Raking the Ashes Read online

  And there were other things that made him seem far more like someone else’s happy-go-lucky employee than a man who held the fate of a business in his hand. When I asked idly, ‘How’s it going at the shop?’ he’d always answer, ‘Pretty busy this week,’ or, ‘Quite slack today,’ as if the amount of photocopying passing through was the important thing, not any overarching pattern of profit or loss. It made me curious, and for the very first time I realized that, if we had merged our finances, it would have made me most uneasy. But we had stayed apart on money matters, and he kept all his paperwork packed away. Indeed, the only negotiation between us I could even recall was when, right at the start, it was agreed that Geoff should shove more money in the communal pot to make up for the fact that I was making payments for the roof over our heads while he was still pocketing rent from his own flat.

  So I had no excuse to pry. But now, as time passed, I became suspicious. Twice, Geoff borrowed quite large amounts of money from me and had to be reminded to pay it back. He took to blaming our local cash machine more and more often for the fact he was short of cash over a weekend, and I heard him chasing customers about the sort of bills he used to leave to gather dust. Almost in spite of myself, I started taking an interest in what came through the letterbox. I was there less than half of the time, of course. But, now my attention had been drawn to it, I noticed that almost nothing came for Geoff. Most bills were still in my own name regardless of which of us paid them. But other things I would have expected to see – his bank and credit card statements, offers from loan companies, pension stuff, anything to do with the flat – none of it arrived any more. I even looked for paperwork for his father’s house. (I’d remembered it falling in heaps on our mat after the old man’s funeral.) But there was nothing. I even found myself wondering if Geoff had opened a box number somewhere without telling me. Or taken to using his work address to receive all his own mail.

  One night, I asked him casually, ‘Can you remember who owned Print-It! before you?’

  ‘It was a Mrs Bellacosa. Why?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, shrugging, ‘I just remembered that she had a pretty name and couldn’t recall what it was.’ I prodded a shred of lettuce with my fork. ‘Why did she pack it in?’

  ‘Retired, I think.’

  ‘What, back to sunnier climes, clutching her fortune?’

  ‘No fortunes in bloody printing!’

  He had such a grim look on his face that I felt pity. I didn’t press the matter. If I am honest, I didn’t want to give him the chance to ask me for money. I had a horrid feeling that any cash he took from me now would never be paid back.

  That night, I phoned Ed. ‘Can I talk to you about Mum’s money? I rather think Geoff might be on the verge of asking me to lend him quite a bit of it.’

  Ed might have been fond of Geoff, but he wasn’t stupid. ‘Is it the business? Is it going under?’

  I didn’t answer. I just cut to the chase. ‘Whatever he asks, Ed, you do promise that you’ll say no? Absolutely not. Nada.’

  ‘We have joint power of attorney, Tilly. You can tell him yourself.’

  ‘Ed, I have to live with him. It will be so much easier if you’re the Big Bad Wolf.’

  He didn’t take persuading. He knew as well as I did that, batty as she was, Mum might hang on for years and, once her money had run out, it would be some grim hospital, his house or mine. ‘No worries, Tilly. I’ll be as hard as nails. The man won’t get a bean out of me.’

  Or out of anyone else with any business sense, it seemed. Over the next four weeks, Geoff changed suppliers twice. (He had a lot of airy-fairy reasons, but when I checked with Sol, he said it almost certainly would have been because they’d stopped offering credit. ‘Don’t lend him any loot, Til. It’ll be money down the drain.’)

  Then Doris, who had worked for Geoff for almost eleven years, was suddenly ‘looking round for another job’. That’s why I didn’t hear alarm bells ring at once when she rang up one morning. ‘Is Geoff there?’

  ‘He left ten minutes ago. He should be with you any min—’

  But she’d already interrupted to tell me her salary hadn’t gone into her account on the day that it should have. Even before I could decide which tack to take, she added hurriedly, ‘Ah, here he comes. No need to mention it, Tilly. I can ask him about it myself.’

