It was granddaddy's firm. At twenty-two I had inherited granddaddy's firm.
Mummy had remarried after the divorce. She had gone back to Milan where she
was born. Daddy, poor daddy, had died suddenly and shockingly, a year back.
It had taken that year to untangle daddy's estate and dry my tears. And now,
through him, at twenty-two I had inherited granddaddy's company. The tangle
had been from mummy trying to take the share she had foregone by divorcing.
She was not in daddy's will. It was not as if she had not made a good second
marriage. She was rolling in money as they say. But "already have wants
more" and the only ones to really gain had been the lawyers as she dragged
her dispute of the will through the courts.
I had inherited mummy's fire and determination. I had her body as well.
Taller at five feet seven and bustier at 36D I had her hourglass figure and
her long (in my case even longer) shapely legs. She had been a model whose
face and eyes on billboards sold everything from soap to safety goggles. I
had Italianate looks too. But what really knocked men out was that I also
had Daddy's dark brown eyes and his black hair. Daddy and granddaddy were
originally from South America. I am half Italian and half Argentinean and,
I
am frequently told, by far the loveliest halves of both.
And rounding off this tale of inheritances, I had the company and with it
the debts from the court case and also with it Kate; "Capable Kate".
My education had not been neglected. I had a good BA. Daddy did not want his
inheritance squandered. He had determined my qualifications for business
should equal or better his. Oxford and my BA had followed private school.
And yet I was shallow and unqualified compared with Kate who had had none of
my privileges but, now twenty-seven, had been indispensable to Daddy and
was, if truth were told, the one who should have inherited the firm, which
she was the inspirational leader of, and brains behind.
Among Kate's accomplishments was a speaking knowledge of Japanese. Her quick
mind absorbed information better than a desert with water. Her working
knowledge of Japanese had saved the company when its US market had
collapsed. Japan was now our market. It was not our entire market but, for
what the rest of the world and England (where we were based in Birmingham)
was worth to us, it might as well have been.
Kate's generosity and patience with me knew no bounds. We had been friends
since childhood. And yet my first stupid action on the first day of "being
in charge" of the company I had inherited had been to tell her off for
calling me "Sab", her pet name for me since forever, reminding her
arrogantly that I had been named Sabrina but that from now on, given her
status relative to mine, I would prefer that in public she addressed me as
"Miss P****": "Sabrina" would be in order to use when we were in private,
but never "Sab".
Kate loved me as if she were my big sister and indulged me with "Miss P****"
from there on, smiling in her mind when she did so, at the thought of how
very much like my mother I had grown up to be. Truth told, where business
was concerned, I had inherited too much of my mother and not enough of my
father. I was a trial to Kate; constantly directing that what should be done
was the opposite of what she advised, and only because I was fonder of my
new found power than capable of wielding it sensibly.
One fateful day I unwittingly sowed the seeds of disaster when I signed and
had witnessed my signature on a document the contents and meaning of which
I
had no idea of. Other than for the request that two copies be signed one
kept and one sent back to the N***** Corporation, it was in Japanese. I
insisted I sign it. Kate was away. I ordered that nobody tell Kate, adding
that I did not have to consult her; it was she who had to consult me. I
owned the firm not Kate, I insisted for the umpteenth tedious time.
Education. I had education. I am an intelligent girl. But education and
intelligence do not preclude a moment of blind arrogant foolishness. In
signing that document I did the stupidest thing I had done in my whole life.
I was to pay for that stupidity. I paid. And how!
Kate was clever and subtle. Despite my objections she got me to go with her
and the rest of our management board to meet our biggest customer in Tokyo,
the N***** Corporation. I am not racist, but I had argued, against sense
given our all but total dependence on the Japanese market, that I did not
like or trust the Japanese.
My silly notions were based on tales I had been told of granny's fate in the
second war where she had very briefly been a prisoner of the Japanese of
those times, when the family had been in Singapore. I had not been told the
full truth. Only the truth it was considered reasonable to tell an
impressionable early teenager. And, though I would never have admitted it
then or later, the tales I had heard of humiliation and rape had turned me
on as a budding woman and had me caressing my sex when abed, as I imagined
myself helplessly bound in the hands of drunken Japanese soldiers who needed
me to tell the plans of the upcoming attack. Of course I always told them,
crying out as I orgasmed, such was their erotically imagined brutality to
me.
Our management board met on the Thursday before we were to fly over the
weekend to Tokyo and a meeting there on the Wednesday of the following week.
I was behaving particularly petulantly that day. Kate made an impassioned
and brilliant statement of our position and how we would be out of business
if we did not gain renewal of the contract with N*****. So clear was her
exposition there was absolutely no doubt how we stood. There was little
discussion, her statement left nothing to discuss. She went on to outline
our negotiating tactics and our "bottom line". We needed a price increase to
survive in business. Ten-percent would be more than enough. Five-percent
would balance the books. Less than five-percent and we would have to start
throwing people overboard. Two-percent or less and we were dead. If proof of
her indispensability were needed (and it was not) she showed it that day.
I thanked Kate for this, and then reminded the board, yet again, that it was
my company and not Kate's. The five men who were on the board together with
Kate and myself, hid their horror as I announced that no deal with N*****
could be reached without me and that nobody would go to Tokyo unless I were
in full and sole charge of the negotiations. Kate's only role would be that
of my interpreter, secretary, and bag carrier. Unless I asked her, she would
take no part in the discussions. I would be in sole charge and would choose
my own way of proceeding.
The motion was put to the board. Kate seconded it out of love for me. Nobody
dare vote against me. The verdict was unanimous. I would run the show and I
would show them a thing or two.
