Once in a Lifetime. Cathy Kelly

it work like that?’ Charlie was instantly terribly sorry she’d asked. Dolores’ ill-fated love life had taken up many a lunchtime among the Kenny’s staff, and while Charlie wished her love, happiness and a double portion of George Clooney with cream on top, she wasn’t emotionally up to another session about how There Were No Decent Men Left.

      ‘Clearly not,’ Delores said gloomily. ‘Unless it’s cumulative, like compound interest. If you do enough lists, eventually you get some of what you asked for. Perhaps the fact that you stuck at the whole thing counts for something.’

      ‘Stuck at what? Marriage? Life? Working here?’ Shotsy, birdlike, brown as a walnut and with a whirl of platinum-blonde hair, placed a cup on the table. Charlie didn’t have to look to see what was in it: a treble espresso. Shotsy ran the handbag and accessories department, lived for fashion, and was only ever seen putting two things in her mouth: strong cigarettes and black coffee.

      ‘Here’s not so bad,’ said Charlie, smiling at Shotsy.

      ‘Speak for yourself,’ muttered Dolores, going to get more milk for her coffee.

      ‘Have news for you,’ Shotsy said in a whisper to Charlie.

      ‘What?’ Charlie could tell from Shotsy’s frown that it wasn’t good news.

      ‘Later,’ mouthed Shotsy.

      Shotsy waited until Dolores–not known for discretion–had gone before spilling the beans.

      ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ Shotsy whispered, ‘but I’ve heard that David met Stanley DeVere last week.’

      Charlie gasped out loud. ‘You sure?’ she said.

      DeVere’s was the country’s premier department store, a high-end chain with branches in five Irish cities and three of the biggest shopping centres. They stood for money. Big money. Stanley DeVere was the complete opposite of David Kenny: a wearer of loud stripey suits, he thought that waving an unlit cigar around somehow enhanced his image as a bon viveur. Charlie had only ever seen him on television and she’d disliked him on sight. It was no secret that DeVere’s would love another store on the high-density east coast of the country, and buying out Kenny’s, with its fabulous location and its reputation as the country’s only bijou department store, would be a real coup for them. It was also no secret that David disliked Stanley DeVere and had vowed that he would never sell Kenny’s.

      Meeting Stanley undermined that vow.

      ‘Why? I thought Kenny’s was doing well?’ Charlie said.

      ‘Margins, I expect,’ said Shotsy sadly. ‘It’s all about margins. We can’t compete with the likes of DeVere’s on price. They’re buying ten times as much stock as we are, so they get much better deals from retailers. And the supermarkets, the big chemist chains and home-furnishing outlets are hurting us too. We can’t match anyone on price any more. Our saving grace is that we’re a niche store. Take Organic Belle, for example. They’re after exclusivity, it helps them with their brand, but one day some huge conglomerate like L’Oréal will buy them out, and then they’ll go global–world domination in every store. When that happens, we’re in trouble. So, we’re not doing well and the global turndown hasn’t helped. Who has money for luxury nowadays?’

      ‘This is awful,’ said Charlie.

      ‘At least we heard about it. Forewarned is forearmed,’ Shotsy said grimly. ‘DeVere’s have their own handbag buyers and they won’t want to hire me. Too many cooks and all that.’

      ‘You’re brilliant at what you do, Shotsy,’ protested Charlie.

      ‘Brilliant means nothing. This is hostile takeover time and no matter what sort of flannel they’ll give us about merging the two companies and how the staff will join up seamlessly, it won’t happen, not when DeVere’s and Kenny’s have such different cultures. People like me will be made redundant. End of story, kaput. I wish we could still smoke inside.’

      Charlie stood up, got two empty take-away cups and put one in front of Shotsy. ‘Decant your coffee and come out on to the roof. You can smoke and we can talk.’

      ‘Thought your mother had put you off nicotine for life?’ said Shotsy, pouring her espresso into the take-away cup.

      Shotsy was one of the few people who seemed to understand that Charlie’s mother wasn’t quite the loveable revolutionary glamourpuss she pretended to be.

      ‘Tough growing up with a mother like that,’ she’d said shrewdly on their first meeting, an event in the shop. ‘She has very strong opinions on everything, your mother.’

      Charlie sent her a grateful look. Shotsy wasn’t a member of the Kitty Nelson fan club, won over by the purred ‘dahling’s and the war cry that she’d let her daughters live their lives their own way because it was wrong to inflict archaic moral codes upon them.

      ‘I can’t stand the smell of smoke,’ said Charlie now, ‘but I need to hear everything and you need cigarettes to get your brain working.’

      The roof terrace was far less glamorous than it sounded–a flat area of the store’s roof, surrounded on all sides by slanting mountains of tile. To get there, the women had to climb the back stairs that led past accounts and credit control.

      Finally, Charlie pushed the old metal door open and they emerged, panting, into the cool February sunlight. Charlie shivered without a jacket but still waited until Shotsy had a couple of decent drags on her cigarette inside her before asking: ‘What do we do?’

      ‘Keep our eyes and ears open, and wait,’ said Shotsy.

      ‘That’s it: wait?’

      ‘Nothing else we can do. We’re just the worker bees.’

      Charlie wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the cold. ‘If DeVere’s buy us, they mightn’t make radical changes,’ she said hopefully. ‘If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, right?’ She thought how much she loved her job; and she was good at it, too. Shotsy was brilliant as an accessories buyer; she understood that women who could never afford to dress head-to-toe in designer clothes still loved having the designer glamour that went with an expensive handbag or a pair of designer sunglasses. How could DeVere’s belittle what the Kenny’s staff had to offer?

      ‘It mightn’t be broken,’ Shotsy said, stabbing out her cigarette, ‘but they’ll still want to fix it so that Kenny’s isn’t Kenny’s any more. It will become DeVere’s. Branding,’ she added in a low voice, ‘that’s what it’s all about now. People like me are part of the Kenny’s brand, and we just wouldn’t fit the DeVere’s brand. There’s no reason they won’t keep you, though, Charlie.’

      ‘Except for one thing,’ Charlie pointed out. A horrible idea had just occurred to her. ‘DeVere’s don’t stock Organic Belle. It’s like what you said a moment ago: Organic Belle wanted to keep their brand exclusive, so Kenny’s is the only stockist on the east coast. There’s us and Pathologie in Galway, and then the three Organic Belle shops in Cork and Kerry. And now Harrods. That’s it. I’m sure DeVere’s were furious they couldn’t get it. What if they decide not to stock it out of pique, just to make a point? Or if the Organic Belle people pulled out? What then? I’m out of a job.’

      ‘There’s making a point and there’s doing business,’ Shotsy said. ‘They’re not stupid.’

      ‘Getting rid of you would be stupid, but you’re sure they’d do it,’ Charlie retorted.

      ‘Let’s hold off worrying until we know what’s happening.’ Shotsy rearranged her platinum hair and opened the door to the fifth floor. ‘Just keep your eyes and ears peeled. After all, David’s a good man. He wouldn’t sell out without looking after all of us, would he?’

      She didn’t say it with conviction, Charlie thought. David Kenny was a good man and he did look after his staff. But if he needed to sell the department store for some reason, perhaps he mightn’t be able to look after them quite as well