Gemma can hardly believe she's just agreed to pay Rob commission to buy back her own warrants, but there you go: the price of doing business. Of doing business with Rob, anyway. Enough commission for a week's stay somewhere nice with his latest floozie, and for another one somewhere else with his missus and kids, peak season.
Not as if she had any choice.
To be fair to him Rob's actually done some good work here. He's managed to arrange a mortgage against Gemma's share of the Woodhouse trust in under two weeks, and to get almost all the warrants in issue ready for purchase. Gemma is now the proud owner of just over half of them, and Rob is busy selling the rest to those keen, mysterious buyers pretending not to be acting for Montage.
At twice what Gemma paid for them. Who ever said Rob didn't have a sense of humour?
Gemma calls Agnes.
"OK, are we ready?"
"Almost, we'll be over in a minute."
"I'll open the line with Janice at the caff now,"
"See you soon."
"So?" Agnes says as she steps into Gemma's office, followed by Hari, a man dressed as Little Bo Peep on speed, and Nicky Lam's body double.
"Line's open with the caff," Gemma says with a finger to her lips, "But if he's at Peloton we still have about 10-15 minutes."
"Do you like her?" Little Mo Peep asks.
Despite his own attire the man can do subtle. He's made Jane Fairfax a little saggy around the mouth, half a skin tone darker, and changed her lipstick shade to match. He's padded her out ever so little around her waist and bum, and is particularly proud of the trickery he's used to make her chest look twenty years saggier. Jane's nails are the precise shade the real Nicky was wearing last time she visited.
"Well done," Gemma says to Mo, and to Jane: "You look amazing."
And, thankfully, not at all like Jane Fairfax anymore. She even holds herself differently. She's gone deep undercover.
"Green's my lucky colour, because green's the colour of our future," Jane says, quoting Nicky Lam's TED talk in Nicky's mix of a British boarding school accent, and a Harvard Business School one. It really is uncanny.
"My God you're so good! You're just like her!"
"I know," Jane Fairfax says in her own voice and slouch.
"How did you do that?"
"As a woman of color in an industry dominated by white men, I had to start code-switching long before there was a name for it," Nicky Lam says.
Or was it Jane?
"Amen to that, girlfriend," Agnes says, high fives Mo-Peep, and they all have a good giggle.
Jane's price? She's demanded that they kit her out in Nicky's actual Blahniks rather than in perfectly credible Primark knock-offs, and that she get to keep them.
Which is the best value for money anyone will ever get from Manolo Blahnik.
Gemma hands Jane an emerald green Moleskine notepad, which Gemma had embossed in gold with N.L. and then scribbled with figures, names and to do lists. Next she hands Jane a printout of Montage's proposed investment contract, edited to say Nicky Lam Capital Projects where it used to say Montage, and with the figures changed in Queen Bees' favour.
"Don't worry, Gemma," Jane says in her own voice, except friendly, "I've practised dropping these twenty times in different weathers on a pavement with the same exposition. I've got this."
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and whose own wrath is being funnelled with laser-lie precision by two women conned.
"Coming in!" they hear from the café, on the loudspeaker of Gemma's mobile. Turns out Janice, the beetroot salad lady, is another one of Frank's exes, so roping her in as a watcher wasn't exactly a hard sell.
"OK, Jane, calling you now, got your earpods in?"
Jane nods, and there's some awful echo on the loudspeaker of Gemma's desk phone when she picks up.
"Go, Jane, go!"
Jane nods, and Nicky Lam walks out of Gemma's office.
A moment later Hari, Agnes, Mo Peep and Gemma watch Nicky out of the window as she walks off towards the gym, then turns left and disappears out of sight.
"You still there?" Gemma checks.
"Course I am, you hearing this OK?"
"Perfect. Good luck, Jane."
"He's just gone out again!" they hear on Gemma's mobile.
"Jane, he's out!"
"Received."
"Thanks, hanging up now," Gemma says to the café.
They all huddle around her desk. Nicky Lam is reciting her script. They've kept it simple, only three sentences, she just needs to repeat them over and over again until she's saying them in front of Frank. There's:
"Look here, Gemma, I'm offering you ladies a very good valuation, much better than those cheap Frenchies," followed by, "Don't get me wrong, Gemma, I like that you and Agnes have a sense of loyalty towards Montage but really, you know mine's the better deal," and culminating with "Look, Gemma, this is no time to get all Queen Bee on me: I'm flying back to New York on Tuesday so either we sign off on this on Monday, or the deal's off."
Jane is impeccable. She's speaking in Nicky's cadences, she's emphasising Gemma and Queen Bee every time, but she's already done three loops and nothing has happened. What if she's somehow missed Frank? What if he's taken a different route back to his office? What if he's not going back to his office, but to some poor little company he's about to screw up, big time.
