Several times that day, I found my thoughts returning to the previous night. Sue remarked about my preoccupation at least twice before the mid-morning tea break.

As I ate my lunch which had been beautifully prepared by Lucia, I resolved to put the previous evening on the back burner, and to hope that it never happened again.

I was wrong, so wrong.

"Boss," said Sue just before 3 pm
“Something has really gotten to you since you left here last night and this morning. Your mind is just like it was when ‘she’ walked out on you. What gives?”

“Sorry Sue. Yes, something did happen and no I’m not going to talk about it as it is just too embarrassing.”

Her grin told me that she would not let this rest.
“If you are such good friends with my housekeeper, why don’t you ask her?”

“Ouch!” exclaimed Sue.

“Not ‘ouch’ but ask her.”

I immediately regretted that conversation with Sue. She’d been my rock ever since I hired her as my fifth employee. While she had been besties with my former wife, when the latter had left me, Sue told my ex to her face, that she was making a huge mistake by dumping me. Since then, Sue had become my friend and not one of my former spouse. She had been something of a rock to me in those days. If she had not been happily married, and I not such a coward, I might have made a move in her direction. I didn’t and for that, I was thankful. I resolved to make amends as soon as practical.

“I did and she clammed up the moment I mentioned it.”

“There you have it. Whatever it was is not for public consumption so please… Sue, please let it go. Besides, whatever it was will not happen again. I will say this, it did not involve a sexual encounter.”

Her look told me that she didn’t believe me.

I was starting to appreciate how many contacts Rona had when she phoned me to say that our counteroffer had not been dismissed out of hand. She also stated that my wish to meet, the management of the German company was acceptable but that a formal response to our proposal would be made in a few days.

---

As October turned into November and the spectre of Christmas fast approaching, moves on the bid front began to move forward at speed. Rona and I went to Germany to meet the CEO of the company, Jurgen Mueller. We all got on well enough for me to believe that his plans for the company were pretty much in step with mine. Before our trip, Rona had supplied me with details of the two other businesses that they’d acquired in the previous three years before their interest in my baby became apparent. Those businesses were thriving as part of a larger group. We even spent a few hours at their premises just over the Dutch border near Hengelo.

We returned by plane to the East Midlands airport, with a lot of thinking to do. When I dropped Rona off at a hotel near Newark she asked,
“To sell or not to sell?”

“I think that you know the answer. Do you think that we can get all the loose ends tied up by the 15th of next month?”

She smiled.
“So that you can give everyone a very nice Christmas present?”

“Something like that…”

“Then yes, I am going to sell.”

“What then? Are you going to start all over again?”

I sighed.
“Not right away. I want to take some time to recharge and think about the future. The company has been everything to me for so long that it… it will be like giving my daughter away to be married.”

She chuckled.
“Once this is all over, don’t you and Lucia become strangers ok?”

“If you are ever at home that is…”

She laughed.
“Touche. Like you, I’m going to have a rethink about my life. Being always on the go is getting becoming a bit of a chore.”

“I know that you have a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, but won’t it take a long time to extricate yourself from all of them?”

“Only about a year but if I do it gradually then I can adjust besides, about fifteen months ago, I met someone who made me rethink my life.”

I looked at her with a blank expression on my face.
“Are you talking about me?”

“I am. Your dedication to your company and your employees was… is so different to many of the other ones I deal with. Most of them have bought into the ‘get some Venture Capital investments, get listed on AIM and cash out’ plan. Then rinse and repeat until they have enough to retire. When we first met in London, I knew right away that you were different. The reports that I had on you hinted that you were different, but within a few minutes, I knew that you were not like them. That’s why I struck the deal I did with you. My normal fee is closer to 10%. I have more than enough to retire from this game and do something different. As Fagin sang in ‘Oliver’, ‘I’m reviewing the situation’ just like you.”

I leaned over and hugged her.

As she got out of the car, she said,
“Don’t forget to invite me to the wedding.”

“Wedding?”

She grinned.
“To Lucia of course.”

---

[Three days before Christmas]

I’d spent the morning at our lawyers where both parties to the sale finalised the contract. Once everyone had signed on the dotted line, I made a hasty exit. I felt that I had just signed over my baby and taken my forty pieces of silver.

During the drive back to Grimsby, I went over in my mind what I was going to say to my employees many of whom were also friends. The bulging shopping bag on the back seat of my car should make the bitter pill of the sale a lot sweeter.

I had just stopped at a supermarket near Lincoln for a comfort break and to buy myself a sandwich for lunch when my phone bleeped. It was the message that I’d been waiting for. Now I could tell everyone with a straight face that Christmas was going to come early for them.

---

I’d been back in the office for nearly an hour when Sue poked her head around my office door.
“Everyone is gathering for the big announcement.”

“Thanks Sue. Can you take this bag with you. There is an envelope in there for everyone. They are marked with their names so I’m relying on you to not mess giving them out.”

She looked at me puzzled.
“Don’t worry, they aren’t redundancy notices.”

“I hope not. They would be just the Christmas present that they didn’t want.”

I smiled back.
“You are keeping things very close to your chest, aren’t you?”

“I am. I want everyone to know at the same time and that includes you. You will understand why in just a few minutes.”
I handed her the shopping bag and put on my suit jacket. It looked even shabbier than it had when I'd worn it when I'd first met Rona in London. ‘One day’… I said to myself, I’ll get myself a new suit. Then I thought about Lucia and chuckled to myself. I was certain that she would have something to say about that.

---

“Thank you for all being here this afternoon. I know that several of you have interrupted your Christmas Shopping but what I am about to say, affects you all.”

