‘I hope you found something nice,’ he said with a slow smile, before sauntering off to his office.
I did, she thought, picturing the beautiful little jacket she’d bought, and which was hidden in the spare room at home. She’d bought it before the recent allegations had been made about Topolino and she very much hoped it had been produced as ethically as the company now claimed all their clothing lines were.
Lunch was a hurried cup of miso soup heated in the office microwave, and then it was another meeting with an existing client, an online betting website that needed to be seen as advocating responsible gambling while at the same time inviting their core audience – people who couldn’t afford to lose money – to gamble even more.
It was not the most creative or inspiring of days, she thought that evening when she was on the crowded train home. When you had a business to run, you couldn’t pick and choose your clients, Jason frequently said. Martha wasn’t so sure about that. In this day and age, shouldn’t they be more ethically minded, a bit more discerning? Jason had a thing about ‘keeping it real’ but at the same time he would play the game by whatever new rules he’d been handed.
Her father would have agreed one hundred per cent with Jason. Business was business. You did your best for the client, and for those who worked for you, and you didn’t judge. It was a dog-eat-dog world out there and not for the fainthearted.
Martha had idolised her father from an early age and had wanted to be just like him, full of drive and energy. He’d made everything fun, and possible. ‘There’s no such thing as can’t,’ he had drilled into her. ‘Everything in life is up for grabs. You just have to believe it’s yours for the taking.’
Martha had believed him and had done everything she could to be the success she knew he wanted her to be. He had been so proud of her when she’d graduated with a first-class honours degree in Business Studies, and prouder still when she’d subsequently completed her master’s in marketing.
‘That’s my girl,’ he’d said happily. ‘Now you’re officially more qualified than your old dad.’
With sudden sadness she thought how much she missed him. She missed his rock-sure belief in her, the way he’d bolstered her confidence if she ever doubted her capabilities.
She had ten minutes to go before getting off the train when her mobile buzzed. It was a text from Jason.
I’d like you to give the pitch to Topolino when the time
comes.
Great, she texted back. I’ll look forward to it.
Now why had he chosen her, she wondered?
Was he testing her? If so, she might fail as right now her mind was a complete blank when it came to any kind of angle. Which her father would say was a sign that she just had to recalibrate and approach the problem from a different perspective.
She was in her car and driving out of the station car park when she remembered her mother still hadn’t returned her WhatsApp message about the weekend. It was the strangest thing, but for a while now Mum had been uncharacteristically bad at staying in touch. Previously she’d always been so reliably quick to reply, but not anymore.
Martha hoped her mother hadn’t gone silent because there was a problem she was keeping quiet about. That would be so typical of Mum, not wanting to cause a fuss or a bother.
Chapter Six
Willow had been told by her supervisor at Acts of Kindness – AoK – that she had the potential to be one of their star performers.
‘You have a natural way of speaking to people,’ Kyle had said during her training period. ‘People open up to you. Do you know why? It’s because you listen, and you have empathy. And that’s not something you can teach. So be sure to make good use of that skill.’
The trouble was, this so-called empathy of hers was working against Willow and consequently she wasn’t hitting her targets. It was just a dry spell, she told herself; it happened to them all here. She had joined AoK just over three months ago, full of enthusiasm at the prospect of being a part of something that was helping to make the world a better place. It had seemed like the perfect job for her – flexible hours, a short walk away from where she was living, and being a member of a team that believed in what it was doing. But there was a downside to the job; too often she felt sorry for the people she had to call. Sometimes she even felt a bit ashamed.
‘You have to think of the bigger picture,’ Kyle had said when she had voiced her concerns. ‘These are people who genuinely care about the causes they already support; all you’re doing is giving them a little nudge to encourage them to increase their donations.Most people are only too happy to do it.’
He was right. Many of those who were ‘continuous givers’ saw it as their moral duty to increase the amount of money they donated. Just keeping up with inflation, was one way of looking at it.
Another way of looking at it, as a disgruntled ex-employee posted online, was that working for AoK was nothing more than working in a telemarketing call centre that didn’t care how it extracted money from the public in the name of charitable giving, just so long as it did. Kyle’s answer to this was: ‘You have to believe in the cause and that the end justifies the means.’
Working in the charity sector, so Willow was finding, was more ruthless than she had imagined it to be. You had to focus on the reasons why you were making the call. There were sick children dying of cancer who needed treatment and the only way they would have that treatment was if more money was raised to fund research. There were millions around the world dying from hunger. There were all the homeless people. And then there were the animals that needed help, the abandoned dogs and kittens and the brutally abused donkeys who were worked until they dropped. Okay, for some, caring for animals didn’t seem such a priority, but at AoK, raising money for the varied list of charities they represented, there was no distinction. Suffering was suffering. A need was a need. And their job at AoK was to be a part of the solution.
Working the same shift that evening with Willow were quite a few she knew, predominantly edgy urban creatives who saw themselves as modern-day Robin Hoods, taking from the rich to give to the poor.There were also a couple of aspiring actresses. The job was perfect for these girls. With hours to suit, they could work around auditions and earn more money here than if they waitressed. They could act their socks off when making the calls and regularly hit their targets.
Willow had to get her own act together and improve her success rate, or she’d be looking for another job. Turnaround of staff was fast. If you didn’t make the grade, you were out so that somebody better could take your place. After all, as Kyle often liked to joke, they weren’t running a charity here!
Kyle had warned her the other day that she wasn’t sticking to the script when on the telephone, that she was pausing too much. ‘The slightest hesitation from you,’ Kyle said, ‘and you give the donor the chance to take control of the conversation and turn you down. You need to be more assertive.’
Her sister would have no trouble with being more assertive. If Martha worked here, she would regularly smash her targets and put Kyle in his place while she was about it. But wishing she could be more like her sister was a waste of time. They were chalk and cheese, always had been.
Auntie Geraldine, Mum’s oldest friend, and Willow and Martha’s godmother, had once summed up the difference between the two sisters as Martha, who craved order and perfection, being the type who wouldn’t lend anyone a book for fear of it being spoilt, or not returned. In contrast, so Auntie Geraldine said, Willow was the type who borrowed a book and would absently turn back the page corners, accidentally spill drinks on it, or drop it in the bath, or simply lose the book. All through accident, never by design.
