AS IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER THERE ARE NO SEX SCENES IN THIS CHAPTER, IF THAT’S YOUR BAG, PLEASE TRY ELSEWHERE
*
Events ground on slowly over the month. The divorce was going through the system, the contract was up and running and Jim had found a flat and moved in. He still saw Jenny at weekends but never saw Janice at all. He asked Jenny how her mother was coping and Jenny refused to answer. She did not want to get drawn into their private war.
Three months after the first deliveries, the contract started to misfire. Pearson’s had rejected several deliveries as sub-standard and had withheld paying the one invoice submitted so far. Jim was mystified regarding the quality issues and after meeting with the Production Manager they decided to hold back one test sample from every batch delivered. They never told anyone of this new procedure and the issue seemed to be resolved.
Andy and Jake Pearson were in town for the first Quarterly contract review meeting.
The meeting was productive and the Jim assured them that they were taking steps to ensure the quality of the parts in future. Jake seemed to accept this but warned that any future problems could have serious consequences for the future of the contract.
This was a surprise to Jim as he had always thought that Andy was prime decision maker in Pearson’s and he realised he would need to re-evaluate the pecking order within Pearson’s. It was important he knew who was the prime decision maker within a client’s organisation, it would appear that judging on the preliminary discussions today, that Andy was not as powerful as he had first presented himself
When the business was concluded he asked Jim, “How about we take you and your beautiful wife out to dinner tonight?”
Jim was reluctant to discuss his problems with Andy, but simply told him “Janice and I have parted and are getting divorced. She found out that I had been unfaithful and threw me out!”
Andy sympathised and said, “I’m sorry to hear that, she does not forgive or forget easily, I know that from experience.”
Secretly he smiled to himself, he already knew about the separation, he had engineered the bust up himself by providing Jim with the opportunity to stray by setting him up with the girls. He could now put the next part of his plan into motion to get Janice back into his bed. He knew she would never succumb to him while still married to Jim, but with the divorce moving along, the door was now open for him to exploit the situation and he fully intended to take full advantage of it.
He started by sending her a sympathetic e.mail regarding her separation from Jim and followed this up with telephoning her once a week. By the time the next quarterly meeting came around, he was ready to implement the next step. He had persuaded her to go to dinner with him while he was in town. He felt things were progressing well on that front. The main issue at the review meeting would be the continuing quality issues and these would be high on the agenda.
He had instigated the complete hold on any payments citing the quality issues as the basis for this action. Prior to this meeting, Jim had requested that the faulty product should be returned to them for investigation and when they got them back, they were subjected to an in depth analysis and the results were scheduled to be ready in time for the meeting.
Jim and Jake both attended the meeting and things got very heated over the issue. Jim saw a side to Andy Pearson that he had never seen before. He was at his bully boy best and threatened to pull the plug on the contract. Jim managed to keep his cool and waited out the tirade. When Andy had finished with the statement that Pearson’s would not be paying any more invoices until the problem was resolved or alternative suppliers found, Jim stood up and calmly told him to shut up and listen.