I shouldn’t get ahead of myself though, my story could have many beginnings, that one included, but perhaps the best place to start is when I became Mr. Hanson’s assistant.
Andrew Hanson owned a small and highly profitable company that sold specialist software for doctors’ surgeries. His business had grown to such an extent that he needed someone to do all the administrative work: accounts, payroll, secretarial and generally running his small office.
At the time I was twenty-three, having worked in various offices since leaving school and had risen to assistant office manager at another software company, so it was a perfect opportunity for me.
It was a good job and I enjoyed it immensely. I had a lot of responsibility and Mr. Hanson trusted me. With my help he was able to concentrate on growing the business further instead of having to handle all the day-to-day tasks associated with running the company. I was really proud that I was able to organise the, at the time, chaotic accounts and record keeping.
Within a year and a half the business had more than doubled its revenue and was well on its way to doubling again with no prospect of the growth ending. I was doing really well; Mr. Hanson was very pleased with me; I was doing a management diploma in the evenings and Mr. Hanson gave me an afternoon off a week for my studies. My career was going just where I wanted it.
I suppose I ought to tell you a bit about myself since I guess it has a bearing on my story. My name is Isabelle and I’m a tall white woman: five foot eleven in stockinged feet. All through my childhood I was taller than all the girls I knew and most of the boys too. I was most definitely the ugly duckling at school, all gangly arms and legs, not graceful at all.
I have a very pale complexion, I suppose because I’ve always hated sun bathing. That’s probably because I hate people looking at me, and I guess that’s ‘cause I was teased at school. I’ve been told that I’m pretty now, but when I look in the mirror I can only see the plain, overly tall, girl from my school days, and that insecurity takes a long time to get over.
I was always thin, one of the less offensive names I had at school was ‘stick insect’. Nowadays, I love to exercise, I jog most mornings before work, and so I’ve fleshed out a bit and have some pleasant curves. I wear a 32B bra and I’ve always wished I had more ‘up top’. I’m definitely self-conscious about my small breasts. My nipples though are very sensitive and quiet large, which can be extremely embarrassing at times.
My best feature, in my opinion, is my lovely long, flowing, honey-coloured hair.
One might think that running an office I’d be a gregarious out-going sort of person. Well, when it comes to work, I am very confident and can hold my own with the best of them. My private life though is the complete opposite. I’m very shy. Again, I’m certain that it comes from being teased so much at school.
I’d never had a boyfriend. I’d never had sex. Hell, I’d never even had an orgasm. I know you might find that hard to believe but it’s true. At school I was an ugly dork. I came from a poor home and couldn’t afford posh clothes. None of the boys were interested in me when there were many confident and sexily-dressed beautiful girls willing to put out.
I didn’t mind since I spent all my time studying. My mum didn’t want me to end up like her, pregnant at fourteen and living in a tower block. She made me study hard so that I got a good education, and she warned me off boys. I got so many lectures about the evils of sex and its consequences – of which our little family was a prime example – that I was terrified of the male of the species.
In my early teens I discovered masturbation, but no sooner had I started my self-exploration than my mum put a stop to it. She caught me one night (our walls were paper thin) and I received such a tongue lashing that I was terrified of trying again. She even threatened to take me over her knee. Even when I left home the guilt she instilled in me stopped me from touching myself.
Anyway, you don’t need to know all about my history, suffice it to say, I was great at my job and I was terrible at relationships.
The company was doing well and I was raking in some excellent bonuses and I’d passed the first year of my studies with flying colours. Life was looking great. Then Mr. Hanson told me that he’d received an approach to see if he’d be interested in selling the business. It seemed that the success of his software had drawn the attention of some other company that was interested in moving in to the same market.
So, we had a new challenge. I had to get the accounts in order and presented in the best possible light for the due diligence, and had to work out the one hundred and one things that needed to be done to make the process go smoothly.
As Andrew’s assistant I found myself invited to the meetings with prospective buyers. I was well prepared and we were in an excellent position: we didn’t need a deal, there were other companies who were beginning to sniff around, and we had a fantastic product. It was a sellers market. So I was supremely confident as we were ushered into the board room of RS Systems. Andrew, William Preston, our lawyer, and I were introduced to their team. There were four of them, but it was clear that the only one who mattered was Richard Stirling, the owner of the company.
I found him to be very unsettling. He was in his early forties and well built. In my two inch heels I was taller than him but he didn’t make me feel like that. He was rich and powerful and he knew it. What unsettled me was the way he looked at me as we were introduced. He looked me up and down and then smiled broadly. There was something in his blue eyes that I didn’t understand. I’d been in plenty of business meetings and that look said nothing about business. However, during the meeting it was primarily Mr. Hanson to whom he spoke. In fact he didn’t speak with me at all, and that was part of what was unsettling about the meeting. I was too busy taking down notes though that I didn’t have much time to dwell on thoughts about the way he acted towards me.
