Eventually I admitted that Rys and the kids meant more to me than just family; they were my lifeline to reality, a way out of the world of design and intense mathematical calculation I lived in. I was lonely, and Rys was my only outlet. The more time I spent with her family, the more I wanted; eventually I came to realise that it was her that made my life complete; with her I was ‘Mikey, best friend, guardian, shoulder to cry on and hand to hold’; without her I was a solitary, lonely man with nothing in his life except someone else’s family to take the loneliness away; literally, all I had was her. At the time I was too knotted-up inside to understand what was happening to us. With hindsight now it’s all so clear, but back then, all I knew was I needed Rys to keep the dark away, and I couldn’t work out why that should be so.
Rys was the catalyst for everything that happened, and it was so innocent, but it was going to make our lives so very complicated, in so many ways. It was a simple conversation, about Rys finding a job, of all things. She had money, her family benefits, plus what I secretly slipped into her bank account meant she had enough money to live reasonably well, especially as she didn’t have to worry about bills, because I was taking care of those, but she wanted to feel independent; she didn’t feel right taking my money, even though I would have gladly given her everything I had, she was my baby sister, and I loved her to death, but she felt a divorced mother of two should be more independent and self-reliant, so of course, she turned to her big brother for advice.
I felt a certain amount of kismet here; she needed a job, she needed money, but she didn’t like taking my money, so I arranged it so she had no choice but to take money from me, as my employee. That’s right, I hired her, but it wasn’t a token job; Carys was a qualified business administrator, I needed a good office manager, one who knew what they were doing, and whom I could trust; it was the perfect storm, I needed her, she needed me. Kismet.
My office was, frankly, a complete mess, my interns were a bunch of scruffs who didn’t know how to log drawings or file applications properly, they wrote their schedules on scraps of paper and tacked them to my drawing board with Post-It notes, my accountant only had a vague notion of my receivables, because invoices went out, issued by interns, and no-one followed them up, and so the people who owed me money waited until I rattled their cages before they coughed-up. As I didn’t know which cages to rattle, none got rattled; I was owed hundreds of thousands on signed-off and preliminary projects, my accountants were miracle workers but they were fighting a losing battle trying to claw back what they thought we were owed, if I ever needed an office admin, it was now, and Rys fit the bill perfectly.
I offered her top-dollar, and day-care because no-way was I going to separate Rys from the kids, so we turned a spare office into a creche and I gave Rys carte-blanche to make it as accessible and child-safe as she felt was needful, and every morning I collected her and the kids, brought them to work with me, and let Rys have her head to organise my life so I could get some order out of the general chaos.
My hunch was correct; within three months my office looked like a professional workspace, the interns were wearing ties and shaving, brushing their hair, and looking like junior architects, not a mob of scruffy vagrants, due mainly to Rys and her raised eyebrow; once seen never forgotten, and the boys just needed to be pinned to the wall once by that eyebrow to straighten up and fly right the way she wanted. My accounts receivable ledger started unclogging once she talked to the people hanging on to my money; Rys can be very persuasive, and occasionally downright intimidating when she wants to be, her standard response to excuses why payment hadn’t been received was:
“You’ve had five months to set the money aside for an invoice you had contracted to pay, right now you owe us the value of the invoice plus 5 months compound interest accrued at 2% per week, all in accordance with the contract you signed, I suggest you read the payment terms closely where this is all explicitly laid out. This means your invoice debt of 5, 000 has accrued 2, 576. 21 in delinquent interest, making your total due, today, 7, 576. 21, and the clock’s ticking; however, I would be willing to write down 576. 21 as a gesture of good faith and call the debt 7, 000 if you remit payment today. I can send a courier to collect payment, no personal cheques, a notarized cashier’s cheque only, or a direct transfer to the company bank details listed on the invoice will also be acceptable. I shall expect either by close of business today, or any agreed discount will be cancelled and you will immediately owe the full invoice amount plus any accrued interest, while will escalate on a daily basis thereafter.”
Boy she was scary, but it worked, and the delinquent payments started rolling in. I was so delighted I gave her a 20% pay rise, strictly not-kosher and contra government guidelines but whafuck; I can pay my baby sister anything I like, so I upped her pay and threw in private medical as well for her and the kids as an added safety net.
