Karen Mitchell — Part 2: The Reckoning

I sat with what I had found for three days before I did anything.

Nine clients. Six months of her operating behind my back while still showing up to our shared office, still splitting invoices, still calling me her business partner.

I rang our solicitor on the Thursday. The same one who had helped us draft the partnership agreement three years earlier. I told her what I had found. She was quiet for a moment and then she said right, let’s look at what we have.

What we had was a partnership agreement with a very clear non-compete clause. Lisa had helped draft it. She had signed it. It was enforceable.

My solicitor wrote to Lisa the following Monday. Formal letter, registered post. It set out what we had discovered, identified the clients she had approached, and outlined the legal position clearly. It gave her fourteen days to respond.

Lisa called me that same evening. She had clearly not expected the letter. She was angry at first, said I was overreacting, said she had just been exploring options. Then she tried to be friendly about it, said we should talk, said we could work something out.

I told her everything would go through my solicitor from that point.

What followed was two months of negotiation. Lisa’s position weakened every time her solicitor pushed back because the evidence was straightforward. Emails to our clients from her personal address. A company registered in her name six months before she had said anything to me.

She settled. She paid me a sum I am not going to put in writing but it was significant. She signed a document agreeing not to approach any of our existing clients for three years. She also resigned from the partnership, which meant I kept the company, the brand, and everything we had built.

The property company came back to us eight months later. So did two others.

Lisa’s separate venture lasted about fourteen months. I heard through someone in the industry that she struggled to build a client base without the infrastructure we had spent four years developing together. The contacts, the supplier relationships, the reputation. Those things don’t just transfer.

I think about the friendship sometimes. Nineteen years old, sitting in a college canteen, thinking I had found someone who would be in my life forever. There is a grief in it that the legal outcome doesn’t fix.

But I showed up every day and I built something. And when someone tried to take it I didn’t shout or cry or beg.

I got a solicitor.

Sometimes that is the most powerful thing you can do.

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