My job during the weeks of negotiation was to check the figures, do some due diligence and liaise with the staff from RS Systems. Mr. Hanson was very pleased with the results of the information pack I put together, I managed to pull a lot of information together in a short period of time. The Internet is a great resource and you can find almost anything when you put the right terms into a search engine.
To me it looked like it was going to be a good deal for Mr. Hanson. If it came off then he was going to be set for life. I’d make a tidy little sum in bonuses and have a good job in the new company.
Mr. Stirling and Mr. Hanson had quite a few meetings as they negotiated the details. I attended only a handful of them, but it was the same every time. Mr. Stirling would look me up and down, smile and then ignore me throughout the meeting. I found it very uncomfortable. He talked freely with Mr. Hanson and Mr. Preston, but never with me. The first time I tried to interject a point, he just waved his hand in dismissal and said, “yes, yes, very interesting, but the main thing we need to discuss is...” and then went off on another topic all together. I felt so small and insignificant. I didn’t interject again.
The only time I managed to get Mr. Stirling’s attention was when I presented my market analysis. He seemed strangely pleased that I’d managed to find so much information in such a short period of time; even though the analysis probably meant he’d end up paying more than he’d originally offered.
So far, so fine and dandy. Everything was eventually agreed and the contracts had been finalised. Then Mr. Hanson came back from a final meeting with Mr. Stirling and told me that they were going to sign contracts on Saturday. He said he’d been invited to, in his words, a “horsey” event at an estate in the countryside to celebrate the signing. Then his face took on a bit of a bewildered look.
“It’s all very strange though if you ask me. Richard described it as a sort cross between an athletics meeting and a gymkhana. Only female participants. The strange thing was that when I asked about the horses, he just laughed and said, ‘no, no horses, just the pony girls’, I just didn’t understand it, what’s the difference between horses and ponies? However, the food and hospitality is supposedly the best, absolutely first rate – perfect for a celebration, Richard said.”
“Okay,” I said, “so what’s the problem? You’re clearly not sure about something.”
“Well it’s just that he can only get one guest ticket. I really would want you and William there at a signing. We’re a team. However, it does seem something that Richard is keen on and I don’t really want to sour the deal now.”
He continued, “I initially wondered if it was a ploy to change the deal at the last minute without my lawyer present, but I spoke with William on the way back and he says the contract is water tight and anyway I’ll be taking the actual paperwork with me so Richard isn’t going to slip something into the fine print at the last minute. I think it really is just as it seems.”
I could understand why he felt uneasy. It seemed a strange way to close the deal, but then again Richard Sterling was a fairly strange man.
“Well, why not sleep on it, talk it through with William in the morning then let Mr. Stirling know tomorrow.”
That’s how I first heard about the Wallinghurst Pony Club. Mr. Hanson’s gilt-edged invitation “cordially solicited his attendance as the guest of Mr. Richard Stirling Esquire”. There was certainly nothing to indicate anything untoward about the club.
That evening I did a bit of research. There was very little I could find about the pony club. From all I could get it sounded just like any ordinary gathering of the horse set, but from what Mr. Hanson had said it was about athletics not horses, but then why call it a pony club. The references I found though certainly mentioned ponies, their training and competitions. The part about only women competitors did sound right from what I read, certainly there was no mention of men taking part – though there was mention of both male and female owners and trainers, and I found those references very odd.
I was certainly intrigued by it all, and I had the same nagging worry that Richard Stirling was trying to pull a fast one at the last minute. I wanted William to be there to watch out for Mr. Hanson from the legal side and I wanted to be there at the signing to make sure that Mr. Hanson didn’t find himself backed into a corner and made agree to something that wasn’t in his best interests.
The club though did sound like it was very exclusive, and as such it was a closed community. There didn’t seem to be any public web sites for the club or its members. Also, strangely I thought, it didn’t seem to have sort of connection with the other clubs or events for other horse and country folk.
I didn’t see any way to get another invite if Richard really couldn’t get one. Then I found the solution! I do wonder how things would have turned out if I hadn’t found that web page.
The page was actually from a private web site. However, it had been cached by the search engine – clearly someone had made a mistake and left it unsecured and the greedy web spider had eaten it up before they’d rectified their error.
I discovered that the Wallinghurst Pony Club had two types of guest invitations. There were the ones for owners and trainers, and that was the type that Mr. Hanson had been provided with. The other type was for “Young Women of Good Breeding” who were “excited” and “serious” about being considered as a candidate for taking part in the club’s events. There wasn’t much more information and none of the pictures were available having never been captured by the web spider. It did though make it clear that candidates were expected to deport themselves appropriately and that time-wasters were strongly discouraged.
So I eagerly began to formulate my cunning plan. Clearly there was no way that William was going to get an invitation. If anyone was going to look after Mr. Hanson then it would have to be me, and in order to do it I would have to pretend to be eager to join the club as a participant. I decided that I could go along as a candidate, make sure everything went smoothly and then ‘realise’ that it wasn’t for me. Oh foolish me.
