Chapter 56: Rachel's Recovery

The whole conversation was a bit difficult, I guess you could say. Elly wanted to sort out what we were going to do about Sarah, Cindy and the Emir's PA and she recognised that Freddie wasn't doing the job that needed to be done looking after sales. I wanted to solve the Rachel and Sukie problems. Harry just sounded as though he was resenting the fact that all this was taking up time he needed to work on Ops matters.

Freddie was sitting at one end of the table peering inscrutably over his hands as Elly expressed her concerns on letting Sarah out of the business. "I don't have a problem with using these girls on internal work but we've got to recognise that when we do they collect a lot of knowledge that might embarrass us later. And it's not just where they go to next it's what happens to them after that, we've got no control of who they might be sold on to."

Freddie looked pensive. "So what do you think we should do?"

Elly was blunt. "Leaving aside the current problem, there's three alternatives. Either we don't use them internally. Or we do and if they turn out unsuitable we carry the costs of keeping them in house but not using them. Or we do and if they turn out unsuitable we, to put it bluntly, dispose of them in a way that doesn't put us at risk."

"You know I don't like wasting assets, Elly," Clegg said. I wasn't quite sure which meaning of the word 'wasting' he was using. "And I'm not keen on letting the costs of keeping them go up. All right, it's cheaper than paying staff but that's not the point. Harry, what's your view?"

"Well," he said, "I know it's my girl that triggered this but actually I think Elly's right. We ought to have a consistent policy."

"OK and how are our two current problems?"

"They are both in secure accommodation on a no contact regime." I knew what that meant. It would get pretty boring for the girls in those hoods. "I didn't want things to get any more complicated."

"Fine," said Freddie. "Larry what's your take?"

"I'm not so sure," I said warily. "Look, I can't really have a point of view on what's secure or what's not. I just don't know enough about it. It's pretty obvious Sarah can't go back to working for Harry, she's lost his confidence. Equally she's been too involved in the business just to be sold on. We need to supply something to the Emir, we're committed on that and it needs to be Sarah or Cindy. My suggestion would be Cindy."

"And what do we do with the other one?"

"I think we can find a use for her. We could put her through the same programme that Brian's family and Rachel have been through. At the end of it she won't care what it is that she did in the past, she'd be completely absorbed in the pursuit of pleasure. We could use her for what we like then."

"Which might be?"

"Well, I've been thinking about this for a while — since we brought in Brian's family, really - but I hadn't really finished getting all my ducks in a row yet, so I hadn't mentioned it. What I'd been thinking was — as we're starting to see more slave owners appear, some with very little idea of how to look after slaves — I mean imagine I was trying to handle Rachel and Sukie on my own — these new owners, some of them don't have the first idea of how to do it. They've got some romantic idea about having a couple of women on tap but it's much more complicated than that as we all know. We could help them. Run a sort of training school. 'Slave Keeping 101' that sort of thing."

Freddie was thinking. He didn't say anything. Elly cut in, "And we'd use Sarah and Brian's family as the teaching aids?"

"That was my thought," I said. "Look this isn't a fully formed idea by any means. It needs a proper plan and..."

"No," said Clegg. I felt defeated. "No, it doesn't need a plan. I think we should try it. We've got the resources. Let's see if it works. It's the sort of thing we should be doing to help develop the customers — the more we can do for them the more their likely to buy from us. Don't spend time planning, spend time doing. That is unless anyone's got a better idea?"

Harry, Rick and Elly all shook their heads. "Sounds fine to me," said Elly.

"Good," said Clegg. "That's decided. Get on with it, Larry. The lads will help out." Harry and Rick both looked relieved. "Oh, but you might think twice about putting Sarah through the programme. It might be useful to have one 'training aid' that wasn't fully conditioned always to do as she was told."

I nodded. That was the sort of reason why I'd wanted a plan.

Elly wasn't going to let the issue of who was running sales to slide. "And sales management?" she said.

Clegg sucked in his cheeks. They'd obviously discussed it before and it looked like he'd been hoping the problem would go away. "All right. I can see you think it's not working like this, Elly." She gave him one of her most inscrutable looks. The others tried to look as though they were agreeing with both parties. Clegg seemed to make up his mind. "I'll look at moving one of the account managers up into a coordinating role. We don't need a sales director, I don't think."

"Your right there, but we do need someone to take day to day responsibility for sales management," said Elly.

"Agreed," said Clegg. "Leave it with me. I'll fix it."

The meeting broke up. I had a separate word with Freddie about Rachel and Sukie. I wanted to hang on to them but I might need some help as things got busier. Freddie agreed to my proposals for Rachel and for Sukie too. He complained a bit about increasing the overheads but, as I said, it was basically only food and drink anyway. Their costs were pretty marginal and the value that we were getting from Rachel's insights into the sexualisation programme were worth that alone.

The two of them were installed in an office next to mine. Sukie as a sort of admin / marketing gofer and Rachel doing any of the research or writing that I needed.

The first real jobs that I had for the two of them were mapping out the owners training programme and organising the buyer's hospitality event. The buyers took priority — we already had a date for that.

Rachel was to script the entertainments. Sukie would handle the admin. I spent an hour running through my thoughts with the two of them. In many ways it was just like a hundred events I'd organised before. Just this time the audience and the products were a bit different.