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Carolyn didn't want to run the Sweet Shop. The girls all loved her and Ian, and no clients tried anything outside of the rules when Carolyn was in charge, but she wanted something more from life than running Scotland's oldest brothel.
Ian, who was as gay as flowers in springtime, was the perfect Madam. The girls loved him, he cared deeply for all of them and was no more interested in their charms than he was in Carolyn's. Carolyn had fallen into the role of tough den mother with ease.
She and Ian had gotten married for the economy of it, and because they had been best of friends since nursery school. When Ian's mum had passed, leaving the Sweet Shop to Ian, he'd been quite at sea. Carolyn had stepped in, gotten the books straight, resolved a few issues with clients who thought because they were paying for a girl's time that they could treat her like property without her consent, and revised the rules and rates for the first time since 1923.
When the girls stopped feeling like younger sisters and more like daughters, and Ian and the weekend bouncer Vince began making moon-eyes at each other, Carolyn knew it was time to move on. She and Ian divorced very amicably. She hoped Ian and Vince had gotten together and formed a partnership, civil or business or both, but she kept her nose out, not wanting to be a gooseberry.
The Sweet Shop still ran and last she'd heard had quietly expanded, now offering options for most sexualities and genders and willing to try to satisfy anyone's desires, as well as adding more space and a piano bar to be more of a social club atmosphere than a plain place for the world's oldest transactions. Carolyn had heard that they'd done away with the 'per act' fees and only had memberships now. Once while flying some seedy businessmen to Lesotho she'd overheard complaints about the client screening process. Ian was doing well it seemed. She'd known he would.
She did think of it some nights; she remembered sitting around with Ian and the girls, all in the brothel's fluffy monogrammed bathrobes, drinking sherry by the ancient stone fireplace, laughing and crying as required. It was a family of sorts. She missed it, but it was in good hands and she'd moved on.
Carolyn had a new family now.