‘And pay a penalty? No way, Mum.’
‘Love, your dad provided for us all; you know what he was like.’
‘I do and he wouldn’t want you to lose out. No, Mum. This is my mess. I have to be the one to sort it.’
And then came the worst question she could ask. ‘Bess, how did you let it get this bad?’
Bess liked to think of herself as strong and capable; that was the way she was at work, certainly. She kept cool in a crisis, she could calm patients down, keep the stress out of a situation even when it seemed at its absolute worst. Last week, when they’d been called out to a near-drowning at a leisure centre after a patient dived in and hit their head, the parents had been in pieces, freaking out. It was Bess who took them aside, broke through their wails and barrage of questions to get them to a place where they could take in the information she was giving them. Noah and other first responders had all told her they weren’t sure anyone could’ve handled it better. What was so wrong with her that she wasn’t the same with her own life? Her mum was right; she’d let it get this bad, she hadn’t talked herself out of all her stupid decisions along the way when she should have.
‘I want to understand, Bess. I really do.’
‘Dad always went on about how important it was to save, to put money aside, and from the day I got my very first part-time job, I did it. But when he died, all I saw was the unfairness of it all, the way he’d tried to futureproof himself, and for what?’ She wasn’t going to cry; she wasn’t going to feel sorry for herself. Herhands balled into fists so tightly, she almost didn’t feel her mum reach out her own hands to cover them.
Her fingers unfurled a little.
‘Your dad was a great provider. For me. For you. That was just as important to him as making money for himself – more important, even.’
She thought about the first year after losing him, the first Christmas, the first birthdays, the myriad of occasions where his presence felt like a giant hole dug out of their lives.
‘Is that why you started spending more money than you should?’ Fiona asked. ‘Because you didn’t see the point in saving it in case something terrible happened?’
Bess nodded. ‘It wasn’t only losing Dad that did it.’ Bess waited for Maya to put a file on the desk in reception before she went out back again. ‘It was my health scare too. All the emotions it brought up: the worry, the relief when I got the all-clear. I hadn’t got over my anger that Dad had been so careful and his life was cut short and then all of a sudden, I’d been given a reprieve. I felt I had to make the most of it. I booked holidays, I upgraded my car when I didn’t need to, went on spa weekends, changed my sofa, splurged on whatever I wanted. I couldn’t stop; it brought me comfort.
‘Every time another bill landed on my doormat, I got more and more overwhelmed, and yet I didn’t stop spending. I went into denial. I added those bills to the pile. The cost-of-living crisis didn’t even deter me. I’ve been living my life to the full; that was how I saw it. I kept doing balance transfers to new credit cards as I realised I was short of money each month. And then I let interest get charged on those cards so the amounts on each card continued to climb even when I stopped spending. I could barely make the minimum payments.’
‘I didn’t see it happening, and I should have,’ her mum said, as though any of this was her fault.
‘Don’t you dare blame yourself. This was me, all me.’ She leaned in to her mum, who had got closer to her without Bess realising.
Fiona put an arm around her daughter’s shoulders.
‘I’ll get it together,’ Bess insisted. She had to. ‘There are people out there with real problems, not things they brought on themselves.’ She’d done this. She’d spent money to feel better and it had worked for a while; it worked even better when she buried the reality of it. Somewhere along the way, she’d stopped questioning whether she could really afford things.
Her mum asked again exactly how much Bess needed to get totally straight and reluctantly, Bess told the whole truth.
‘That’s quite some debt.’
‘I know. And I’m out of options to fix this. I’ve drawn out cash on my credit cards too many times to pay bills; I’ve taken out a loan to pay off debts. What happens next – another loan to pay that loan and so on and so on? I haven’t missed too many mortgage payments but I have missed one. And that terrifies me the most, because if I default regularly then I’m at risk of losing my home.’
‘You won’t, my darling. I’ll go to the bank, see what I can do.’
‘Absolutely not. And I will pay you back every single penny of the £500 as soon as I can. I mean it,’ she added before her mum could try again to insist she took a financial hit for her daughter’s benefit.
‘No rush, no rush at all.’ Tentatively, she asked, ‘Have you thought about seeing someone for some proper advice?’
‘That would cost money.’
‘The Citizens Advice Bureau could be a good place to start; that’ll be something at least.’
‘I could try,’ she said. ‘You know if Dad were here and I could’ve brought myself to tell him the mess I was in, he would’ve been the perfect person to ask.’
‘He really would.’ She hesitated. ‘I know someone else who might be able to help.’
‘Who?’
‘Malcolm. He’s a retired financial advisor.’
Bess’s body went rigid. ‘No. I don’t know him well enough; I really don’t want him involved.’
