Harriet mumbled that the paint had been a good idea and she thought it looked really nice, and she and Margot went on trying. Rays of platinum crossed beams of dingy plaster; the dimensions of their room deepened. As they painted, Harriet made an attempt to ask a question via telepathy. She would’ve loved to know why Margot went on dragging her daughter all over the place in the name of some better way of life that probably didn’t even exist, doing this in the full knowledge that said daughter had no special needs aside from that of being wherever her mother was. And just when Harriet’s telepathic message to Margot was almost ready to send, the woman flattened a hand across the girl’s forehead and said: Don’t wrinkle your forehead like that; let’s minimize frown lines while we can, OK?
With no benefactor standing between her and the jobs she’d daydreamed about, Margot tried a few of them, cheating a bit, since Tamar was her character reference. She lasted two weeks as a personal shopper and one week each on jobs as an assistant stylist for magazine photo shoots and an assistant curator of a museum (I can definitely handle this, Harriet . . . it’s a teeny tiny museum . . . all in one room!). She voluntarily left each post. At least, she said it was voluntary. Having conceded that she couldn’t opt out of building actual experience, Margot’s new plan was to live off a Minimum FrankenWage, the cobbling together of wages from the three jobs she eventually found. Two of her jobs were paid in cash, so in official terms, she stayed below the tax threshold. The Minimum FrankenWage put them a few pence above it, and parting with 20 percent of that . . . the mind boggled. She knew people did it, it seemed like some of the people she ran into at the Job Center did it, but how? The Lees were on one meal a day as it was. Admittedly a big meal. Could it be cut down to medium size? Margot and Harriet got lean again. Not anywhere as lean as they’d been on the farmstead, but lean enough to prevent regular menstruation. Ambrose Kercheval came to see Harriet after school one day, and when he clocked her, she got some idea of the shocked expression he must have exhibited the first time he went to McDonald’s with Kenzilea.
My dear girl. Wouldn’t you like to have some—Ambrose checked his watch—late lunch? On me. Please! Harriet didn’t want to eat a meal Margot had had to skip, but she didn’t want to be unsociable either, so she and Ambrose sat on a park bench and shared her emergency gingerbread slab. According to Ambrose, he’d been about to put a job on offer through his “usual channels,” but then he’d thought Harriet might be interested. She shook her head. He told her how much he’d pay, and she shook her head with a little less conviction.
I can’t work for you . . .
It’s just a delivery job.
There’s no use asking; we’re not taking any money from you . . . because of what you do . . .
What I do?
The company. You and Ari.
Come, come, we’re not that bad.
They weren’t hit men, though Ari’s “whatever it takes” mentality often left Ambrose ruminating that they might as well be. Their company managed dynastic wealth, swept a searchlight across all the tributaries of an inheritance, and guaranteed that no matter how much of the original capital had been spent, there would always be more. Much more. If you were wealthy now and you put the Kerchevals in charge of your assets, your grandchildren would be four to five times as rich. This was the profession of both Ari and Ambrose’s parents and that of their father’s father and great-uncle. There were many close associates at work behind the scenes, but client liaison was straightforward. The business had two faces to it. One encouraged the client to spend when it was deemed necessary to spend, while the other encouraged saving when it was deemed necessary to save.
Father was Save and Mother was Spend. Now I’m Save and Aristide is Spend. Come back in twenty years or so and it’ll be the same company, only with Rémy saying Spend and Gabriel saying Save. Spend’s always the more creative one . . . there’s a lot of troubleshooting on that side of things . . .
So if you’re Save, all you have to do is sit on top of a pot of gold rubbing your chin?
Ambrose coughed a couple of times. That was how he chuckled.
Didn’t think so. About the job . . .
Ambrose wanted Harriet to collect one package a day—a package she’d find waiting in the front hall of Kercheval House each morning.
How many mornings?
One thousand and eighty, with bank holidays off. Maybe more. We’ll have to see how it goes.
Harriet was to deliver the packages to Kenzilea Kercheval, see that she unwrapped them, and tell him in detail what her initial reactions had been.
You can’t outsource this one, Mr. Kercheval. It’s OK . . . this isn’t your decision. You have to deliver one package to Kenzilea Kercheval every day, and if she isn’t in that day, then you deliver two the next day and so on until all the presents—
All the presents? Ambrose asked.
Oh, nothing. I don’t know why I said that. Anyway, you have to. And that—that’s an order . . .
He smiled at her and said: I see.
Kenzilea was irritated; it was too late for gifts, she had no room for them, she’d return them. Only she couldn’t. She looked at the receipts, and the dates fell so far beyond the standard twenty-eight-day returns policy . . . she dug up her daybook for the year in which the gift had been purchased and phoned Ambrose to read him that day’s doings: hospital, home clinic, dinner with Rémykins (or see what excuse he makes for not coming to dinner), a good gossip with Ms. X, Dr. Y, or Mr. Z before bed. This was supposed to impress upon him how irrelevant the purchase was to her current life, but it was awkward because when she thought about the day that was almost at an end, hadn’t the substance of it been more or less the same as the one she was depicting as ancient history? Right down to setting aside of blocks of time for uninterrupted gossip . . .
Hmph. Since I’m stuck in my ways, shall we go for a milk shake, ex-husband?
Ambrose thought a milk shake would be just the thing. Malted, he added, since McDonald’s doesn’t sell those.
Margot and Harriet searched the Kercheval company name again and reread the results in a new light, though, as Ambrose had said, terms like “cutthroat tenacity” were only slightly less sinister in the context of hoarding wealth.
They’re not hit men, though . . . damn and blast it. I did ask Tamar, and she was so cagey. What did Ari tell you? Well, daughter, what do you think I’m going to say now?
Let’s go crawling back? Only joking. Onward, onward . . .