The Necklace: A true story of 13 women, 1 diamond necklace and a fabulous idea. Cheryl Jarvis

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СКАЧАТЬ with blonde hair and a firm body. She moved back and forth, one minute admiring the necklace, the next flirting with a good-looking salesman.

      ‘We need pictures!’ said Jonell. One of the women along for the camaraderie ran out into the shopping centre to buy a disposable camera.

      Each woman – Jonell, Mary, Maggie, the two friends – posed for a photo with the diamonds. They vamped and giggled, amazed that three of them were even thinking of buying such a thing, even as a ‘time-share’. Obviously these giddy women didn’t buy diamonds every day. Throughout the posing, there was awe. ‘It’s so beautiful,’ they said. They said it over and over. They said it when they saw it on one another and when they looked at themselves in the mirror. They breathed it when Mary wore it with her sleeveless shirt and khaki shorts. They repeated it when Maggie tried it on with her vest top and jeans. And they sighed it as the diamonds lay against Jonell’s gold peace symbol charm. ‘This necklace is so beautiful!’ The women swept everyone up in their excitement as they grinned and gushed – and anticipated.

      Then it was time for Jonell to hand Tom Van Gundy an envelope. In it was a sheet of paper with her handwritten bid and the names of twelve women, four of them followed by question marks. As she proffered her bid, she was confident and her grin playful but she was nervous. She was asking him to cut his price nearly in half. She was grateful for her estate agency experience in negotiating prices but she knew all too well that coming in with a low bid was a gamble.

      The scene had caught all three Van Gundy men in its headlights. Nothing like this had ever happened in their shop. It wasn’t just the buzz in the place. In a quarter of a century of working in the business, Tom Van Gundy couldn’t recall seeing a single woman buy expensive jewellery for herself. Women fuelled the desire but they waited for the men in their lives to make the purchase.

      Tom almost hated to take his eyes off these spirited women to look at their bid: twelve thousand dollars. He winced inwardly. Jewellery shops can have large mark-ups – that’s the reason why so many chain jewellery stores offer discounts of up to 70 per cent. Being in the jewellery business meant being a negotiator, and in this shop Tom usually handled negotiations himself. However, on high-priced items – and this was definitely a high-priced item – he needed clearance. This time it might be tough to get. Still, he managed to look and sound kind when he said to Jonell, ‘I need to have a look at the figures.’

      He went to the back room. Priscilla Van Gundy, his wife and chief financial officer, was there, hunched over the books, hyper-focused, trying to tune out the noise. She usually worked in the administrative office across the street, but because of the sale she was squeezed in the store’s small stockroom between shelves of inventory and a desk that doubled as a kitchen table.

      Priscilla had heard the commotion. She’d heard the salespeople talking about the group of women, but she hadn’t left her desk to go and have a look. She avoided looking at customers’ faces. She didn’t want negotiations to get personal.

      ‘There’s a group of women who want a special price on the diamond necklace,’ Tom said to the thick auburn hair hiding his wife’s face. ‘What can we sell it for?’

      Priscilla tapped figures into the calculator: one for the actual cost of the necklace, another for the number of months it had been in the store, a third for what they needed to make a profit.

      ‘Eighteen thousand,’ she said.

      Tom knew the number wasn’t going to be acceptable, but he was used to the to-and-fro of negotiations. He went back to the front of the shop to counter Jonell’s bid with Priscilla’s offer.

      ‘Not low enough,’ Jonell said. ‘We only want to spend a thousand per woman.’

      Tom had anticipated the answer. He nodded his head and returned to the back room.

      ‘Can we go any lower?’ he asked Priscilla.

      She felt his apprehension. After thirty-three years of marriage she could read his emotions like a spreadsheet. She turned to the calculator again, tapping in more numbers.

      ‘Seventeen thousand,’ she answered.

      Tom scratched out the twelve-thousand-dollar figure on Jonell’s sheet of paper, scribbled fifteen thousand, and showed it to Priscilla.

      ‘Can we do this?’ he asked.

      ‘That’s ridiculous.’

      ‘It could be good for business.’

      ‘We sell it for that and we won’t have a business.’

      Tom was silent. Priscilla said more firmly, ‘That is not going to happen.’

      Tom looked at his wife. He remembered how much more relaxed he’d become after she started working with him six years ago. She had her finger on every dollar, and she was good at it. The business was doing well in large part because of her. More importantly, he trusted her more than anyone.

      But little of that mattered today. Today he wanted her to be flexible.

      ‘I just have a feeling about this,’ he said to her.

      ‘You sell it for fifteen thousand and we make no profit.’

      At that moment Tom Van Gundy realised he was willing to let go of any profit. In part, he didn’t want to disappoint so many women. It was the same feeling he’d had when he played football in high school and didn’t want to disappoint the fans. He knew that turning away twelve women wouldn’t be good business either. Deep down inside, though, he wanted to see Priscilla smile the way these women were smiling. Six months earlier her sister Doreen had died of cancer and he hadn’t seen her smile wholeheartedly since then.

      Something more important was happening here than making money, something so important that it gave him an idea.

      Tom Van Gundy rarely acted without his wife’s consent, and he knew if he continued to debate the issue with her, he’d lose. Deciding that it was better to plead forgiveness afterwards than ask permission before, he decided to deal with the repercussions later. He walked out of the back room to hand Jonell the sheet of paper on which he’d scribbled fifteen thousand.

      ‘I’ll give it to you for this price,’ he said, ‘but on one condition. I want you to let my wife be in your group.’ He had no idea how Priscilla would feel about it or if she’d even participate. He just knew he wanted these women in her life.

      Jonell looked at the attractive, soft-spoken man in front of her. She didn’t know why he wanted his wife in the group, nor did she know who his wife was or if she’d like her or if any of the women she’d recruited would like her. But the whole idea was about inclusion and sharing, so she didn’t hesitate.

      ‘It’s a deal,’ she said.

      Jonell wasn’t worried about Tom’s wife. She was worried that the women she’d worked so doggedly to recruit would balk at paying nearly two hundred dollars extra each. Then what was she going to do? She hid her concern behind her most radiant smile of the day.

      Tom returned to the back room.

      ‘I gave it to them for fifteen thousand,’ he said, again to her bowed head, ‘but you get to be in the group.’

      Priscilla looked up at him. ‘What are you talking about?’

      ‘The СКАЧАТЬ