The Forbidden Promise. Lorna Cook
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way of visitors and I admit you are very out of the way. You weren’t too sure about the events programme and we were going to take a look over the bedrooms to see what could improve but …’ Kate cut to the chase. ‘Liz, how many visitors does Invermoray House get?’
‘None, dear.’
‘None? Oh I don’t just mean out of season,’ Kate clarified, wondering why Liz was quoting the unimpressive out-of-season number. Although none, even for that time of year, was a worry.
‘We don’t get any visitors at all. Over any time period,’ Liz explained. ‘We don’t have any kind of events programme. We have never opened the house to paying visitors. We’ve never offered overnight stays. I love the idea of turning us into some sort of boutique bed and breakfast but we wouldn’t even know where to begin. I mean, do we need some kind of catering licence from the council to offer breakfasts or afternoon teas? But for now, what you see is what we are: a family home that needs to start paying its way. That’s why you’re here. We need you to help us do all of this. We need you to save Invermoray House.’
What on earth had she got herself into? She’d done this job for years. But normally she turned up, following in the footsteps of a well-executed business plan, was pretty much thrust a strategy and then off she’d run and drum up interest with the glossy magazines, bloggers and the Sunday supplements. She’d take journalists out for lunch. She’d organise snazzy, all-expenses-paid press trips and then sit back and wait for the editorial coverage to roll in. She’d had it quite easy. She would be the first to admit to herself; although she’d never dared tell anyone else that, especially her clients.
But this was different. If Liz had outlined exactly how amateur this operation was, would she have come? God, no. She was a publicist, not a business strategist. She was the cherry on the cake, not the cake itself.
Kate looked at her watch as she lay in bed, unable to sleep. Ordinarily, it would be too late to text someone, but she knew Jenny would be awake and doing something slightly bonkers such as an all-night spin cycle class. ‘Help,’ Kate messaged. ‘They have no idea what they’re doing.’ She paused before typing again. ‘And neither do I,’ she finished with a flourish before sending a follow-up with a very brief summary of the situation.
Kate watched three dots appear on the screen, indicating Jenny was composing a reply.
‘You’ve handled worse than this, I’m sure,’ she replied. ‘Remember that diabolical spa that thought they were good enough to get coverage in Vogue? You can do this blindfolded. Do you need more in the way of a pep talk or can I go to my trampoline disco class now?’
Kate replied with a heart symbol and left Jenny to her latest late-night exercise fad.
She wasn’t ready to sleep yet and was annoyed with herself that she’d forgotten to ask Liz what the Wi-Fi code was for the house. Kate actually rather suspected there wasn’t one. After trying unsuccessfully to connect her laptop to her phone’s 3G, she gave up and just scrolled through sites using the hazy 3G on her phone. She had one bar of signal and so had to wait an interminable amount of time for a page to load, but at least it was loading. She was looking up famous country houses, to see what they were doing to drum up business. She couldn’t possibly be expected to formulate the entire business strategy, could she? If so, what the hell had James been doing until now, if not that very thing? Liz had said he was some hotshot who’d come home to Invermoray to run the house. Run it into the ground, clearly.
Kate thought of all the country houses she’d visited over the past few years, though there weren’t that many. She googled Longleat, near Bath, remembering it thrived thanks mainly to a Safari Park. That was out of the question. She moved on to Chatsworth, Blenheim Palace and then looked more locally at Cawdor Castle before realising she was completely out of her depth.
This was a disaster. She’d been hired under false pretences. Although she suspected Liz had no idea of the difference between PR and business strategy and now they were all in this mess together.
She switched her phone off and put her head in her hands. She had two options. She could give in, explain to Liz that she’d been mistakenly hired for a job she wasn’t qualified to do. Or she could breathe deeply and be pragmatic.
The sun streamed through a chink in the curtains and Kate blinked and looked at her watch. It was early, but not so early she could try to grab forty more winks before starting her first day at work. She’d had very little sleep, had been up all night formulating a rough kind of plan and had engaged in a stern chat with herself on more than one occasion to force herself to continue. She wasn’t going to give in. For one thing, she could imagine the smug joy on James’s face when she confessed she had no idea what she was doing and that it was probably best for all concerned that she drive back to the airport and not darken their door again. The image of his self-satisfied face riled her. But it was something else stopping her. Kate always made a point of giving clients the best service she could offer. She’d always told them that she treated their business as if it was her own. And she meant it. What would Kate try to do if Invermoray was her house?
And so, with careful, methodical planning, throughout the night she’d filled a notebook with short-term, and long-term ideas for raising cash. In short, she created something vaguely resembling a business plan. She’d made a point of not sleeping until she’d run out of ideas. And the ideas kept flowing, which meant she hadn’t slept. So it was with an exhausted excitement that she stood zombie-like in the shower and tried not to fall asleep upright.
‘I can do this,’ Kate whispered as she stood in the kitchen and loaded the silver cafetière with coffee, ‘I can do this.’ In the morning light things weren’t as bad as she thought. Often she’d make suggestions to clients about how to tweak their business. She understood getting people through doors. What they wanted. What they needed. With the hash they’d made of it at Invermoray so far, things could only get better. Kate had rallied her confidence and had chosen to wear skinny jeans tucked into ankle boots and her nicest shirt, which wasn’t too crumpled from being packed away. She needed to find out where the iron was. Overall, she hoped the outfit conveyed seriousness to her role without being too staid.
‘I can do this,’ she repeated.
‘It’s not that complicated,’ James said as he entered the kitchen, startling her so that she spilled coffee granules over the counter.
‘Fill with boiling water, leave a few minutes and then push the plunger,’ he continued.
‘Right, yes.’ She knew how to make coffee.
‘Jolly good,’ he said dryly. ‘Enough in there for me?’ His tone was lighter, not by a lot, but he certainly wasn’t on as much of an offensive as he had been last night.
Kate made them both coffee as James scraped a kitchen chair out and sat down at the table. Maybe this wouldn’t be as awkward as yesterday.
‘So …’ he started and then stopped.
‘So …?’ Kate echoed. She was wrong. The awkwardness was seeping back into the room.
‘So you’re basically the cavalry,’ James said with a thin smile. ‘Come to rescue us because we’ve cocked it up?’
‘Oh no,’ Kate said quickly. ‘No no no. I see us as more of a team …’
‘Pfft,’ James replied.
She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. And it was hardly fair given she didn’t know she was meant to be the cavalry.
‘Do you know,’ he started, looking out the kitchen window, ‘I gave up my job to come back here. I don’t know why now. I’ve been here all of five minutes, I think I’ve just about worked out where things are going wrong, I’ve sorted what I believe is a decent plan of attack and then without a chance to do anything about it I get …’
‘You