My Fight to the Top Read Free Page B

shop across the road – Pick A Pack. I was offered ten pence more an hour. I had to tell George I was leaving him. ‘Good luck, darling,’ he said. George was a lovely man.
    I’ll never forget getting my first pay packet from Pick A Pack. I got a bus into town, went into something like an Argos and I spent my savings on new kitchen gear for my mum. I bought her a bin, a kitchen-roll holder, a toilet-roll holder and a toilet brush. My wee arms felt like they were going to tear out of their sockets as I carried the goods home. But no effort was too big to help my parents.
    Equally, Mum and Dad would spend their last penny on me if they could. Mum would pay for me to enter dancing competitions and beauty shows to boost my confidence. They scrimped and saved to send me to elocution lessons because they wanted to better my chances in life. I’ll always be grateful to them for that. Elocution lessons seemed to me to be like a finishing school because I already had good manners. Mum and Dad had always taught me to be polite, but I did speak like an East End girl – that’s where I was from after all. The teacher would make me practise asking for my groceries.
    ‘I would like a pint of milk, please,’ I’d repeat after her. It was very different to what I was used to. People in the East End would say, ‘Gimme a pint of milk’.
    Mum would always make sure I had a good outfit to wear to my Saturday lessons. She used to stitch clothes such as dresses and pinafores. Perhaps that’s where my passion for design first came from. She had a sewing machine and if she saw fabric lying around, she would turn it into a new creation.
    I was grateful to my parents for helping me but the elocution lessons and the clothes did leave me open to attack. ‘Posh girl’, they used to call me at school. ‘She thinks she’s something special,’ they’d whisper behind my back. It also didn’t help that I was one of the few girls who actually wore the school uniform. Most of the kids would turn up in tracksuits and trainers but my parents insisted I looked smart.
    ‘Please, Mum, don’t make me wear this.’ I’d beg her to let me be like the other kids.
    ‘No, you’re wearing it, and that’s the end of it,’ Mum cut me dead. She was right to insist; you should always look well turned out. Back then I was just terrified of being beaten up again.
    Mum’s words rubbed off on me, though, because I made sure I always looked impeccable for my next job. I was 13 when I forged my mum’s signature so I could be an Avon rep. You had to be 18 to do that kind of door-to-door sales but I couldn’t wait until then: I wanted to make more money. I might have been shy around my friends but when it came to work, I had this armour of confidence that I would throw on. I could sell anything; I could sell sand to the Arabs. I used to go home, change into my smart clothes (I had a perm at the time too) and then I’d go from door to door. I’d collate orders, put them through the area manager and then collect all the money.
    Customers probably thought, Who’s this nice wee girl on my doorstep? But then I would deliver the most aggressive sales pitch ever. I’d go through each sales product, giving them the features and the benefits, and tell them how amazing they were going to look. ‘If you buy that,’ I’d say, pointing to some lotion, ‘then you really need to have the set.’ I’d always push. ‘It’s no good having something that you don’t have the whole set of because you’re not getting the full benefit of those products.’
    I always made a sale. And if I couldn’t at first, I kept on at that person until I had. ‘I’m not interested in buying on the door,’ they might say. But I kept going back and back again until I’d made a sale. Within six months I was the best selling Avon rep in Glasgow. I’m not kidding – and the best bit was they didn’t have a clue how old I really was. They thought I was my mum! My mum knew I was