  I looked at my watch and it was only five to nine. I’m not the sort of woman to monitor her partner’s day, but after all those years I knew enough to be quite sure he rarely reached the shop before ten past the hour. So why had Doris rung at all? Was it to let me know? To give me warning?

  It was the next call that brought me hard up against the facts. I’d scarcely put down the phone before it rang again. This time, it was Frances. Instead of following up her usual indifferent ‘Oh. Hi, Tilly’ with the traditionally dismissive ‘I think I’ll phone back later’, she asked me meaningfully, ‘Nice meal out?’

  ‘It was quite good,’ I admitted. ‘We hadn’t been to Shrimps before, and I was impressed.’

  ‘Nice prices, too, as I’ve heard.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t cheap.’

  The crunch came. ‘Frankly, I’m rather surprised that Geoff can pay his way at all these fancy restaurants – given he’s just announced he won’t be able to pay his whack when Harry goes through college.’

  I could have cheered her up. ‘Geoff? Pay his way?’ I could have said, ‘You must be joking.’ But right from the start she’d been as good as Geoff at cutting me out of things. Live by the sword, die by the sword, I say. ‘Well, Frances,’ I responded cheerfully, ‘you know the two of you have always preferred to leave me out of everything to do with their education. So I wouldn’t know.’

  That night, remembering all the times Ed had accused me of going at poor Geoff too hard, I came at it sideways. ‘Don’t you ever wish you could just close up shop and walk away?’

  ‘What’s up, Til? Fed up with pumping systems and submersible drilling units?’

  And into the braking lane went that conversation. So I was quite surprised when, less than an hour after brazening that one out, Geoff sidled up and asked, ‘You couldn’t lend me a bit of money, could you?’

  ‘What, for the weekend?’

  He looked embarrassed. ‘A bit more than that. To tide the business over a bad patch.’

  ‘What sort of bad patch?’

  ‘Oh, you know. You only need a couple of people who won’t settle bills for things to get sticky.’

  ‘Bad debts? I’ll sort them out for you.’ (I’d learned that knack from Sol. He used to make me phone up customers in a bored sort of sing-song to ‘check an address’, and when the person asked why I wanted it, give the name of a notorious collection service or, to real innocents, say I was phoning from the County Court. It used to work a treat.)

  ‘I’ll bring the details home.’

  He never did. So we just waited. Once or twice I sympathetically brought up the subject of the ‘bad patch’. But he affected not to hear, and soon it became clear that the only way Geoffrey wanted to take money from me was with me offering it with a sweet and trusting wifely smile, along with an old-fashioned ‘Here you are, dear. A chunk of my old mother’s savings. I’m sure that you know best. Do with it what you will.’

  Fat bloody chance of that.

  The next few weeks, I felt like The Ice Queen. It wasn’t pleasant. I did what I could – bought treats, kept coming out with, ‘Let’s go out for supper. My shout tonight.’ I kept both cars topped up with petrol and even cancelled my crack-of-dawn taxi once or twice so I could drop in at some supermarket on the long drive home and pack the car sky high with groceries, and all the other supplies it takes to keep a house running. I must have kept Geoff’s day-to-day expenses down to almost nothing. But still the crunch came. One night, Geoffrey spread his hands across the table and said: ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

  To me, all problems are the same. They’re technical – to do with how systems flow: gas, oi
l, power, money. Geoff looked relieved to bring his bits of paperwork to the table, and I was careful not to remark on the discreet little box number at the top of so many. I started drawing up my tidy charts. Owed. Owing. Overheads. None of the amounts seemed critical. ‘Are you quite sure that this is everything?’ I must have asked him half a dozen times. ‘There’s nothing else? No money lenders sitting up darkened alleys, waiting for cash? No loans on ice?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, that’s the lot.’

  The man looked so forlorn, I searched for comfort for him. ‘Never mind. These debts aren’t all that crippling. You can get rid of most of them at a stroke.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Selling the flat, of course.’

