October 2008, for one hundred and thirty-five pounds.’
Bless Cathy. Those were Christmas presents for her mother and her sisters. But I flush with shame that these were the last payments into the account: I am being propped up by friends, by my husband. There have been no website sales since then.
‘Miss Kapoor.’ Clare Lomax shuts the folder with a flourish and puts her fingers under her chin. She stares at me. ‘It’s not good, is it?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘And in the meantime –’ the same nail scratches down a long list – ‘we’ve got payments coming out of the account regularly, driving you further into debt.’ I gaze down. ‘Website hosting . . . three hundred pounds . . . Two hundred pounds to Walsh and Sons, Hatton Garden?’
‘They make tools. Er – pliers and things.’ It’s the truth, yet I sound whol y unconvincing.
‘Right. This payment here, for six hundred and forty-three pounds, in September, to Aurum Accessories.’
‘That was for materials.’
‘What kind of materials?’
My voice sounds high, like a little girl’s. ‘Um . . . gold wire, earring studs and clutches, that kind of thing?’ I try to remember. ‘I’ve got the receipts in my folder here, I’l check.’ I’ve got every single piece of paper I could possibly need, neatly filed away, carried with me to Cornwal and back in preparation for today. I’ve documented the failure of my business meticulously.
‘It’s fine.’ Clare Lomax scribbles something on her pad. ‘Have you thought of using cheaper materials?’
‘What, like string?’ I smile, but there’s a silence and I realise she’s serious.
‘I’m just saying there are some very nice necklaces and bracelets made out of waxy thread and beads. You know, you see them in Accessorize, Oasis. And so forth,’ she adds, pul ing out the ‘th’ of ‘forth’ on her tongue, as if to give weight to it. ‘I’m just saying,’ she repeats. ‘You need to look at some other options, Miss Kapoor.’
‘I don’t make jewel ery like that,’ I explain. ‘I work with metals, enamel, laser cuts mainly, it’s different—’
‘Miss Kapoor.’ Clare Lomax raises her voice slightly and shifts her arms forward and then back into their clasp. I see the flash of a tattoo on her wrist, quickly hidden again by her polyester jacket. I wonder how old she is. ‘We are here today to discuss your business and to work out a way to keep you from going bankrupt, which at the moment is looking likely.’ Her voice is clipped, brisk, precise. ‘You have defaulted on your loan repayments twice. You have refused to respond to us about your overdraft. If you want to avoid a consolidation repayment plan, where we charge you twenty per cent interest and demand repayment of the overdraft beginning now, we need to work out how you can change your working practice so that you don’t accumulate debt.’ She gives a thin smile. ‘Otherwise, you wil have no business. Is that clear?’
I nod. ‘Yes. It’s very clear.’
‘Do you want to change the way things have been?’ She’s staring at me. I sit up straight and meet her gaze. This woman, girl real y, whom I’ve never met before, is cal ing me out, pointing out my flaws in a way no one else has, in a way I could never do. If she can see them, they must be pretty obvious.
I clear my throat. ‘Yes,’ I say softly. ‘What?’ She leans forward. ‘Yes,’ I say again, more loudly. ‘Yes. I real y do want to. I want to change the way it’s been. I don’t want it to go on like this.’
As I hear my voice, soft and tentative, saying these words out loud, it gives me a jolt, and I realise again how true it is. I nod, as if confirming it.
To her, and to myself.
Clare Lomax folds down a smal corner of one of the bank statements in front of her. ‘Right.’ She permits herself a smal smile and I want to smile too. ‘Let’s carry on, then. So – five hundred and fifty pounds paid out in November. To Aird PR Limited. There’s a couple of payments to them last year. Who are they?’
‘It’s a PR firm. I hired them to publicise my jewel ery.’ She looks at me blankly, as wel she might. ‘They’ve worked with a few designers I know.
People who have gone from having a stal or sel ing stuff through just a couple of shops to being featured in magazines, in blogs, so people write about you, look you out at the trade shows, and so on. It helps you to get a name for yourself.’
‘And have they done that for you?’
‘No,’ I admit. ‘Not real y. They got me a mention in the
Clare Lomax says, suddenly kind, ‘You have to ask yourself if your product is right for the general public. If there’s more you can do. We see this al the time with smal businesses.’
Now I’m feeling more confident, I take a deep breath, to try and stick up for myself. ‘Miss Lomax – we’re in a recession. Two years ago I was getting interns to help me, I had orders for shops here and in Japan, the Far East, for fifty necklaces, a hundred bracelets a time. But that’s al gone now.’ I try to sound as though it doesn’t bother me. ‘People are stil buying jewel ery, but not like they used to. And if they are they won’t take a punt on some random girl they’ve never heard of. It’s real y hard.’ I sound as though I’m trying to talk her
‘I can see that,’ she says drily. She leans forward, so that a lock of her thin brown hair fal s over her face. ‘But if you’l al ow me to say it, it seems to me you’ve been burying your head in the sand, Miss Kapoor. You’ve failed to keep up the repayments, you’ve not explained what’s happening and why you’re in difficulties, and most importantly you’ve failed to communicate with us despite many attempts on our part. And that makes you a bad risk in my book. You’ve got to face up to it. As it is, you’l probably lose the business if you go on at this rate.’
She says, not unkindly, ‘I just don’t understand why you’ve let it come to this.’ She sounds for a second like a concerned friend. I blink. I can’t stand it if I start to cry. Don’t cry.
I clear my throat noisily and sit up. ‘I don’t understand either,’ I say softly. ‘I’ve had a lot of other shi— stuff going on. And it’s been a hard time.