"Look here, Gemma…"
Agnes is gnawing at the stub of her latest liquorice stick and tapping her foot. Mo Peep and Hari are squeezing each other's hands to almost equal shades of white. He looks, of all of them, like he might need the smelling salts first, but that might just be the corset. Gemma is staring at her phone, and, what do you know, wishing she had Dylan's hand to hold.
"Look, Gemma, this is no time…"
Suddenly they hear it, the long-awaited thud.
"Jesus, look where you're going!" Nicky cries.
It's impossible to tell whether the contract sheets have flown as they should, or even whether it's really Frank she's bumped into. Nicky rewinds to deliver a slow, perfect:
"Look, Gemma, this is no time to get all Queen Bee on me, alright? I'm flying back to New York on Tuesday, so either we sign off on this on Monday, or…"
The woman is a genius. It's almost like she's gone undercover before, or something. She's sounding so perfectly pissed off, but in a dignified, grown up, business-like sort of way. Just what Nicky Lam sounded like when she assassinated Gemma's margins.
But is it working, has Frank even stopped?
"Jesus, look what you've done!" Nicky Lam says, and Mo Peep frees up one of his hands to bite his hairy fist.
There's definitely some kerfuffle and flapping of papers on Jane's side of the line, but who is she talking to? Knowing Frank he might have just walked straight on, leaving someone less useless and selfish than himself to pick up after him.
Then again, behind the oversize shades she's borrowed from Gemma, Nicky Lam is a very handsome woman, and she's talking down at him, so he's probably finding her devastating.
Gemma and Agnes exchange anxious glances.
Someone's talking to Nicky, but it's impossible to tell whether it's Frank.
"Go get this one, it's flying off!" Nicky snaps then, quite a bit later:
"Well, next time just look where you're going," followed shortly thereafter by Jane muttering: "you arse-wipe two-timing fucking French scumbag."
Mo Peep almost knocks Hari over when he falls into her arms, and Agnes high fives Gemma. Five minutes later there's a group hug when Jane gets back into the building, and much congratulating one another. Then Mo takes Nicky Lam away to turn her back into Jane Fairfax again – only Jane Fairfax on eight hundred quid stilts.
Because she's worth it.
x
It's going to be a while now, and another anxious wait, for Frank to get back to his office, discuss it with Geoff and the others, possibly call Gemma to try and cajole her into telling him more. They're not all going to hang about waiting for Gemma's phone to ring.
But it does, not five minutes after they've all left her office:
"Gemma?"
"Jane?" Gemma says, trying not to sound as disappointed as she feels.
"I really hope you nail them, bastards," says Jane.
"Thanks, I'll be sure to keep you posted. But you've done your part now, and you were amazing. You really are the Queen of the undercover job."
"I know, but…" there's a silence then: "…I wanted to say I'm sorry about you and Dylan."
"Thanks... thank you, Jane."
"I feel bad about it. Plus it sounds like Frank pretty much assaulted you."
Gemma shrugs:
"There's been worse assaults since Harvey Weinstein went out of circulation, Jane."
"But that photo wasn't consensual and now… do you want me to call him, to explain?"
"What?"
"Dylan: I'll do it, you know. That's on me, I'll explain to him – I've got his email, obviously."
"You… you can't do that, Jane. I appreciate you even thinking about it but…"
"Why not?"
"He's with someone else now, Jane. Queens don't do this to one another."
"Is she a queen though?"
"Every woman is, whatever her sex or sexual orientation, Jane, you know that. And Katiya is very much a queen. She's much better for him than I could ever have been."
"What, because she's brown?"
"That too. And because she's not lied to him, or to herself as much as I have been, hopefully. Because she appreciates him for who he is."
"You don't know that."
"But I know they deserve a chance. He does, anyway. Please, leave him alone, Jane. Leave her alone too, no one deserves this."
"OK your call, bye."
Gemma sighs and calls Rob, for something to do. Warrant sales are going well, and he's having fun playing Montage's various banks against one another, upping his price each time.
Gemma calls Hari and asks her to go through all those supply contracts Montage asked to see during the due diligence. She asks her to order them by renewal date, send her a few of the earliest ones, and start entering the renewal dates in the calendar, with three months pop up reminders.
By the time she's been down to Rafik's and back, Hari's already dug up the contract for their mobile phones, the office's buildings insurance, and the carpet cleaning contract. Gemma calls the Queen of Finance and the Queen of Facilities into her office and advises them to hire a paid intern for six months, to review all office and personnel related suppliers with contracts under fifteen thousand pounds. They'll meet weekly to review the upcoming renewals and change providers as necessary. Then she calls Hari and Agnes in, advises Hari to route the contracts to be reviewed accordingly, and suggests Agnes start working on some premium packaging and refill options for her lovely new line. Who knew bee venom could be made to smell this good?
