‘I was a partner!’ Keith rebuked me sternly, after I’d mistakenly suggested he’d been just a manager. ‘I was in charge of all the Sturgis offices. I was the residential sales partner – I basically employed everyone that worked there! Hire and fire, as they say,’ he barked back, sounding a little as if he were shouting at me on a military parade ground.
I apologised for my mistake, and he wasted no time in telling me all about Sturgis and that he’d been the person responsible for giving Suzy a job with the company.
‘We did lots of things to do with property. We had different elements – chartered surveyors, commercial, overseas – but essentially the largest element of the business was the residential side. I had my private offices in Barnes. That’s where I was based, which actually wasn’t attached to a sales office. It was basically executive offices. My immediate thought, when Suzy came for the interview, was that she would probably do well in sales. And I think she did. But as soon as I’d employed her, and once she had an agreed date to start working, she was despatched to Fulham, where she worked. And she was under Mark Gurdon’s command on a day-to-day basis there.’