Runaways

by Carolyn McCrae

  The post arrived and as I opened the envelopes it seemed obvious that the sum of the bills was far greater than the value of the cheques. More ominously there was a letter from a firm I knew to be one of Linda’s main regular clients. It was a very pleasant letter, full of thanks for all the hard work done in the past but saying they were purchasing their own equipment and wouldn’t need the services of a bureau after the end of March. ‘Nice of them to give a month’s notice’. I think I spoke out loud. I went into the small kitchen and watched the kettle as it boiled, listening to the silence. What Ted had said seemed very true.

  I took two more mugs into her office without knocking. She was standing by the window, looking out on the busy High Street.

  “You know, Susannah, I have always thought I would be a success, that this business would grow and I would be, if not rich, then comfortable. But it’s all over isn’t it?”

  Before I could answer the bell rang and I went to welcome Ted.

  Perhaps he would be able to help Linda.

  Someone had to.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Linda was still in her office with Ted when the phone rang. I answered it, wondering what would be the best thing to say if someone wanted some work done, perhaps I shouldn’t have sent Debbie home.

  “I’ve got a bit of a problem.” The voice at the end of the phone seemed foreign and rather theatrical but since it didn’t seem to be sensible to turn work away I agreed to go straight round to the paper mill some miles outside the town. As I tried to follow the directions, driving through small villages and between orchards fields full of lines of poles, I was hoping the client wouldn’t see through me and realise how little I knew about what I would be talking about. Perhaps I should have had a word with Linda before leaving the office unattended and driving out to meet a possible new client.

  “Thank you for coming at such short notice.”

  I tried to listen carefully about the details of what he needed, nodding in appropriate places, but it was quite difficult to concentrate. He had a smooth voice with a strong Australian or New Zealand accent, I could never tell the difference. After he had given me a large envelope stuffed with pieces of paper with the request that the first draft of his report be available by Wednesday he asked if I had time for a quick lunch.

  “There’s a pub just down the road, it won’t prejudice getting the work done will it?”

  I think he was flirting with me but I didn’t really hesitate before accepting. “I can’t see an hour making much difference.” The work couldn’t be started until the following morning anyway, with Linda tied up with Ted and the girls given the day off.

  I followed his silver BMW through the narrow lanes, I was pleased he was ahead of me because he would come across any cars coming in the opposite direction first. He drove far faster than I wanted to and I spent the time worried about losing sight of him. It was a relief to see the car eventually slow down and pull into a pub car park.

  The time went quickly and without any embarrassing silences. His name was Jonathan Smith ‘No really’ he had added swiftly. He was 40 years old, not only currently unattached but had never been married, was a management consultant who was normally based in London but was to work at the paper mill for a few weeks. He only knew about this pub because he was staying there during the week. He normally lived in a flat in Connaught Square.

  I told him far less about myself, but that didn’t seem to be a problem as he seemed quite happy to talk about himself, his parents’ farm in New Zealand, why he had decided to come to England three years earlier ‘to see if I can hack it’.

  When I asked what he did in his spare time he laughed ‘you’ve never met a management consultant have you? There is no such thing as spare time.’ Though it seemed he did do quite a bit other than work. He had a pilot’s licence and shared ownership of a plane with his flat mate. He went to concerts, ‘pop, classical, anyone and anything as long as it’s the best in its field.’ He travelled. ‘We have to go over to the States every few months but I’m gradually working my way round the capitals of Europe.’ And he read. ‘Science fiction, war, fantasy, anything as long as it’s not too clichéd.’

  At the end of the lunch I felt I knew everything there was to know about him.

  “Look, I’d better be getting back to the office. I’ll call you tomorrow to say how we’re getting on and hopefully the first draft will be ready on Wednesday.”

  “Wednesday lunch? Here? Bring the script with you and then we can go back to the mill afterwards to go through it.”

  I couldn’t see a reason why I shouldn’t accept and set off back to the office feeling excited and looking forward to Wednesday. A mood that was completely shattered after ten minutes with Linda and Ted.

  “Where’ve you been?” Linda asked shortly.

  “A man rang, I had to go to talk about some work.”

  “Couldn’t you have left a note? We had no idea where you were. The office was empty, where are the others? Ivy? Debbie?”

  “I sent them home, I didn’t want them asking questions about why you were in a long meeting with Ted. I wouldn’t have known how to answer.”

  “What about the work?”

  “Apart from this,” I waved the envelope in my hand “there isn’t any.”

  She was silenced by that, and I thought she would break down but she pulled herself together and took the envelope from me.

  “That’s a big firm, how come they want us to do anything? They must have the resources themselves.” It seemed like she was going to add something but thought better of it.

  I explained about the mill and that it was not going to be a regular client. “He’ll be back in London in a few weeks, he just wanted this put onto disk now. We were the only people with the same machines they have.”

