There had once been a slender thread that linked Savannah to her reserves of strength and guts. That linked her to the woman she’d once been. But it was gone now. She was at the bottom of the mountain, unable to move. Trying to survive.
Arriving back in the office, two espressos banished Savannah’s earlier spaced-out feeling.
She clothed herself in her office persona: smiling, warm, enthusiastic – and always with a list.
Her list was long: check the outgoing orders, make sure all the invoices were gone, say hello to the staff – fourteen of them – and admire the new boxes.
She felt a quiver run through her at her husband’s reaction when he saw what she’d done. Calum was a brilliant businessman and he had the instincts for business, he always said.
He’d told her often enough that she was the arty head of things but that the business, that was all him. She recalled when things had changed. When his own business had gone bankrupt. He hadn’t been broken – he’d been insane with rage.
That was when he’d gone from being her cheerleader to being the one in charge, the one who called the shots. His business and the kudos along with it was gone so now he grabbed onto hers.
Looking back, his control over everything seemed to have happened slowly, like the goldfish being boiled alive in water that kept getting gently warmer.
He got angry over the slightest things.
If she answered back, she got the silent treatment where he would simmer, raging silently, for weeks at a time. Not talking to her, making the atmosphere in their home toxic.
She learned to walk on eggshells, to do nothing to upset him.
But it was hard to knowwhatupset him. Her laughing on the phone with her sisters – that could set him off.
Her taking so much as a glass of wine when they were out – another danger area.
‘Your father’s a lush,’ he’d hiss. ‘I don’t want you to be one too.’ And yet in public, he was polite to her father, charm itself.
The only utterly revealing part of this Jekyll and Hyde persona appeared with waiting staff, a person at a cash register: the people Calum didn’t see as important.
She could only cringe when he spoke to them the way he spoke to her.
Calum now insisted on being consulted on all decisions. Savannah wasn’t sure why she’d madethisvital marketing decision without him but it had been last minute.
And – she admitted it to herself – when she’d delicately broached changing the packing, moving the brand in another direction, he’d told her she was stupid. That it was a ridiculous idea. Why replace what was not broken?
Savannah had known he was wrong.
She’d taken the risk. When he’d see it all, then he’d understand, surely? But she knew he wouldn’t. He would be furious.
Except she needed her business to work, she needed that little bit of her to remain …
Savannah breathed deeply. In, out, hold in the middle. The sacred pause.
Calum would have to agree that the new marketing and packaging would move Velvet Beauty up another notch in the organic/pure perfume market. The old white and gold looked tired now. Savannah’s instincts had told her that a matte black box with off-white lettering was the way to go.
And she’d been right. SO right. But at what cost? Why had she acted so impulsively?
Sometimes she did things like that – without thinking of the consequences and, then, the anxiety would cover her like a wave, stop her breath as fear inhabited her entire body.
‘The chypre still smells a little synthetic in Capri Moment,’ said Anthony, coming up behind her and making Savannah jump. ‘I don’t know why – it’s the most expensive one we tried but I feel the base notes are corrupted by it. Capri is supposed to be so clear and pure.’
‘Still synthetic?’ asked Savannah, quieting the quiver of fear that had risen up in her when he’d startled her.
‘You’re so jumpy,’ he’d once said in an unguarded moment and Savannah had laughed. ‘Growing up in a hotel makes you jump when someone appears,’ she’d said. ‘We were all waiting staff, you know.’
Anthony had taken the comment entirely at face value. People did. People were remarkably trusting, actually. Nobody ever had any idea how much she lied. How she jumped if scared, how noises frightened her, how the fight or flight hormones flooded her body at all times. That was the secret to being thin, she knew: not diet or eating. Living in constant survival mode.
‘I don’t know if the chypre was good or not,’ Anthony said. ‘I didn’t take it in myself. I was in the Burren.’
