Chapter Six
Jack
Jack swigged the last dregs of coffee from the disposable cup, aimed the empty vessel at the trash can and succeeded in getting it in first time. He yawned as he looked out of the office window from the space that sat above The Diamond Touch flagship store, across at a bakery, a fashion store. If you stood close to the floor-to-ceiling window on your left, you’d see the magnificent Washington Square Arch, but Jack had been up here so many times he rarely registered its presence anymore, let alone its beauty or history.
He yawned again. Even the caffeine hit couldn’t wake him up this morning. These days, much of their business came from online, but a physical presence still carried a lot of clout and this week he’d been to Cincinnati, Chicago and Seattle. He’d spent four days discussing retail strategy, meeting with staff and clients, meeting buyers, only to return to New York to race all over the city and check out new properties with his father. And now, this morning, he should have been tackling the accounts, losing himself in figures and collating spreadsheets, but all he could think about was bumping into Nicole Capra in Macy’s the other week.
Jack hadn’t seen Nicole since his father had fired her three years ago. She hadn’t been back once, and at the time he’d been hurt, upset. They were close, and when she’d left, a gaping hole in the household had opened up even though Jack had moved into his own apartment many years before. He’d tried phoning her, sending her emails, writing her old-fashioned snail mail in the hope it’d get through to her, but nothing had worked. The letters had been returned to him, the emails ignored, the phone calls unanswered; eventually he’d been forced to accept that what his father had done, and what he’d been party to that night, had alienated Nicole forever.
Jack loaded up the spreadsheet from the Seattle store. The sooner he got this done, the sooner he could get onto the website redesign, something that at least interested him slightly. It was preferable to staring at figures and writing reports at any rate. But his mind still hovered on Nicole, and more predominantly, the young woman she was with. She was familiar, no doubt about it, but Nicole had no family to speak of, at least not here in America, so who was she? He turned the name, Evie, over and over in his head but came up with nothing.
When Braydon knocked on his office door, he stopped thinking about Evie and turned his attention to the range of bracelets his colleague had brought in. Jack had seen the initial designs on the computer, but now they’d been crafted at the company warehouse, they were even more spectacular. Blades, pliers, soldering equipment and brushes had pulled together some fantastic items, and Jack took turns with Braydon to use the loupe and inspect the diamonds set in the bracelet that dominated the collection in its beauty as well as its expense. He wouldn’t mind betting Fern would have her eye on that for her own jewellery box.
Before Braydon left, his father came in to see them both and discuss the company website, and all Jack’s thoughts of escaping to see his latest girlfriend, Aurelia, were crushed. Aurelia was the assistant to a bank manager as old as their combined ages, and Jack suspected she’d rather be his assistant any day, at least in the bedroom.
‘The diamond flower earrings on the Home Page are a part of the store’s history,’ Jack insisted when his father tossed up the idea of a new approach. ‘I think theyshouldbe the feature. Simple, sleek, elegant, the image we’re trying to convey.’
‘Exactly,’ said Braydon.
‘What do you mean?’ Braydon couldn’t possibly agree with him for once, could he?
‘The design is part of the store’shistory.’ Braydon looked over to Kent. ‘But is it a part of the store’s future?’ Perhaps sensing he was touching shaky ground, he added, ‘All I’m saying is that we need to be forward thinking, keep up with the competitors. Otherwise, we’ll constantly be a step behind and we’ll drown.’
Braydon took the floor and pulled up some images on the Smart Board. ‘Here are the home pages of our competitors.’ He swiped the screen periodically, scrolling through. ‘They’re clean, simple, classy, no fuss, allowing customers to delve for specific items using the search criteria.’
Jack couldn’t read his father. If he disagreed, he was keeping it well hidden. But they needed to come to some sort of agreement and move forward.
Eventually Kent nodded. ‘Let’s put our proposals out to the web designer, give himallour thoughts and let him work up what he sees as the best ideas. We’ve worked with him long enough now, we can trust he understands what we’re trying to achieve.’ Kent ignored Braydon’s lift of the eyebrows, pissed he hadn’t got his way and it was still to be decided.
‘How did we do with the marketing campaign for wedding designers?’ Jack moved on, a sure way to placate Braydon.
‘Good,’ Braydon confirmed, his face still pinched.
‘How many stores have agreed to take part?’
‘A hundred stores,’ he announced proudly, mellowing. ‘Every store I approached was happy to feature the poster in their window, hand out flyers to customers for ring designs, wedding day jewellery.’ Braydon flourished an image of the poster on his iPad for maximum impact as he talked, his heady enthusiasm for the marketing campaign a tonic for not getting his way, the conversation a reassertion he could still do the job as well as any Churchill. He and Jack had devised the marketing campaign together, with Braydon happy to approach stores as Jack went around the country doing business.
‘It’s an inexpensive campaign,’ Braydon continued, ‘but it’ll have maximum impact. Already, from the customer feedback box on the existing website, we see it brought in two online orders this morning before eight am. And they weren’t even for wedding-specific jewellery. One order was for a watch, the other for a christening bracelet.’
They talked more about the marketing campaign, but Jack’s niggling temptation to meet up with Aurelia for a more physical lunch than one sitting at a table with business associates was thwarted when Kent reminded him of the working lunch at a top seafood restaurant that afternoon with Braydon and a buyer from Bloomingdales.
Half an hour later, Jack and Braydon walked the three blocks to the restaurant as Braydon prattled on about his golf technique. Jack had gone along to golf several times with his father, to the driving range with the fairway jutting out over the Hudson River. It was the cigars all over again, all the little things that added up to showing Kent Churchill that his son could keep up with his father in whatever he was asked to do. If Jack was asked to chair a meeting, he did it with ease; if he was asked to play golf, he hit the ball like a pro, if he was expected to live the high life in Manhattan, he did it without question or rancour, at least on the surface.
‘Hang on.’ Braydon stopped at the street vendor on the corner of the next block and lifted up a Bridal Magazine.
‘You and Fern getting serious?’ Jack laughed. He blew into his palms and rubbed his hands together, the outside temperature unforgiving.
‘Shut up and give me a minute.’ Braydon flicked through the magazine, and when he found what he was looking for, he held it open for Jack. ‘It’s our new Christmas advertising feature, I thought you’d want to see it.’
Jack took the magazine. ‘Impressive.’ He’d seen the feature before it went to press, but kudos to Braydon, a man who was more than just the jewellery designer at The Diamond Touch, an almost unconventional business where all employees wore different hats at some time or another. In fact, Jack felt sure Braydon could run the entire business himself given half the chance. But it didn’t make the man any more likeable. Short in stature, bald on top but clinging on to the remaining hair he had at the sides, Braydon was outwardly loyal but inwardly shifty.
‘You buying it or what?’ the street vendor called out to them. If he was worried about two men running off with a magazine filled with white dresses and lace veils, he was sadly mistaken.
As he moved to return the magazine, Jack’s fingers slid between another two pages and revealed another article altogether. He looked at the front cover, dug in his pocket, and without taking his eyes off the feature, paid the street vendor. ‘Keep the change.’
They stood at the corner and waited for the sign to change to Walk from Don’t Walk, all the while Jack mesmerised by the article in front of him.
‘What do you want that for?’ Braydon asked, nodding to the magazine.