  It had seemed a plausible explanation.

  “Well at least I did something right, getting the right machines.” She sounded very down again.

  “You did a lot right, Linda, you just didn’t have much support.” Ted put his arm around her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her.

  I was unprepared for how I felt. Part of me realised he was just being the nice man he had always been, part of me was irritated that he showed such interest in someone else’s feelings. All my life Ted had been my comforter and his arm had been around my shoulders when I had needed comfort. Linda wasn’t even family.

  “Susannah and I will help in every way we can, won’t we?” Ted must have noticed a change in my attitude and shot me a warning look.

  “Of course, anything I can do.” I said, perhaps a little unconvincingly.

  “Now you go home Linda, get some sleep, and we’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

  “I can’t go home, I’ll never sleep. I’ll stay and do this,” she gestured to the envelope still in her hand, “Is there anything I need to know?” she asked me.

  “Nothing that can’t be said in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll wait and drive you home, Susannah, I think the Metro had better stay here.”

  Ten minutes later I as sitting beside Ted as he drove us down the hill towards the motorway.

  “Not a bad time of the day to be setting out.” He sounded ill at ease, almost nervous.

  “At least it’s not snowing.” I wasn’t sure whether to ask about his day with Linda or not. Eventually he answered my unasked question.

  “Linda has decided to close the business down.”

  I waited for Ted to continue, biting back the comment that at least I wasn’t the only failure around.

  “It’s the only way I’m afraid. She’s put everything into it but it’s just not going to work. That kind of business seems to have run its course, her clients are getting their own word processors. I feel very sad because I feel responsible for her setting it up.”

  “I thought it was Charles’s way of getting a proper job.” My brother hadn’t had to work, he had enough money from Max to live comfortably off the interest and he earned somet
hing writing and talking about birds, but in 1975 he had decided he needed to do something more and he and Linda had gone into business together, employing Holly. I hadn’t realised Ted had been involved from the beginning. Perhaps I should have done. It wasn’t that I felt possessive about Ted, I was just feeling that he seemed to have helped everyone except me.

  “Certainly, but they really put a lot into it. But when Charles married Holly they decided it wouldn’t be wise to work together, and they always thought they would have a family, so Ram bought them out and they closed the office in Hoylake and Linda opened up down here on her own. It appears, however, that Kambli didn’t do it through the goodness of his heart, it was very much a business arrangement. He arranged a loan in Linda’s name which has been repaid only from the business. Kambli put nothing in and with interest rates rising it has meant too much of the profit was going to the bank.”

  “I would have thought he’d have helped her out. He must have been earning good money.”

  “And there was family money too.”

  “But he just left her to sink or swim?”

  “It seems so. She’s been trying to pay back the loan through years of some of the highest interest rates. When she took out the loan they were 5 or 6% since then they have been as high as 16. It was crippling.”

  “But Ramesh could have paid it all back, he could have cleared it completely. Linda said his family are seriously rich.”

  “But he chose not to. He put her into a position where she had to work all the hours there were and then left her saying she spent too much time working.”

  “I don’t understand how he could do that.” I said the words that were expected of me though I was thinking that this must have been part of Vijay’s plan.

  “Neither does she.”

  “Couldn’t she have gone to Charles? Her parents?”

  “And admit her failure? Admit that her husband wouldn’t help her? I don’t think so.”

  “Perhaps not. But why did she keep on the staff? And the office, that can’t have been cheap to run.”

  “She answered that, I asked the same questions and I have to say I agree with her reasoning. She said ‘success breeds success, if you look down at heel no one will give you any business’. No one would trust a one-man band so she had to have staff. I don’t think she was wrong, and it would have been successful if she hadn’t had that crippling debt.”

  “Which was Ramesh’s fault.”

  “I’m not sure I’d go that far. But he didn’t help.”

  “So she’s going to lose her business as well as her husband.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  I looked out of the window at the passing fields while Ted concentrated on his driving. When my father, that is the man who brought me up as his daughter, had gone bankrupt it had had a catastrophic effect on the family. I had been 12. My world was changed completely. One day we lived in a large house with people to look after us, the next we’d moved to a cramped semi-detached where we had to do everything for ourselves. I hoped Linda would be more resilient than my father who had never recovered from losing his money, even though he had had the support of the woman he loved and who loved him. Linda would be on her own.

  “What about the annulment? Is there any way that can be reversed? Linda was OK about divorce, in fact she was looking forward to getting her freedom back, but an annulment? What are the implications of that?” I tried to sound concerned and understanding, it was obviously what Ted wanted me to feel.

  “Well first and foremost she has to change her name back to Forster in absolutely everything. If she had been divorced she could have kept her married name but not now.”

  “What about her house?”

  “His. I’m afraid she really is in a bit of a spot. There was a letter delivered today giving her notice to quit by the end of the month.”

