Bess piled up the plates to take over to the sink.
‘Do you have room for cinnamon tea cake?’ Fiona asked.
Bess laughed. ‘Silly question.’
Bess set off for home once they’d had a couple of slices of cake each and a cup of tea and she let the conversation with her mother settle. One step at a time. Maybe meeting Malcolm properly, and soon, might be a step in the right direction.
When she arrived at her house, she parked on the drive and stayed there for a moment looking up at her cottage-style home with its unassuming frontage.
Bess’s place wasn’t big but she’d made each room inside individual – all had walls in various colours, two rooms had a featurewall with wallpaper, the furniture fitted perfectly, she had pictures up from the holidays she’d taken over the years, trinkets she’d collected like the colourful sand timer she’d found in Spain which sat on the shelf in the kitchen next to the olive dish she’d brought back from Italy. She had a set of coasters she’d bought in France, the hard-knotted teal rug she’d found in Scotland last winter which she couldn’t resist after seeing it in a shop window.
Bess’s dad Ron had helped her choose this house. When she’d begun looking for her own place all those years ago, he’d gone with her whenever she asked. He quite enjoyed it and confided in her that he loved looking at property but he’d never persuaded her mother to move so he had to live vicariously through his daughter. Ron had vetoed four properties before this one for various reasons, including subsidence, proximity to an alleyway, a ridiculously high asking price, and a non-committed vendor. Then they’d come to see this house. It also came with a fairly high asking price but it was a sound investment if they could get the price down even a little bit. Ron had told her to think with her head as well as her heart – that was her dad all over. He always said emotions had to take a back seat when you were spending a lot of money. He’d been sensible up until his very last day – always paid into a pension, never put money on a credit card unless he knew he could pay it off, he had insurances for this, that and the other. He had money put aside too so that eventually, he and Bess’s mum would be able to enjoy his retirement and do the things they’d talked about like the cruise around Norway, learning to play tennis together, heading to Europe.
And then he died.
Bess remembered the day her second and final offer on the property was accepted. She hadn’t expected to be successful, shenever thought she’d be so lucky, and even better, nobody dragged their feet and she moved in three months later.
Bess loved her home. She’d installed a wood burner, redone the kitchen with Cotswold grey cabinetry and solid oak benchtops, she’d stripped off the torn and very old wallpaper in the main bedroom and replaced it with something to her taste. She’d slowly put her stamp on the house and the labour of love was all recorded in a photograph album, the before and after pictures she and her dad had looked at many a time, hardly able to believe how different it looked now compared to when she bought it.
Bess went inside. She stepped onto the mat, picked up the post collected there as if she’d been away for a week, not out for less than twenty-four hours while she went to the supermarket and had lunch with her mum. Her feet sank into the pecan-coloured carpet as she made her way from the hallway and into the lounge but she didn’t open any of the correspondence yet. She needed a glass of wine first, something to take the edge off. Because she knew what was waiting for her.
She snuggled on the sofa in what was usually the ideal reading spot, armed with a glass of wine for Dutch courage, and tore open the first envelope. Then the second, the third, each and every one of them. Some weren’t too daunting; one wasn’t even asking for money – that had to be a win, didn’t it? But plenty of them were and she added them to the pile with the others. She retrieved her iPad from the shelf below the coffee table and logged on to her banking app. But where to start? When you had this many bills, it was hard to know, when you had so much debt you couldn’t doggy paddle, let alone swim.
Her mortgage payment had been taken successfully – that was a plus; she didn’t want to miss it. Losing her home was terrifying; surely she couldn’t let things get on top of her so muchthat that happened? She remembered one of her blind dates last summer, a guy who was a roofer and, although nice enough, she’d had a feeling from the start that he wasn’t her type. She’d stayed for the date – it would’ve been rude to leave just because she didn’t feel any attraction towards him. She’d wondered whether things might improve; maybe if she gave him a chance, he’d surprise her. He definitely did that when, a few drinks in, his whole woeful story about a gambling habit and a recent drug addiction came out and it was a story without a happy ending because he lost his home as a result of those things. Was that about to happen to her? Was she about to get herself into so much mess that she’d have to turn up on her mother’s doorstep with all her things in tow as if this, being a homeowner, had all been a game of make believe like she was a little girl again who’d been playing house all this time?
With the mortgage payment already made, it didn’t leave an awful lot in her account by the time she’d also paid her water bill followed by the electricity charges that she’d had reminders for and ignored until today’s demand arrived.
With a shiver, she got the wood burner going. Her dad had loved sitting in front of it when it was first installed. He’d said it went perfectly with this house and she’d had a sneaky suspicion that he might have tried to persuade Bess’s mum to get one put in too.
It hadn’t happened, or maybe he’d never got the chance to push the idea.
Ron Gardner would hate what his daughter had been doing since he died. He’d hate that she’d lost control –Be careful with your money, he’d always said,Make sure you have a fund set aside for the unplanned things that might happen. It was what he’d done. She still did the same job he’d always been proud of, but unfortunately, when she lost him she’d sought comfort from anywhereshe could get it. And as much as it sounded laughable, she’d found comfort in buying herself things, treats here and there that over time had become more common. Spending money had become her way of life and her habits had run away with her.
She reached for the last piece of post she hadn’t yet opened and ripped away the envelope before she could chicken out.
She read the letter.
This was the third time she’d been late with repayments on a loan she’d taken out last year to cover the cost of a new boiler when hers needed replacing.
She sat forwards, taking in the additional information at the foot of the letter, about debt collection agencies, legal action.
She threw the letter down and clipped the side of the wine glass, sending red liquid all over the coffee table. She grabbed a bunch of tissues from the box on the shelf beneath and mopped it up straight away, the tissues soon staining pink, never to be white again.
And then she put her face in her hands and cried, something she rarely did, something she hadn’t done since the day they buried her dad.
This was very real. And if she didn’t do something about it soon, she might end up losing just about everything.
7
Gio wasn’t all that comfortable with his mum being on her own at his place but he was slowly getting used to it. He was on a day shift that would finish when she was still at work herself, which at least meant they had some head space from one another. And it gave them something to talk about when they were both home other than focusing on the past – he told her about his day, she talked about hers, although she did tell him that there wasn’t all that much to say about cleaning and steered him to talk more about himself. Fair point, he supposed, and he indulged her, told her about life at the fire station, what it was like to go out on a shout, the work they did and the lives they saved. But he’d also glowed inwardly at the thought of her going out every day, to a job. It sounded so trivial, but it wasn’t for her, and it was a welcome change. She was holding down employment and after almost a week, things were looking good. He only prayed it stayed this positive.
Gio arrived on shift, changed into his uniform and stood with his crew on parade while the officer in charge detailed their duties. Then it was on to checking all their equipment includingbreathing apparatus, the fire engine itself and the equipment on board.
Halfway through the morning, they set off to the primary school for a community visit.
‘What?’ Mickey asked Gio, who gave him a look when he pulled up in the playground and set the sirens going and blared the horn to announce their arrival. ‘Kids love it.’ Sure enough, little kids’ faces lined the low-down windows.
‘Are you telling me that was all for them?’ Gio laughed.