  I know I said that. I’ve the clearest memory because, the instant the words were out of my mouth, I felt so trapped. What if I wanted him to leave? What if I quarrelled horribly with one of his children? What if I fell in love?

  Clearly I’d missed his next words. ‘What was that?’ I asked.

  ‘I said I’d rather take a loan from you.’

  Tartly, I rubbed his nose in it. ‘You mean, from my mother’s savings for her old age?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Not wanting Ed’s refusal to come as too much of a shock, I tried to introduce a businesslike tone of my own. ‘What, against the security of 2A Tanner Street?’

  He seemed a little miffed. ‘Of course.’

  I gathered up the papers. ‘Let’s take a break.’

  I found some wine. We had a pleasant evening. I even took him to bed to cheer him up, and, when he was fast asleep after, crept down to run through my fax copier the bulk of the papers he’d shown me, and one or two others I found in his briefcase.

  Next day, I made a date with Sol.

  ‘What, now?’ he grumbled. (I could practically see him scowling at his watch.)

  ‘If you don’t mind. I am supposed to be in Aberdeen by crack of dawn tomorrow.’

  When I arrived, he was still grumbling. ‘Christ, Tilly! We’re supposed to see each other for a bit of nookie, not for more bloody work.’

  ‘Just do your stuff, Sol. Your reward will come in heaven.’

  He spread the papers. Tapping his pencil against his teeth, he stared at the figures. After a while, he reached for the bank statements I’d filched from the briefcase and leafed his way forward and back through the pile.

  ‘Tilly, see these?’ He lifted the sheets, one by one, his pencil coming down, month by month, against one payment.

  ‘Doesn’t seem much,’ I offered.

  ‘No. But it’s to a mortgage-lending company.’

  I leaned across to point to another entry. ‘I think you’ll find this is his mortgage payment.’

  ‘I think you’ll find he has another now. A supplementary.’

  ‘Against his flat?’

  ‘My guess. And, if Print-It! goes under, this lot take Tanner Street, and that is that.’

  I was quite shocked. But pride came to the fore. All of those times when Solly sat in bed and lectured me about the flaws in my relationship came back in force. I didn’t want him to see how much humiliation I was feeling, so played it down, trying to act as if, when you’re unmarried and don’t have children together, you hardly find it surprising when big financial decisions take place while you’re working abroad, or busy with other things.

  Still, simple astonishment can’t be quelled entirely. ‘Thank Christ for Briar Cottage!’

  There was a gleam in Solly’s eye. ‘Briar Cottage?’

  ‘His father’s place. Geoff has been havering about what to do with it since the day of the funeral.’ I tried to look on the bright side. ‘At least, now he’ll have to sell it, I can stop nagging him about leaving it empty.’

  I saw Sol looking at me pityingly.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘See here?’

  Leaning against his shoulder, I watched Sol’s stubby fingers walk back through statement after statement. Even I couldn’t help but notice the figure in the last column was fattening steadily as he ploughed back through the months. Sol’s finger stopped beside a figure bloated out so far it grazed the column edge.

  We sat in silence for a little while, then I said: ‘Briar Cottage?’

  ‘I can’t think what else.’

  I checked the date. ‘That long ago? Almost as soon as he inherited it.’

  Now Sol was walking his fingers back the other way, dropping each printed sheet in turn as the column we had been watching grow now took to shrivelling. ‘Dribbled away,’ he said forlornly, rather as if the money had come from his very own coffers. ‘That is the problem with men like him. They form an image of themselves as “businessmen”, and won’t let go of it. Even when the facts are staring them in the face, they’ll let every last asset run through their fingers rather than sell the place to someone smarter who could make a go of it.’

  I felt my first small twinge of hope. ‘Someone like you?’

  Sol sighed. ‘Not promising. I’d have to nose around a bit first. But it’s a prime site.’ He peered at me quizzically over his reading glasses. ‘I take it he wouldn’t be wanting any more for it than being kept out of Queer Street.’