  “That’s unnecessary.” Perhaps Ted’s concern was because of the seriousness of Linda’s position, not because he felt any personal responsibility for her.

  “I’ve spent some time this morning talking to the Kambli solicitors in London and they are adamant there has never been a marriage. They are insistent that she must leave as he wants the house for one of his cousins. She has to be out by the end of the month.”

  Ramesh wasn’t just being harsh, he was being vindictive. How did this all help Vijay get back at David? I recognised that Linda had been practically part of the family when they had first met, she was Charles’s good friend and business partner, so it must be the whole of our extended family he wanted to wound. I felt a shudder of apprehension. If he would go to these lengths to harm Linda how much more would he hurt a closer member of our family?

  “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  “She doesn’t want me to. She said that now she realises what he is really like she wants to put her life with him behind her. She wants to start afresh as soon as possible.”

  “With nothing?”

  “As you say, she’s going to have to start again but she isn’t starting quite from scratch, she has some of the most important assets in the world.”

  “What’s that? She has no money, no home, no work?”

  “She has family.”

  “She would never go back to her parents for help, and she’d never ask her brothers either.”

  “They will always support her, I mean give her moral support not financial assistance. She would never accept that, you’re quite right. But, perhaps more importantly, she also has friends. Her friends can make her accept their help because they can make it impossible for her to refuse.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She’ll be helping others. She won’t be being helped. I think it’s all going to work out quite well.”

  “How…”

  “We’ll have to go over this later. Here we are, home.”

  I was left to mull over what Ted had said while we went through the evening routine of an early evening drink before cooking and eating dinner. Nothing was said about the events of the day until the washing up had been done.

  “Well, I’ve been patient. How did it go?” Maureen asked as she sat down in front of the fire.

  Neither Ted nor I immediately answered. We looked at each other to see who was going to answer and I nodded to him. How different our relationship was now, we were almost equals. I watched him carefully as he spoke, recognising the mannerisms and tones of voice that had been so familiar, and that I had taken so much for granted. Had I felt jealousy that ‘my friend’ was so concerned about Linda? Was I attracted to him in a way I would never have thought possible? Whatever the feeling was it was completely different from anything I had anticipated.

  “I’m not going to tell you the tale of Linda’s woes and the problems caused by Ramesh’s actions and those of his family. I will tell you the solutions.”

  When neither Maureen nor I interrupted him he continued. “In summary Linda has, as of the end of this week, no husband, no home and no business. I am going to ask Susannah, sorry, ‘Annie’…” he turned towards me, “I like that name by the way, it suits you, it’s softer somehow, gentler than Susannah,” I tried not to feel so pleased. “I’m going to ask Annie to help me here. There will be work to complete, administration to be done as the business winds up and I am hoping she will agree to spend two or three weeks looking after the office.” He looked at me questioningly and I was surprised to feel flattered that Ted had been thinking of me while working out Linda’s problems. “We really need you to help. My plan won’t work without you.”

  I nodded assent.

  “I will tell you all that you have to do, as long as you can make sure all contracts are fulfilled and all clients understand the circumstances. We don’t want to let any one of them down and we need to get in all the money from creditors we possibly can. You say there was a new client today?”

  “It won’t be a long term thing, he’s just here for a few weeks before going back to London, but I’m sure we can
get quite a lot done in the time, and I quoted our highest rate, he’s used to London prices.”

  “March Quarter Day will be the day the office shuts, so you’ll have quite a bit to do in that time. Will you help?”

  “Of course.” I answered, basking in the glow of Ted’s approving smile.

  “Linda will be coming north with me on Friday.” I think, by the mischievous look on his face, Ted knew this would surprise both Maureen and I. “The school holidays begin next week.” I began to realise what Ted had planned.

  “You mean…?”

  “Yes, Charles is getting desperate and Linda is the ideal person. She is going to stay with Charles and look after the children.”

  “But…”

  “They got over any possible attraction years ago, so there won’t be any embarrassment. Everybody’s happy.”

  I caught a look between Ted and Maureen, a comfortable, knowing look. It annoyed me.

  “What if I don’t want her to look after my children? I have to ask the question, though I know I have given away most of my rights.” I didn’t mean my voice to sound so bitter and resentful.

  “I think you have answered your own question, my dear.” Maureen answered for Ted. “Charles has obviously been doing his best against all the odds. I think this is a brilliant solution. The children can only gain.”

  “That’s what Charles thinks. He knows he can’t do it all on his own with a succession of au pairs. It’s not fair on him to expect it.”

  “You’ve spoken to him?”

  “Yes, this afternoon. He is relieved and very, very grateful though obviously shocked and disappointed at the circumstances.”

  “If he hadn’t married Holly he wouldn’t have sold his share of the business, Linda wouldn’t have had to take out the loan, she wouldn’t be in such a mess.” As I spoke I heard the words and how they would sound, not only harsh but also childish.