“When do we get laid off?” quipped John Morgan. He’d been a steelworker at Scunthorpe before being made redundant some four years earlier.

“John, thank you for a very pertinent question. No one is being made redundant.”

There was a little chatter amongst my employees. I let it peter out before continuing.

“At ten this morning, I signed a deal to sell the company to a German Engineering business. There will be an eight-week handover starting after the holidays. A manager from Germany will be arriving in the first week of the new year. He is the son of the CEO of that company. Gerd will be taking over my role. He speaks perfect English and is an engineering graduate from the University of Newcastle.”

I paused to let that sink in.
“A little over a year ago, I was tipped off about a possible bid for the company. An old friend of mine who works in the city, was recommended that to engage the services of a consultant to advise me on the bid. As part of that deal, I restructured the ownership of the company.”

“How does that affect us?” shouted Debbie Thomas from the back of the room.

“I’m coming to that Debbie.”

I swallowed hard.
“Together with the company legal advisors, we created a new class of shareholder. These were non-voting shares and the ownership of them was put in trust for you all. Everyone, of you will benefit financially from the sale.”

“How much? A tenner each?” asked, Harry Thomas, Debbie’s husband and our Trade Union Shop Steward.

“Harry, why don’t you look for yourself?”

I turned to Sue.
“Sue, can you find Harry’s envelope for me please?”

She dug into the bag and found the one with his name on it.

“Harry? Why not come forward and read your letter?”

A slightly red-faced Harry came forward. Sue handed him his letter. He hesitated.

“Open it then,” said a few people close to him.

He opened it and his eyebrows went up when he saw the number.

“So, it’s twenty quid then?” asked another wag.

“Harry, you don’t have to say the exact number if you don’t want to,” I remarked.

He looked relieved.
“Thanks boss,” he said quietly as the headed for the back of the room where his wife was standing. His body language told me that he was pleasantly surprised by what the letter had said.

“Everyone will have a different sum based upon their current salary and the time you have been with the company. Some of you have only been with us for a few months. You have not been forgotten. I won’t mention any specific figures and remember these payments are not related to redundancy but the minimum sum is just under one thousand pounds. Sue has an envelope for everyone. Please collect yours on your way out and I wish everyone and their families a happy Christmas.”

Sue took her cue and stepped forward.

I stepped back and let her deal with everyone until the only envelope remaining was hers.

Many people had read their letters and were on the phone with their families. All of them had a smile on their faces. I took that as a sign that I’d done well.

I made it back to the office and breathed a sigh of relief. Sue joined me a couple of minutes later.

“You are a dark horse, aren’t you? You never let that plan of yours slip out, did you?”

“That was my aim. Will your amount pay off your mortgage?”

“It will and we won’t be the only ones to do that. Then if we do get laid off in the new year, it won’t be so hard.”

“You sound so fatalistic? Part of the sale agreement was that there would be no redundancies until next September at the earliest. If there is then everyone of you will get an extra five figure bonus, but that isn’t for general circulation.”

“You really do care about us don’t you?”

I smiled.
“I have always cared about the people who work for me. I put my trust in everyone and they have responded by trusting me, but that’s all over. Doing that has made this company the success it has become but we got to the point where we needed a lot of investment in order to grow to the next level. I was not going to sell out to some faceless vulture capitalists nor, was I going to pay a different bunch of cutthroats a load of money for a stock market listing.”
I decided to change the subject.

“As I said to everyone, the son of the owner of the business in Germany will be taking over as MD in January and as I said, I’m here for handover until the end of February. I got on well with Gerd. He is an engineer like myself. I think that you will get on well with him.”

Sue looked at me. That look said, ‘oh yeah…?’.

“Have a great Christmas Sue,” I said as I grabbed my things and headed for the exit.

Several of my now former staff were talking amongst themselves in the car park. One came over to me holding his letter.

“Is this for real?”

“Stan, it is for real. The money should be in your bank tonight.”

“Thanks boss. You don’t know how much this means to me… and… Well, the whole family.”

“Don’t thank me, thank the consultant who persuaded me that this was a good idea. I didn’t need much persuasion by the way.”

---

Lucia greeted me with a brief kiss on the cheek as I arrived home.
“How did it go?”

I sighed. The day had been long and tiring.
“Which part?”

“All of it. Why not start at the beginning?”

I sat down in the kitchen, Lucia put a large glass of red wine down in front of me. Then she sat down and waited. Scamp padded into the kitchen and rubbed her head on my legs. As I failed to scratch her under her chin, she went to her food bowl. It was empty. Scamp gave a little whimper and sat down in her basket.

“The morning went as expected. I signed over ownership of the company to the new owners. After that, I took Rona to her hotel in Newark where I left her.”

It was Lucia’s turn to sigh. I’d learned that she rarely showed that form of emotion and when she did, she was getting impatient.

“What about your last curtain call in front your staff?”

“Oh that!”

“Yes that…?”

“It went well. I think most of them were surprised by what was in their letters and as a result, they will enjoy the holidays.”

“Is that all?”

“What more do you want? I’m just glad that it is all over at last.”

Lucia came around behind me and began to massage my shoulders.
“I can tell. It is over and now it is time to relax.”

I looked at the clock on the kitchen wall.
“Don’t we have to hit the road?”

“We do but you are in no fit state to fight the holiday traffic. You are on an adrenaline high from your performance in front of your staff. The last thing we need is for you to crash and burn on the M62.”

“Ok, ok.”

Lucia knew just how to make me relax. Her gentle massaging was working wonders on my neck.

“That’s it. Relax. We have 10 days to work out what we want to do in the future.”

A kiss on the back of my neck helped a lot.
[to be continued]