The next morning, I laid down my opening salvo. I dropped a hint to Mr. Hanson that I’d always been interested in joining a pony club and that it was a shame that I’d miss out on the fun. I ‘failed’ to hide my disappointment when he repeated that Mr. Stirling had only one guest invitation. He’d just finished discussing it in detail with William and it seemed he’d laid his worries to rest and was now keen to get the deal finalised.
Then in a wonderful piece of acting on my part, I ‘remembered’ that clubs often had special deals for people who were interested in joining the club to come along to an event to see if they really did want to join.
“Do you think that the Wallinghurst Pony Club would do something like that? I’ve been really interested in joining a club like that for years – they must always be on the look out for new members. It would be great, I could come along to the signing celebration and maybe enrol at the same time. I’d love it.”
Mr. Hanson seemed surprised by my eagerness, but I could see that he was thinking it over. I just hoped that he wouldn’t realise that it was just a ruse so that I could watch his back. I know he felt that he could handle it all himself, but I wouldn’t forgive myself if he was taken advantage of when I could have help him.
“Well, as much as I’d like to help you realise a dream, we must remember that this is an important business meeting. I wouldn’t want you to forget that, if anything went wrong it could cause problems. You’ll be working for Richard next week if everything goes well.”
“I know, and perhaps this is a great opportunity for me too. If Mr. Stirling is going to be my boss, I don’t think it would hurt for him to know that we share an interest.”
He thought about it some more and then nodded.
“Okay, yes, I can see that. It would be good for you to meet with Richard at a social occasion where you share an interest, get a head start with your new boss and all that. Well, I still don’t want to be pushy after he’s made it clear that there’s only one ticket – I actually think he wants to seal the deal one-on-one, but I’ll mention it to him when we speak later.”
Yes! I thought. Now, if Mr. Stirling goes for it too, then I’ll be home and dry. Oh, I patted myself on the back for my cunning. Yes, definitely, foolish, foolish me.
Later on, Mr. Hanson came over to my desk, clearly on the phone with Mr. Stirling.
“Isabelle, I’ve mentioned to Richard that you’re interested in joining the club and wondered about whether you’d be able to come along on Saturday as well. Well he’s not sure he can pull it off. Anyway, he wants a chat with you.”
Now that surprised me. He’d hardly said a word to me in the weeks that we’d been working on the deal.
“Hello, this is Isabelle.” Well duh, I cursed myself, of course it was me – who else could it be.
“Andrew tells me you’re interested in joining the club.” He came straight to the point, no ‘how are you’ chit chat.
“Yes, I’ve always wanted to join a club like that.”
“Really?” He sounded sceptical. “You do know about the club I take it?”
Hmm, what to say, I thought, does he know I’m bluffing?
“Well, not specifically the Wallinghurst club, but clubs like it yes, and it’s always been something that has,” I paused for a moment trying to remember the words from the web page, “‘excited’ me, I’d really like to find out if it’s something that I’d enjoy as much as I think I would.”
“You’re sure, are you?” I heard a little chuckle down the line. “The club has a very exclusive membership and takes its privacy seriously. They don’t like just anyone coming along to their events, and certainly not people who just want to pry into their goings on.”
“Oh, I’m definitely serious about it,” yes that’s the right term, “I want to give it a shot and hopefully take it from there. I’ve been looking for a way to join a club for a while.”
“Ha,” he gave an amused snort, “I’m sure you have. I imagine that you have good potential, I hadn’t realised that it was something that interested you though.” Then he paused, obviously weighing it up and then to my relief he said, “I’ll see what I can do.” Then abruptly, “Hand me back to Andrew please,” and our conversation was over.
Mr. Hanson took the phone and returned to his office. Meanwhile my heart was pounding. I felt like I’d been subjected to the third degree and wondered what I was getting myself into. All that guff about exclusivity and privacy. I bet he’s more concerned about being seen with a girl who wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth in front of his friends. Well I can ‘deport’ myself as well as the best of them.
I felt a bit guilty about pulling the wool over their eyes. If it turned out the deal was a bad one for Mr. Hanson then I wouldn’t mind upsetting Mr. Stirling and I’m sure Mr. Hanson would forgive me. If it turned out that everything was good then a bit of time proving that I’m interested in the same things as my new boss will go a long way to smoothing my way into my new job. It all sounded like a win-win situation in my head when I thought it over.
It was late Friday when Mr. Hanson came and told me that Mr. Stirling has managed to secure an invitation for me as a candidate member.
“He did say that he’s glad you want to come and that you’ll need to remember that membership is a serious matter and that he’d understand if you decided not to come and wouldn’t think any worse of you.”
I was beginning to wonder whether I wanted to work for Mr. Stirling. The whole palaver about the club seemed way over the top. I thought that I’d try it out and if working for him didn’t suit me I’d have made enough money from the bonuses I was due that I’d be able to take some time off and look for another job.
“Isabelle, I’ll pick you up in the morning, at say 8:30.”
That brought me back from my pondering and I nodded.
“Yes, that would be great. See you then.”