Placating the little brute was much harder than it looked, Charlie could not tell how Mr. Salt had been able to pull it off year after year, it was incredibly exhausting physically and emotionally, not to mention financially. Fortunately, if years of experience in the business world had taught him anything of value for a regular person, it would have been the concept of supply chains and how important they are to the movement of goods. When a customer wants a particular item but the shop they are at does not have it in stock, there is a good chance there is a warehouse somewhere nearby with the desired item in stock. Wonka bars and his mentor's other candies worked in the exact same way, whenever a corner store sold out of the beloved sweets and the shopkeeper needed to restock, there was an entire supply chain behind them ready to supply them with whatever they needed to restock. Now, while pieces of furniture were much larger and less easier to transport about than candy bars, the Good Boy knew he would have to use a bit more elbow grease in order to make it across the finish line, and luckily, his extra work did pay off now that he learned where he could get the sofa the brat wanted. There was now a light at the end of the tunnel, there was a chance Charlie would be able to keep his word after all, the only problem was that he needed to get Veruca to agree to accompany him to a location she had not chosen to visit beforehand.

He knew he had to tread carefully or else she might even take a swing at him too, so Charlie approached the little brute ever so carefully, and informed her in the most positive tone he could muster, "Veruca, Veruca, I have great news. I found you your 'Lisbon,' but we have to take a short drive down to South Croydon immediately."

"South Croydon, why would I go there? It's so provincial," Veruca replied, indignantly rejecting the idea of traveling anywhere south of the River Thames.

Nearly drained of all his emotional energy, Charlie began to smile nervously, and pleaded with Veruca, "I'm not asking you to live there. All you have to do is pay here and we'll drive down there, pick up your sofa from the warehouse and then we'll take it back to your penthouse, like I promised."

Veruca pondered the proposal over for a bit and then proceeded to get up from the display sofa and passed Charlie without giving him a simple glance, instead she approached the sales associate, who was now at her transaction desk ready to receive a payment for the sofa and the other pieces the brat destroyed, and bluntly asked, "How much?"

It took a while for the sales associate to figure out what Veruca was talking about, but after a few seconds of her not responding, Veruca simply blurted out in rage, "How much is the bloody sofa?!"

"Well, the 'Lisbon' is £3,500. There's also the additional charge of £1,200 for the items the madam destroyed," the sales associate responded from behind the desk, trying to sound as professional as possible, yet not afraid throw shade at such a rude client.

With her death stare originally focused on the sales associate for daring to insult her, Veruca took in the information given to her and turned her attention over to Charlie where she barked a simple but large order at him, "Pay for it!"

"Me...but...w...why?" A frightened Charlie replied, still trying to process why Veruca would order him to do such a thing, especially since both of them knew her father had enough money to cover the expenses, so it was not like she would not be able to pay for everything.

But weirdly enough, Veruca did have a reason to cast the responsibility to pay upon Charlie, which she explained using her twisted logic, "Because this mess is all your fault."

Even more confused now, Charlie looked at both the sales associate and Veruca, before responding, "This mess is my fault?"

"This mess is his fault?!" The sales associate screamed, surprisingly more upset at Veruca for her accusation than Charlie was.

As it turned out, her messed up logic relied on using Charlie's weakness against him, she made him feel guilty for something that was out of her control as she screamed, "You promised I'd have a new sofa tonight and look at us now. We've been here for how long and I still have nothing!"

The sales associate fought back every muscle in her body urging her to slap Veruca across the face, and Charlie as well in hopes of knocking some sense into him so that he would just storm on out of there, leaving this brat stranded there to teach her a lesson. But instead, all she saw was Charlie pull out his wallet once again, and reply in a defeated, exhausted tone, "Very well."

With his elite black credit card in his hand, Charlie saw his reflection on the shiny material that glazed the card, he saw his life go from a poor kid trying to survive one day at a time to now trying to buy off a brat's friendship with luxury furniture. He was only brought out of his trance once Veruca grew too impatient of waiting for Charlie to give the sales associate his credit card, and screamed in his right ear, "Buy!"

The sales associate reached across her desk to take the credit card from Charlie's hand, but not before making a sly comment about the madam's attitude to the cardholder, "It's like a battle cry."

All it took was one tap on the Point-of-Sale machine for one of Charlie's largest personal purchases to go through, the sales associate then proceeded to hand Charlie his credit card back, along with a business card with the address of the warehouse written on the back in black ink. With the purchase going through without a hitch the two customers proceeded to leave Coûteux's, albeit with different outlooks. Shame overcame Charlie as he noticed the other patrons watching them leave, making him want to crawl into his shell and never come out, all the while Veruca strutted out of the shop with her head held high and a smug look on her face that indicated she felt rather proud of herself, in other words her typical expression for when she was out in public.

Now, before driving off, Charlie went over to the red Wonka truck parked behind them and knocked on the window to tell the Oompa Loompa driver that they were going to South Croydon to pick up a sofa and for them to just follow him. The Oompa Loompa concurred and his partner rolled up the passenger side window once Charlie returned to his car, where the heir found Veruca standing next to passenger door, looking rather impatient. Even after all the headache she caused him, Charlie still found a way to put a smile on his face and he then opened the passenger side door for The Bad Nut. With Veruca in his car, Charlie rushed over to the driver's seat, hopped in and got back on the road, now headed for their new destination. It was a ten-minute drive through rush hour traffic in Chelsea to reach the Albert Bridge and cross the River Thames, and from there on outwards it was more rush hour traffic. The only difference was that they were now in South London, a place where well-bred people like Veruca seldom ventured to unless they had reasons for doing so. It took another forty minutes to drive through the roads crossing the various South London boroughs until they reached their destination, the suburban town of South Croydon.

As Charlie looked out the window all he saw was a normal-looking English town, in fact, before he had won Wonka's chocolate factory, he could have only dreamed of living in a place like this. While a town with such narrow roads and the outer walls of the houses all touching each other would have been a step up for him growing up, he also understood why Veruca called it provincial. Growing up exuberantly wealthy, it came as no surprise to Charlie that she would view such an average town in a less than positive light since it neither had the prestige of her natal Buckinghamshire nor the glitz and glamor of her current residence, Central London. Even from the driver's seat he could see Veruca literally sticking her nose up to the entire town, especially whenever they passed a local on the street, and that look on her face especially didn't change once they reached the Davies Brothers Warehouse, South Croydon facility. The two former Golden Ticket winners arrived at the warehouse with only a couple of minutes before they closed up for the night so there wasn't that much movement of people on the grounds, but it didn't take that much imagination to picture the warehouse in the middle of the day with trucks being loaded and unloaded with goods by workers doing their best to get by on such a meager living. While Charlie very much respected the working class, seeing as he hailed from such humble roots, Veruca didn't just not understand the plight of the poor and working people, she downright despised them for something out of their control, their social station in life. The brat gave the occasional worker on the outskirts of the warehouse the same look of superiority she gave the townspeople they passed for no reason other than to proclaim how wealthy and important she was. Fortunately, none of them seemed to notice, thus avoiding getting them, particularly Charlie, in trouble for it.