After the One by Cass Lester (e book reader free .TXT) 📕

‘Charley’s’, apparently carelessly hand-written, across one corner, also in gold, with a few gold stars tastefully scattered around. The finished product positively oozed class.

‘Oh my God, it’s stunning!’ exclaimed Charley.

Angie beamed. ‘Thank you. And can I just say, you are a delight to work with!’

Charley laughed and shook her head in a self-effacing gesture.

‘No, honestly! When I did this for a living there’d have been dozens of people all demanding changes, just for the sake of it, and we’d have gone back and forth arguing about different fonts and colours and whether or not to replace the dot over the ‘I’ with a star, and six weeks later it would have ended up exactly how it was in the first place!’

‘Sounds like a nightmare!’

‘You’re not kidding! Fun though,’ admitted Angie, a little ruefully it seemed to Charley.

‘Er… how do I actually get the design on the real bags?’ asked Charley, cringing at how naive that made her sound.

But Angie didn’t seem to think it did. ‘I’ll email you a digital version you can upload when you order them,’ she told her, and when Charley still looked a little startled, she added, ‘If you get stuck, I’ll help.’

A couple of days later, as she’d promised, Tara came round to Charley’s with details of the events and bookings, including prices, at the Avalon, and a large box of sea-salted caramels. Pam tactfully took herself off to her room, even though they’d both assured her she was welcome to stay.

‘I don’t want to intrude,’ she’d insisted.

‘You won’t be,’ Charley had assured her. ‘Honestly.’

‘We have sea-salted caramels…’ coaxed Tara, waggling the box enticingly towards her, but Pam was adamant. She limited herself to taking a couple of caramels and then left them to it.

Tara curled up on the sofa next to Charley and settled down to indulge in her favourite pastime: taking the piss out of her boss.

‘Then he said, and I quote, “We have to cascade this information and capture our colleague on this,” so I told him I’m not a sodding kidnapper.’

‘What did he even mean?’ laughed Charley.

‘No idea,’ said Tara with a straight face, but Charley guessed she’d known perfectly well what her manager had meant – she just couldn’t resist the chance to wind him up.

Charley swiftly ran her eyes down Tara’s list. ‘Blimey. The Avalon’s not cheap, is it?’ Mentally she adjusted her ideas, and crucially her prices, towards the higher end. ‘Okay, so, how about I offer a range of five or six different goody bags, and a range of prices from, say, a tenner each up to twenty pounds?’

Tara frowned and shook her head. ‘Way too complicated. You’ll have to keep it simple, otherwise you’ll confuse the poor lad. Honestly, he’s got the wattage of a toaster. And only a two-slice one, at that.’

Charley laughed and then had a rethink. In the end she decided to offer three products: pamper bags, party bags and gift bags, at two different prices.

‘As long as you talk slowly and don’t use words with more than one syllable, he might just get his little noddle round that,’ said Tara. ‘I’d offer to set the meeting up, but I think it’d put him off you. I’m not exactly his star employee. In fact, it might be better if you pretend you don’t know me at all!’ She sighed. ‘I sodding hate my job.’

‘Well, pack it in then!’

‘You sound like Baz.’

‘So why don’t you?’

‘Because he only wants me to give up working so that he can dictate what I spend money on.’

That, thought Charley, simply isn’t true. Baz never begrudged Tara anything, and if he was the main breadwinner, well that was Tara’s choice. She’d had a career before getting pregnant and deciding to stay at home for Monnie. She could hardly blame Baz.

‘He thinks I spend too much on Monnie.’

Privately, Charley agreed. On one of the very rare occasions Tara had agreed to leave her daughter to go out with her husband, for some business do for Baz’s firm, Charley had babysat Monnie. The poor kid had barely been able to get into her bed, it was so full of teddies and dolls and fluffy animals, and Monnie slept in a king-sized double larger than Charley’s, for crying out loud. The funny thing was, the only soft toy Monnie had seemed to really want was a rather bedraggled and much-hugged gingham rabbit she called Bunny-May, which she had slept with tucked under her arm. Monnie’s entire room was crammed with toys, and Charley reckoned she must have more than all of Angie’s kids put together.

When Charley didn’t say anything, Tara guessed her train of thought. ‘I just don’t want Monnie to go without things. I had bugger-all when I was a kid. It wasn’t mum’s fault,’ she added hurriedly, ‘she was skint, but I like treating Monnie. And if that means putting up with a pimply prat with the management style of an obsessive-compulsive sociopath and the intelligence of a coffee grinder, then that’s my choice.’

Charley shrugged sympathetically. ‘I’ll ring the “pimply prat” tomorrow and let you know what he says.’

‘Okay, but if you do get a meeting, remember, you don’t know me. In fact, don’t even look at me!’

Charley rolled her eyes. In a warped kind of way, she was actually looking forward to meeting Tara’s manager, if only to put a face to the muppet.

After Tara had gone, Charley took a mug of tea through to Pam in her room.

‘We need to set some house rules,’ she said, sitting down on the bed where Pam was leaning back against the pillows, doing a crossword. Immediately, Pam sat upright and looked alarmed. ‘You’re not intruding if I invite you to join me and my friends,’ Charley told her earnestly.

‘It is if you feel obliged to invite me, just because I’m here.’

‘I didn’t feel obliged,’ objected Charley. ‘I wanted you to join us. We both did.’

Pam looked mortified. ‘Well in that case, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m