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to her that Les Sprogs needed a unique selling point, something that made it different from all the other mother and baby shops in London. One way of achieving this, she thought, might be to make it somewhere that attracted not only women but their children, too. From the heartfelt way Chanel talked about the children she had looked after—she was in regular touch with all of them—Ruby thought it was fair to assume that little ones loved her as much as she loved them. Chanel, she decided, would be a huge hit with customers’ children.
    Then fate stepped in to prove the point. Halfway through the interview—which was being conducted at the back of the shop—a friend of Stella’s turned up with her three-year-old. Stella insisted on breaking off for a few minutes to chat to her. What happened next was typical of Stella. She introduced her friend to Ruby, but not to Chanel. She also completely ignored the little girl. It was only when Blanche, Stella’s yapping pooch, jumped up at the child, scaring her and making her cry, that Stella was forced to acknowledge her.
    “Oh, that’s just her way of showing she likes you,” Stella cooed, making no attempt to remove the dog, which was still pawing the child. It was the little girl’s agitated mother who scooped up the dog, handed her to Stella and suggested the animal might be in need of a walk. While Stella got affronted, but carried on smiling in an attempt not to show it, Chanel knelt down to the child’s height, shook her hand and said: “Hiya, I’m Chanel. What’s your name?”
    The child turned and buried her head in her mother’s skirts, but Chanel persevered. “Wow, that’s a beautiful dolly you’ve got there. Isn’t she the one I’ve seen on the telly? Doesn’t her hair grow by magic?”
    The little girl looked back at Chanel and rewarded her with a hesitant nod.
    “Can you do the magic and make her hair grow?” Chanel asked her.
    Another nod, but this time there was a smile as well.
    “Do you think you could show me? I’d love to see it.”
    A couple of minutes later the child, who finally revealed her name to be Freya, was sitting on Chanel’s lap chatting away with her as if she’d known her all her life. Ruby felt really guilty breaking them up to continue the interview.
    Ruby was left in no doubt that Chanel would be perfect for Les Sprogs. Her references had said she was a hard worker and on top of that she had proven how well she got on with children.
    Stella took some persuading, but after Ruby had worked on her gently but consistently for a week, she threw up her hands, said “OK, on your head be it,” and agreed to give Chanel a month’s trial. For her part, Ruby acknowledged that Chanel’s stonewashed jeans probably wouldn’t play well in Notting Hill and she agreed to introduce a staff uniform. Ruby had pale blue T-shirts made with the scarlet Les Sprogs logo across the front, which she and Chanel wore over smart black trousers.
    Although she kept promising to be more hands-off as far as the business was concerned, Stella found it impossible. Much as Ruby had expected, she turned out to be an almost pathological control freak and insisted on being consulted at every turn. Irritating as Ruby found this, she was forced to admit that if she had invested as much money as Stella had invested in Les Sprogs, she might well have become a pathological control freak, too.
    Long before the Chanel issue, though, they’d had another major difference of opinion. They hadn’t been able to agree about how the shop should be decorated. Ruby envisaged a modern minimalist feel with lots of primary colors and the walls covered in giant black-and-white photographs of pregnant women, babies and children playing. Stella wanted the Martha Stewart, weather-boarded house in Maine look: natural wood floors, painted dressers, squidgy check linen sofas, teddies and Beatrix Potter mice wearing aprons and wire-rimmed glasses dotted about the place.
    As usual