THE BIG CHILL

WHEN KATE PASCOE SQUIRES woke up from having a  hysterectomy for chronic endometriosis, the first thing she did was reach for her phone. At the time, she was one half of Kate & Kate, a cult homewares company she and her sister-in-law, Kate Pascoe, had founded five years earlier. Both of the Kates had young children and made the company profitable through passion, 50-hour weeks and a commitment to the business that manifested itself in answering emails from a surgical recovery ward. “When it’s your own business, and it’s going well, it’s so rewarding,” Pascoe Squires says. “You’re getting all this great feedback and so much instant reward that it can become like rats with the pellets – you just can’t stop.”

But faced with the prospect