exhibits spinning slowly round on the screen. They’re so vivid that you really feel you’re there in the room with them. Imagine if we could do that! ‘So, like … how much would that one have cost?’
‘Actually, I read about that one in a tech magazine,’ Toby says, nodding. ‘It was half a million. Oh, don’t worry,’ he adds at my expression. ‘Not pounds, dollars.’
‘Half a million?’ I feel like he’s punched me in the chest.
‘But that was, like, with a whole big rebrand and everything,’ he adds hastily. ‘Like I say, it depends what you want.’
I feel betrayed. All I’ve seen online is adverts saying how cheap and easy it is to make websites. ‘I thought these days you could make websites in your bedroom for half nothing,’ I say, almost accusingly. ‘I thought that was the whole point.’
‘You can!’ Toby nods earnestly. ‘Totally. But they won’t work like that one does. You don’t need to spend half a million, though.’ He’s obviously trying to sound reassuring. ‘You could spend a hundred grand, fifty grand, ten grand, one grand …’ His eyes drift back to our home page again. ‘I mean, this is cool,’ he says. ‘Just a drawing. It’s subversive.’
Mrs Kendrick, subversive? I’d laugh if I weren’t still poleaxed by half a million.
‘Maybe it is.’ I sigh. ‘But it doesn’t bring in any customers. It doesn’t make any money.’
‘So how do you get customers?’
‘Lots of ways. Little adverts here and there. Or word of mouth.’
‘Oh, word of mouth.’ Toby perks up. ‘That’s the Holy Grail. That’s what you want.’
‘Yes, but there aren’t enough words. Or mouths.’ I look at the American website longingly for a few more moments. ‘So, basically we need money in order to afford the website which we need to make money.’
Toby nods sagely. ‘Golden goose. No, I mean, chicken and egg. So, did you think about a platform yet?’
I rub my face, feeling my energy ebbing away. Why is it that everything in life is just a bit harder than you think it’ll be? Icing cakes, having children, keeping marriages together, saving museums, building websites. All hard. The only thing that’s ever turned out easier than I expected was my Italian GCSE. (Oh, and lasering my legs, that was a doddle.)
‘I think I’d better put a budget together,’ I say at last. ‘Then we can talk about platforms or whatever.’
‘Put a budget together.’ It’s such a euphemism. It sounds as if I just need to collect the bits together from where they’ve been scattered and assemble them. But I don’t have any bits. I have nothing.
We could sell off some pieces of art, it crosses my mind. But would Mrs Kendrick ever agree to that?
‘Sure thing, Sylvie, whenever you’re ready,’ says Toby, and a wave of sympathy passes over his face. ‘It’s tough, isn’t it?’ he adds, suddenly sounding more serious, as if he gets it.
Well, of course he gets it. He’s trying to launch a start-up. He’s got enough struggles and obstacles of his own.
I give him a wry smile in return and shut his laptop. ‘Yes. Yes it is. It’s all pretty tough.’
TWELVE
It’s all pretty tough. And it hasn’t got any easier.
It’s the following Tuesday and the most positive development in my life right now is the ‘Willoughby House Museum’ sign, which arrived yesterday, and is gorgeous. Far better than we expected. We all keep going outside to gaze adoringly at it, and the volunteers are convinced it’s bringing in more visitors already, and even Robert gave a kind-of-impressed grunt when he saw it.
But at home, forget it. I’m not sure who’s most stressed out right now, me or Dan. He’s permanently taut, stroppy, tentery and generally hard to live with. When his phone rings, he grabs for it so fast it makes me wince. I’ve got home twice to find him striding around the kitchen having intense phone conversations which he immediately breaks off from. And when I ask, ‘What was that?’ he replies, ‘Nothing,’ in discouraging tones, as though I’m somehow trespassing on his privacy. Whereupon I feel such a surge of frusture that I want to hit something.
I feel as if I don’t know anything any more. I don’t know what Dan’s thinking; I don’t know what he wants; I still don’t know what this ‘million pounds, maybe two’ is. I don’t know why he’s been huddling with my mother. If it was to arrange a surprise, then where is that surprise?