Gemma, in other words, orders her Queen Bees to act as if they'd still all have a job in six months' time, and the illusion works wonder for the next few days. Hari throws herself into what she christens "Operation 10:30", after the old vs. new margin targets.
Gemma and Agnes are in the midst of a hard nosed discussion with a possible alternative supplier of recycled-plastic lip-balm tubes based in Copenhagen, when Hari interrupts with an incoming call from Montage.
Agnes and Gemma stare at each other:
"Tell them we're in the middle of something, we'll return."
"They said it's urgent," Hari says with a nervous giggle.
"Aha," Agnes says, "tough, we'll call back in twenty minutes."
They end up sitting on their hands for over ten minutes of that, because Gemma makes them hang up soon with the Danes, so as not to appear too keen so they get a decent price out of them, but she's also keen to keep Frank waiting and believing that she's chilled about this.
Not that anyone is.
"OK, now?" Agnes asks.
"No it's only just been half an hour. Twenty minutes means at least half an hour."
"OK, well I need another bloody wee,"
"Sorry," Gemma says as Agnes vanishes.
She's staring at her desk when Hari calls again announcing Frank on line one.
"Frank, I was just about to give you a call!" Gemma lies brightly. One of his own favourite openers, if she remembers correctly.
"What a happy coincidence,"
"Are you well?"
"Very well, you?"
"Very well, thanks, but…" this is the game plan, and she's going to stick to it, "… it's Geoff's daughter I should be asking you about. Any progress?"
"Funny you should ask."
"I'm sorry. It's not funny at all, I know, and I'm sorry to sound so callous. What happened to Geoff is everyone's worst possible nightmare and I feel so, so bad about it but…"
"But?"
"Well, Frank, this is so embarrassing, I can't tell you how bad I feel telling you this."
"Go on, I don't see what could be worse than our last meeting."
Nice touch, Frank, thanks for reminding me, Gemma is thinking as Agnes re-enters her office.
"I'm putting you on loudspeaker, Frank. Agnes just popped in."
"What a delightful surprise," Frank lies, "How's the bump?"
"Great," Agnes has the good sense to lie back. Given her timing and present complexion, Gemma rather suspects she's also had her head down the toilet just now.
"Frank, I'm sorry there's really no nice way to put this, but well… it's been a while since you guys concluded due diligence, which is leaving us rather exposed given our contract for the warehouse, and I'm afraid that we've received interest from another party."
Silence.
Is Frank buying it, or has he called Nicky Lam's office and uncovered the whole sting?
"I'm sorry, Frank, and this is why I was going to call you. You see, I won't hide from you that she… that is they, are offering us slightly better terms than you are, but Agnes and I have discussed it and after everything that you have done for us, putting us in touch with your warehouse guys, helping us close those loopholes with our suppliers, well, I know it's sometimes been a bit complicated between us but we have a relationship, don't we? What I'm trying to say is that we feel that if in the next few days you could find a way for us to sign off on the deal, we'd still much prefer to sign with Montage. We really would, Frank, hand on heart, if perhaps your other founding partner could fly over from Paris or something?"
Silence, then…
"Agnes?"
That, they had not planned for.
"Yes?"
"Agnes, t'es d'accord?"
"Ben j'suis d'accord avec elle, oui."
"Avec qui?"
"Avec Gemma."
"English, please," Gemma reminds them before he makes Agnes say anything she shouldn't. He's already made her lie once today, for goodness' sake, it's not clear she can do it again, especially when she's just seen her lunch for the second time.
"So," Frank says rather ominously, "you've been offered better terms, but you'd both still rather sign with us?"
"Absolutely, yes."
"Why?"
All part of the plan:
"I'm a little disappointed you should ask, Frank. When did Queen Bees last make a business decision that was purely based on the bottom line? We have a conscience, and the margins to prove it, don't we?" she says with a fake little laugh.
"True," Frank says, and Gemma feels emboldened to go off script:
"If anything, I've sometimes wondered why you guys were so keen on us. We'd had so much pushback until you came along, we were almost discouraged."
Silence again on the other end of the line. Agnes and Gemma look at each other with frozen faces, then Agnes goes back to chewing on her stick. It's now really hard to tell who's bluffing whom. As Gemma's father said the French are indeed fond of intrigue, or at least this Frenchman is.
"Well, like you said it's not all about the bottom line," Frank says, "and as it turns out Geoff's flying back in tomorrow, that's what I was calling to tell you."
"Oh Frank, you tease! Oh I'm so happy!" Gemma cries with the utmost sincerity. "Agnes and I are just having the biggest hug," she adds, truthfully still. There's also air punches, the wrong kind of V signs, and what Agnes is mouthing is almost certainly as rude as it is French, but Gemma glosses over that.
She hears Frank laugh briefly too on the other side of the line.
"Well I'm really happy too, how's Monday for you?"
"Monday would be perfect."