  ‘He can go over a fucking cliff for all I care!’

  ‘Now, now, Til,’ Sol reproved me. ‘Nobody benefits from having to step over old partners in the gutter. Best get him on his feet again before you decide if you want to plant the boot on his backside.’

  Decide? Already my only concern was that Sol should help me cobble together enough of a raft from the wreckage to cast Geoff adrift. But all I said was, ‘Ever the cool adviser, eh, Sol?’

  ‘Hard head, that’s all. “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”’

  He held a hand out and we went to bed. I wasn’t really in the mood, but Geoff deserved it. What a fucking liar! How many times had I asked, ‘Is this all?’ How many times had he assured me, ‘Yes, that’s everything,’ and sat there hoping I’d whip out the cheque book to my mother’s account, assuming his old flat and Briar Cottage would be security against all risk. Don’t people who evade hard truth have any limits at all? Is there no point at which they stop believing the shining mantle of their sheer good nature makes up for everything? Oh, not for them the bother and the effort of facing facts. No. All they do is let their terrible affection brim over on the ones they love, ignoring the fact that, without honesty, they might as well be spilling lava on them. Tirelessly these optimists haul up their buckets of excuses from what they claim to be a bottomless well of sympathy, even of sacrifice. ‘I really didn’t want to worry you.’ ‘I thought the last thing you needed was to have more on your plate.’ ‘I meant to tell you just as soon as everything had come out right.’ Oh, saintly. Positively saintly! The trouble is, without plain dealing and your honour bright, such great and sheltering ‘love’ can end up hanging over the victim like a pall as in stroll the bailiffs. Lovers like these should pick their partners very carefully, or they might find themselves, not just thrown out but, worse, living with someone who has had enough of love and kisses, flowers and pretty meals on trays: someone now looking, not for Mr Perfect, but for one nugget of unshifting truth that can be used to take revenge.

  The bastard. Sneaky bastard. What a shit!

  9

  I CAME HOME to a house Ablaze with light. A man in a dark suit was in the kitchen, talking to Geoff. Minna was sobbing in her new boyfriend’s arms and getting hysterical because she couldn’t raise Harry on his mobile.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s Mum,’ she wailed. ‘Josh and I found her. She was wrapped in a blanket on the sofa. At first I thought that she was just asleep, and so we left her. But …’

  Oh, brilliant! What great timing! I walk through the door, fizzing with outrage, all geared up to hurl her father into the street, and her damn mother’s died! I could have spat. Instead I stood back, watching Geoff show his sober-suited visitor across the hall to the front doo
r. As he passed Minna, the man cupped Frances’s house keys more discreetly in his palm and said to Geoff in guarded tones, ‘And you’ll keep ringing your son? Every few minutes?’

  I took it as a tactful way of saying, ‘If your boy bumps into us, he’ll get a shock.’ And so he would, because although we’d been expecting Frances’s death for months, it still seemed strange, as if that steady waiting had done no more than keep reminding us that Frances was dying, and not accustom us to Frances dead.

  It was a long, long evening. Geoff couldn’t read my face, and he said nothing when I went upstairs without a word. (I expect he thought I was leaving him to grieve with his family.) Josh was allowed to stay. I heard him pulling out the sofa bed, and, in the early hours, I heard his quiet footfalls up the stairs.

  Anxiety stirred. I nudged Geoff. ‘Time to start banging up and down the landing?’

  He dredged himself from sleep. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A mercy fuck,’ I warned. ‘About to start next door.’

  Indeed, the bed already had begun to creak, and Minna’s quiet sobbing was stilling to occasional sniffs.

  Geoff sounded irritable. ‘It is her business, Tilly. She is eighteen.’

  Maybe. But in my mind’s eye I could plainly see the silver-backed sheet of pills that had tumbled from Minna’s backpack on the Sunday before, blistered only till Wednesday.