Most of Monday was a washout in more ways than one.
Some might have called it a typical English late summer's day. The skies were dark grey and angry. Torrential rain came bucketing down so hard that it bounced as it hit the ground. Sharp biting winds drove the raindrops sideways like flying shards of icy glass that pierced the skin.
The weather may have been reason enough to dislike that particular day but it got worse.
I had two calls planned for the day with prospective clients, both of whom had been referred by people who knew of my reputation for bringing businesses back from the brink. That was not all that I did by any means, a lot of my work was about bringing about positive change in organisations, but it was the disaster stories that people always remembered.
My first call of the day was with the founder and chief executive of a new technology business that was one step away from the corporate graveyard. The business had started promisingly enough and it had attracted major investment. But the enthusiasm of the investors had not been matched by the skills and experience of its management who had frittered away most of the money in a scattergun approach to product development and marketing. Now they were on the brink of disaster: No money, no sales, no skills and the bank hammering on the door threatening to foreclose. There was little I could do to help. They were in dire straits. I spent the morning talking to them about the few available options left; straightening out their act, cutting costs, negotiating with the creditors and the bank, appealing to investors and at least, putting together a plan to engage skilled management to bolster confidence. I gave freely of my time. There was no way they could afford to pay for it. I left at lunchtime and walked out into the rain feeling damp and despondent. I doubted that the business would survive the month.
My early afternoon appointment was as bad for different reasons. It was with a business development director of a large software company. After a spurt of meteoric growth, they had got stuck and were going nowhere. This man talked in clichéd buzzwords and meaningless jargon. He thought we might uncover some good 'synergies'. He spoke about his 'catalysing a delayered customer-centric management culture', of systems that were based on 'partitioned, time-sliced, transactional processing'. I understood part of what he said; at least I thought I did. I asked when he had taken up office and when the growth slowdown occurred. Coincidentally expansion had hit the buffers seven or eight months after he had joined the business. He was responsible to the main executive for sales, marketing and product development. This was no coincidence at all. I was looking the problem in the face. I needed to end the dialogue fast. I was wasting my time here. I said that I felt that I was probably not the right man for the job, that the job was too big for me and that he would be better off talking to one of the bigger consulting firms that could parachute in a whole team of experts. What I was thinking is that a team might just about cut it if one of them gagged this man and held him down, while the others went out and cleaned up his mess. He said he understood and was courteous. He thanked me for my time and input, and suggested he might like to talk to me again in the future, to use me as a sounding board. I agreed. I looked at my watch. It was two forty five. I needed to be back at Rosie's by four fifteen and it was a seventy-mile cross-country drive. I would have to go like a bat out of hell to get there in time.
The rain had stopped. The roads were drier and I drove like the wind and arrived at Rosie's doorstep on the stroke of four fifteen. She came to the door and greeted me like a long-lost lover who had been on extended trip overseas, not someone who had made love to her just over a day ago. I detected she was anxious, slightly on edge. I imagined it had something to do with her sister.
"Come through and meet Daisy...I mean Sophia, do please remember to call her Sophia otherwise she will be angry with me," Rosie said.
We walked into her comfortable sitting room. Everything about Rosie exuded warmth, I thought, even her home which like her was full of small curiosities.
A small neat woman rose from the couch and extended her hand. I could see that we were both checking each other out, making those intuitive character assessments that in my own experience proved frequently to be more reliable than what came later. First impressions really matter I thought.
She was a very neat woman standing about five feet nothing and immaculately dressed, her jewellery was understated but expensive. On her wedding finger, she wore a diamond ring with a large but beautifully cut-stone. I guessed it weighed around a carat. She wore a fitted blue linen suit with a white silk blouse. As for her age, she did look about forty although I knew this already to be the product of cosmetic surgery and that actually she was over sixty-one. She was after all Rosie's older sister by some eighteen months and Rosie was sixty-one. Her hair was sandy brown with no traces of grey neatly cut into a fashionable bob. The skin of her face though unwrinkled seemed to be pulled tight, the result of clever plastic surgery. She was tanned too, from the tanning salon rather than the beach I suspected. Her movements were sleek, regal and she sashayed across the room swinging her hips like a much younger woman. Her smile revealed gleaming perfect white teeth. Her mouth smiled but her eyes did not. Her smile spoke of insincerity and put me on my guard.
"Oh John, I'm so pleased to meet you. I've heard so much about you," she said.
I knew that Rosie would not have said that much about me. These sisters were bonded by birth, not friendship.
We shook hands. Her handshake was firm although her hand itself was small and delicate. She was a dentist and I had difficulty in imagining her wielding the forceps to yank out a reluctant molar.
"It's a pleasure, Sophia," I said, smiling a very convincing polka player's smile deliberately wrinkling my eyes to look friendly.
"I have never seen you in a shirt, tie and suit before, John," Rosie said. "You do look terribly smart, quite dapper in fact."
Rosie was smiling calmly, one of those smiles that told me to relax.
"No, I suspect that you are more used to seeing him with no clothes on at all," Sophia said, firing the starting pistol of sibling combat.
"Mmm I must say he looks wonderful naked too," said Rosie.
Fifteen - Love to Rosie, I thought.
Sophia looked straight at me and spoke in clipped tones, "John, I understand that you are a married man and I notice you wear a ring too. Is your wife aware of your romps with Rosie?"
So it was unarmed combat now. I decided to give as good as I got. I felt my face redden as I turned an indelicate shade of beetroot.
"Sophia, that sounds like a rather censorious question, one designed to embarrass me rather than yield any information in which you might be interested," I replied indignantly. "In the same vein, I could ask you about your romps with Craig, Rosie's husband at the time. But I wouldn't do that as it seems pointless, futile in fact, rather like your question."
I hit below the belt and I was prepared to go for the jugular rather than be bullied by this woman.
"Yes, but that was when Rosie's marriage was all but over, there were extenuating circumstances," she said defensively.
"Okay, but your marriage wasn't over, was it? Was your husband at the time aware of your relations with Craig? I suspect not," I replied.
"No," Sophia replied weakly.
"And you were aware of the state of Rosie's marriage as you are aware of the state of my marriage presumably? Are you really in a position to make judgements?" I asked.
"Hey, you two, let's call a truce. I've made tea, lots of delicious sandwiches and I bought cakes too. Let's make those a peace offering," Rosie said then winked at me.
"I'm sorry," Sophia said. " I agree the tone of my question was aggressive and uncalled for. It's just that I don't want my little sister to be hurt," she added in a pathetic girlie tone.
