Bess was pretty sure she’d been standing with her mouth hanging open.
‘Why would you do that?’ she eventually stammered. ‘Why would you loan me money?’
‘I care about your mother, Bess. And, if I’m allowed, I’d like to care a bit about you too because you are your mother’s whole world.’
Tears pricked her eyes and she turned round to head to the kitchen. ‘Cup of tea?’ she trilled over her shoulder. She didn’t know what to feel, or think, she just knew she wanted to do something as what he told her sank in.
When he appeared in the kitchen, where she’d taken out the mugs, he’d taken off his coat and hung it on the back of a chair.
‘Sugar?’ she asked, unable to meet his eye yet.
‘Not for me, thank you.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I understand you don’t find this easy. Accepting help, especially from me.’
She looked at him now. ‘It’s not that I don’t like you, or that I resent you being with Mum.’
‘I know that. But I lost my dad when I was only twenty-one. Nobody would have ever replaced him. I promise that is not what I’m trying to do here.’
No preamble, just like that, he’d addressed what she’d found so hard about this aside from her mum sharing her financial problems. ‘I’m sorry you lost your dad so young.’ She turned her focus back to the mugs and poured the boiling water onto the tea bags.
She passed Malcolm one of the mugs when she was done. ‘You’re incredibly generous lending me money, but I really can’t take it. It wouldn’t be right.’
‘You’re not taking it; you’re borrowing it.’
Bess sat at the table and gingerly, he sat down next to her as though he still wasn’t sure about how she might react.
He cleared his throat again; maybe he did it when he was nervous. ‘In exchange for loaning you the money to pay off some of what you owe, I want you to do something for me.’
Bess’s heart sank. This was where she found out he was a dodgy dealer, someone she didn’t want in her mother’s life, a criminal, about to bribe her and ask for goodness knew what.
But when he spoke, it proved he was none of those things. ‘I want you to sit here with me and make a proper plan.’
‘A plan?’
‘One that sorts out your finances, gets you out of this mess.’
‘That’s it?’
‘It’ll take us time, I won’t lie.’
He wanted to help. She’d doubted him, she hadn’t been overly welcoming and yet he was still here.
‘Okay.’
Malcolm beamed as though she was the one doing him the favour, not the other way round.
‘I have my own condition, though…’ Bess said.
‘And what’s that?’
‘If it’s going to take time, then we need a decent packet of biscuits.’
He reached down to the leather bag he’d brought with him. He took out a laptop and then a carrier bag which he passed her. ‘Your mother knows you well.’
And when she peeked inside, she saw a supply of some of her favourites. ‘Then I guess we should get started.’
The surface of the kitchen table was soon covered in paperwork – statements, bills, loan information, correspondence. The first thing he had Bess do was pay the council tax bill in its entirety, which removed the threat of being taken to court. And once that was done, Bess felt as though it was a giant leap in the direction she needed to go in.
They got through almost a whole packet of custard creams and what felt like a gallon of tea. Malcolm went through all her paperwork with her and slowly, the shame every time he picked up another piece of paper gave way to a calm that came with dealing with something she’d put off and then been befuddled by for too long.
