

Once Sal’s $20 marks had worn off, we had gradually started giving her more freedom. We watched her like a hawk, with considerable help from Jael. And so far she had been completely transparent and reliable. Jael’s punishment, and both her and our promises after that, had really made a difference, we thought. And we thought that getting more sexual experiences made a difference too: she was more secure about that aspect of her life.

She now had her phone back, and did our shopping, and we trusted her. We’d even tested her by getting her to buy alcohol for us. No problems we could find, and she was gradually rebuilding her old friend network. First, Sal had reached out to her closest friend, a woman she’d worked with until the start of the year, and they met for coffee. Her comment when she got back: that was by far the most intense deep and meaningful I’ve ever had, and it blew her mind, but I think she understands. Then she’d talked to a couple of other friends. So things were gradually easing for her.

Sal started with “Firstly, thanks again for everything – I’m feeling really great now. You know I’ll always owe you everything I have. But, I’m afraid I still need your help. It’s about Lem. The easiest path forward in my life is that he’ll come around, we’ll get back together, the kids will accept him, and we’ll work something out in bed. Anything else ... it’s hard, because he’ll always be there, involved somehow. I’m finally ready to talk to him, and I think I want to at least consider giving it a go with him. What do you think?”

Well, our response was that it was absolutely time for her to talk to him, but nothing about that path she described was easy at all. In fact, it sounded like a fantasy to us. But, well, she should start by having coffee with Lem – now that she could finally do that under covid rules, and then see how that went. And she needed to do that quickly, because we had an urgent decision to make: what are Michael and Jael going to do for school, now that they’re about to open in person. Hard decision...

So later that day, I called Lem, on speakerphone, with Kat and Sal sitting beside me. Lem had grown over the lockdown. He sounded better, and he’d done some counselling and made changes in his life.

“Hi Lem.”

“Hi Dave, how’s it going?”

“Yes, we are doing fine. I have some news for you.”

“Oh, exciting.”

“Yes, we checked the timing on Jael’s swimming, and she is routinely breaking the Victorian age record for anything over 400m.”

“Wow, thanks.”

Lem had been an absent but enthusiastic supporter of Jael’s obsession with swimming.

“OK, now, can I do a progress check – where are you with what we talked about?”

“Well, I’ve gotten fit. Very fit. I’ve rebuilt the house. I’ve changed churches, and the new church is much more chill. Though I haven’t actually been there yet, of course. But I’m looking forward to it when it moves back to in-person services. And I have work, though it’s totally casual so I can do anything Sal wants. And I’ve done the counselling you said, and I’ve read a lot, and I’ve learnt a lot. It hurts to say this, but you were dead on right about women and I deeply regret how I treated Sal. Do you have any idea whether she’ll ever be ready to talk to me? I really do want to apologise to her, and I’d love to start over again.”

Sal was looking like the cat that swallowed the canary. This was all music to her ears, though Kat warned her that it would look easy at the start. She nodded.

“Well Lem, today is a happy day for you, because Sal is on this call with us.”

I heard him draw in his breath. It was unfair to dump this on him, but life is like that.

Sal was more prepared. “Hi Lem. It’s great to hear your voice again, and I’m sorry it took me so long to be ready to talk to you. I had a lot of problems to deal with, and Dave and Kat needed to sort me out. But I’m ready now.”

I can hear that Lem is in tears. “Oh Sal, how amazing to hear your voice. I’m so, so sorry, I have such a lot to apologise for, and I so want to see you again.”

“You’re not the only one. Lem, Kat says that our history means that we should not start out too quickly. I want to meet you for coffee with Kat there. There’s nothing in my life that Kat doesn’t know about, and she does still talk to me. If we can do that OK, then I’d like to start having coffee regularly, and see how things go.”