‘I may make cupcakes but I also keep up to date with business and tech.’
‘Right.’ He nods at Luisa and then turns back to me. ‘And then you’re going to need a further budget of at least twenty K for a marketing campaign once it’s up and running on the app store. I know that sounds like a lot, but for what you need, it’s fair. You need someone hot on SEO.’
‘Search Engine Optimisation,’ Luisa offers.
‘Oh stop it now, show off,’ I say but the inside of me is dying. I’ve been waiting for years to finish this and get it to the next steps but this is insane. All that work and it’s going to shrivel on the vine. Rory presumably knows what he is talking about, Luisa hasn’t flinched at these numbers, but this is beyond any funding I can hope to secure from the Arts Council or from going around schools. I try not to let my face reflect the fact that my hopes are now dead inside, dust.
‘Right, and then a social media marketer to implement it in a micro-targeted ad campaign, not just to attract the keen English students and teachers, but deliberately targeting kids that are not on academic or study aid sites. It takes a fair chunk of money.’
‘Yep.’ By this point I know the despondency is on my face.
‘And of course, a salary for you. That’s something you would have to think about. You can’t implement the next stage, going into schools, meeting head teachers and so on if you’re working a forty-hour week in something completely unrelated to pay the bills.’
‘Right.’ I nod. He can stop now.
‘So we’re looking at a start-up budget of seventy-five K and then ongoing running costs.’
‘When you put it in black and white like that…’
‘Right, it makes it more achievable, we know what we’re aiming for.’
Seriously?
‘Yes, that isn’t what I was going to say. But thank you, you’ve obviously put a lot of time into this.’ I rise to my feet, desperate to change the subject. ‘I’m getting another drink, who’s up for one?’
‘Sit the fuck back down, woman. He hasn’t finished yet.’
‘Yeah, but I think it’s clear I am. Can we not hack the corpse when it’s already rotting?’
‘Oh my God, sit down now.’ Luisa grabs my sleeve from where she is sitting on the sofa and yanks me down again.
‘I’d listen to your friend,’ Rory advised, his green eyes twinkling.
‘I listened to her in college and all it got me was a raving weed habit and an STI.’
‘You forget I knew you in college.’ Rory grins. ‘And that wasnot down to Luisa.’
‘She was a nightmare!’ Luisa smirks. ‘When I made her godmother, I did it because she has the best heart, although the worst habits, of anyone I know. Belle is true and good.’ I shoot her a look that says she can stop now. She ignores me. ‘Heart, character, you can’t change that but habits you can work on, so as she held Marsha when she had just been born and was shooting out crazy love-me-look-after-me pheromones, I told her if she was to have a place in my child’s life she needed to be someone I could trust my child with without worrying about the next unsuitable boyfriend coming through the door, or the baggie left on the kitchen table.’ Luisa switches her gaze from Rory to me and we exchange a look of love that only a decade plus of friendship can create.
‘Yes, and I haven’t had sex since.’ I grin and flourish my hands very much like my dad does.
‘You’re so naughty. You know that’s not true.’
‘Practically true. But I knocked the smoking on the head, mostly, but never, never if Marsha is around or if I’m going to see her imminently. And I’ve completely sorted out the only dating losers thing by just not dating. In fact, right now, I’m off all sex for the foreseeable. All my love is for Lu and Marsha.’
‘Good to know but I think you might love this too. I’ll cut to the point. I have a client, well, friend, primarily, who is very keen on investing philanthropically into literacy projects. They want to target primary schools, address inequalities there, and this may shock you but 75K is a drop in the ocean to them and they didn’t even blink when I ran the figures past them. They want to meet you, talk about how you deliver it in schools as well as develop the app. See if you could filter it down to primary schools when they’re studying the Tudors and try and engage them with Shakespeare then. Get them learning early that old texts aren’t anything to be scared of. Teach them about rhythm, cadence, rhyme in language. If you can do that he’ll support you with the secondary schools and colleges too. And as luck would have it, he’s in Bristol until tomorrow evening, and suggested a face-to-face tomorrow, what do you think?’
Think? I can’t think.
Rory reaches across, places his hand on mine and very quietly whispers ‘Hey, all things are ready if our minds be so.’
I don’t dare look at Luisa.
No legacy is so rich as honesty
December Sixth.
Belle.