I think the best day though was the day, about a year after I brought her in; I sat Rys down and went over the value she had brought to the company. Given the revenue she had generated by ceaselessly hounding delinquent accounts, and occasionally suing them through the courts, and winning, she had easily doubled the cash-value of the business, so I thought it only fair that she be a full partner, so the practice was now ‘Kershaw-Elliot Associates’ with my RIBA registration prominently displayed so no-one was in any doubt what we did.
Making Rys my partner ensured a lifetime free of worry and debt, and left the futures of her children in no doubt; so what if Max Elliot decided to weasel out of his family obligations, Carys no longer had to worry about that, the company coffers were stuffed to overflowing with more coming in every day as more and more commissions hit our desks, and fully half of it was hers; she’d earned it, and her future was assured.
The icing on the cake was a RIBA dinner we’d been invited to; the practice was up for an innovation award and several design awards, and the partners were expected to attend, so I handed Rys the company credit card and told her to get a top to toe spa treatment, and get a suitable ball gown, and don’t forget dancing shoes, because I felt like celebrating with my new business partner.
The dinner-dance was being held at the Dorchester; the Royal Institute of British Architects is a prestigious club to be a part of, and their awards dinners were glam, glitzy affairs. We splurged and hired a limo, to take us from Oswestry, on the Welsh border, where my office was, to Park Lane, London because I didn’t want to drive for four hours and arrive tired and rumpled, so we pushed the boat out a little. When I showed up to collect Carys I was stunned; she’d kept her dress a secret, and when I saw it I understood why; Royal Blue, but the exact same shade as her eyes, with a plunging but discreet strapless neckline, what mum always called a willpower dress, but she had the curves to fill it most enticingly, and a slit up the side to display her creamy thigh decorated with a sheer, lace-topped hold-up stocking.
The dress contrasted stunningly with her jet-black hair piled high and coiffed to perfection, and reflected her startlingly blue eyes, a more brilliant shade of blue than mine. She was hearing mum’s diamond bracelet, and my grandmother’s sapphire and diamond necklace and matching earrings, once more highlighting and perfectly accentuating her beautiful blue-violet eyes. She was almost too beautiful to look at; I’d always known my sister was a real looker, but that night she left me speechless. I was going to have to watch the wolves, they’d be around her like bees to honey. With that thought came once again that long forgotten pang of jealousy whenever I had thought of Rys dating or getting married, but now it was almost physical in its intensity. It was then I realised I wanted her, all those dreams and unresolved feelings gelled and I knew, finally, what I had been feeling all along.
Carys obviously felt something too, to judge by her startled expression when I took her hand, even through her matching elbow-length Opera gloves. I made a fuss about getting our overnight bags stowed, basically covering my confusion and blazing moment of epiphany, but there was still that look of puzzlement when we climbed into the limousine. I tried to pass it off with a lame joke about her being wolf bait, and she patted my arm, once again sending that electric thrill through me.
“Don’t worry about that, Mikey; tonight, I’m your date, and I’m only going to dance with you!”
Now what did she mean by that, I wondered, but at her words a little piece of me deep inside uncoiled and relaxed. All the way to London Carys sat with her arm threaded through mine, even dozing a little as we sped down the motorway, and I spent my time studying and memorising her sleeping features and wondering if she was feeling what I was feeling. That and my persistent erection conspired to keep me awake through all the monotony of that long drive!
The dinner was as glitzy as I’d heard they were, celebrity guests and table hosts circulated around the tables, paying more attention than I liked to Carys, but then she’d caused quite a stir when we’d entered with her on my arm; all eyes swivelled to the tall, beautiful girl with the amazing blue eyes and the mass of tumbled and artfully coiffed black curls and ringlets. One of those chancers, some mid-level TV game show host even tried slipping Rys his number, but she giggled in his face and tore it up in front of him, telling him “if you want my number ask my partner, I’m sure he’d like to take you outside and discuss it with you somewhere private… where no-one can hear a thing! Bye-Bye now, Mikey darling, I want to dance, you will excuse us won’t you, I only like to dance with my boyfriend!”
Casanova gulped when I stood up and towered over him, and he beat a hasty retreat, Carys’ giggle following him as he dodged away to chance his arm with someone else’s date.