The Homecoming

by Rosie Howard

  Maddy shook her head, hopelessly.

  ‘Look,’ he said, trapping her hands between his own, warm, strong ones. ‘I’ve said it before, you don’t have to suffer like this. You can beat this and what you’ve just told me makes me even more certain that you can. Let Duncan help you, Maddy. I can even be in the room, if you want me. If that would help?’

  She nodded, her head bowed, sniffing back the tears.

  ‘Maddy, I need you to trust me to help you sort this out. Do you trust me? Can you do that?’

  She thought, seriously. He had been a good friend. He was heroic, carrying her down off the mountain, protecting her from Kevin … of course she could trust him, couldn’t she?

  She nodded, dubiously.

  ‘So, I’m telling you, the way to go forward with this is to see Duncan. Will you do it?’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s leave it there. For now. Here,’ he added, handing her a paper napkin to blow her nose, which she attempted to do with as little honking as possible.

  At that point, two enormous plates of food arrived. Ben’s was a full English breakfast and Maddy ended up with a plate too.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked, daunted at two mounds covered in a yellow, creamy sauce.

  ‘Eggs Florentine,’ said Ben. ‘Poached eggs, hollandaise and spinach. You need protein,’ he said. ‘And iron, by the look of you. You’re terribly pale.’

  He pushed her knife and fork towards her, but she didn’t move.

  ‘Just start,’ he said. ‘Sometimes you don’t know you’re hungry until you’re actually eating.’

  She sighed, feeling the tension draining out of her, and picked up her fork.

  ‘Anyhow,’ said Ben, shovelling in a large mouthful of fried egg and sausage, ‘what else? Haven’t seen you for ages.’

  ‘I know! I was beginning to think you were avoiding me.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, blushing. ‘It’s … I’ve been a bit … busy.’

  ‘There is something else as it happens,’ she said. ‘Much as I regret having to admit you were right, it turns out Patrick is my father after all.’

  Ben froze, his fork halfway to his mouth. ‘Tell me,’ he said, putting it down and turning towards her.

  So she did. Mentioning her conversations with Patrick and then her mother, their love affair, its end, her mother’s decision to raise her alone, Patrick’s guilt over her fall, his desperation to make amends, and their current obvious happiness.

  ‘And the whole motorbike man thing?’ he asked, his voice tight with tension. ‘What about that? All forgotten now, is it? Conveniently brushed under the carpet?’

  She looked at him, nervously.

  ‘Patrick is my father. I absolutely know that now.’

  ‘Well that’s just peachy then, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Don’t you think?’ he said, incredulous. ‘I mean – all I’m saying is, your mother has a bit of a record, doesn’t she? First she tells you you essentially don’t have a father, then it seems convenient to tell you a story about a random affair with a married man, then a few years later we’re onto a third version where Patrick is – drum roll – your father after all.’ He broke off, scowling.

  Maddy edged away from him. She had never seen him so angry.

  Ben took a deep breath. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m not … It’s just a bit weird, don’t you think?’

  Maddy shrugged. ‘I believe her,’ she said simply.

  ‘Of course you do. Of course. It’s none of my business, anyway.’ He took a deep breath and let it out. ‘And they’re happy with each other now? All’s well that ends well?’

  ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you?’ said Maddy, relieved the fury she had somehow triggered was gone again. ‘However, Patrick has already said that if he can’t be this whole ridiculous male protector thing, supporting her financially, putting a roof over her head, that he will refuse to be with her altogether,’ she said, her brow furrowing. ‘I really worry that if he loses the pub, he genuinely will throw away the only other good thing in his life …’

  Ben polished his plate with a triangle of fried bread and popped it in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.

  ‘They’ll work it out,’ he said.

  ‘That’s your professional opinion, is it, Mr Psychology Guru Extraordinaire?’ said Maddy, looking with amazement at her empty plate.

  ‘It is. Like you said yourself, they love each other. Plus – whatever I might personally think of your mother – they’re kind of getting wiser as they get older … Have faith; love will find a way. So,’ he said, stretching widely, nearly knocking the baseball cap off the market trader sitting behind him, ‘we should wish them well, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m pleased you’re pleased,’ she said. ‘Anyhow, to change the subject completely, what’s with you and Jonno meeting with Dennis and looking thick as thieves?’

  Ben’s face went blank.

  ‘Ah … can’t talk about that. Sorry.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. No, listen, I wish I could – but I can’t … not now.’

  And he wanted her to trust him, thought Maddy. That was rich.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  With the Development Committee meeting looming, Patrick and Helen were on a mission. The whiteboard was looking increasingly complex and Helen was being kept busy with paperwork. Her legal contact back at home was drawing up a Memorandum and Articles of Association to form the community company that would own the pub, assuming they managed to buy it, and Patrick had taken charge of the lobbying and recruiting of community members to co-own the business.

  With a shared cause, they were barely even arguing.

  Maddy, Serena and Flora had their own whiteboard at Home Farm and were generally stuck around the kitchen table drinking too much coffee, working the Bespoke Consortium figures and monitoring their marketing activities anxiously, waiting for the ‘flood’ of orders, which would hopefully come in and scoop the whole enterprise out of the ‘new company’ danger zone. When they had run out of other things to worry about, Serena would google ‘new business failure rates’ and relate them to Maddy and Flora until they begged her to stop. One morning, the three of them gathered around the whiteboard gloomily.

  ‘It’s not bad,’ said Serena, waving her coffee at the sales figures.

  ‘But it’s not enough,’ insisted Maddy. ‘If we don’t hit our turnover targets by January …’

  ‘We could find more funding?’

  ‘Not soon enough.’

  ‘What about the trade fair?’ asked Flora.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Serena. ‘We’re in it up to our necks with the expense of it. I know, I know … my fault … We’ve got to make it pay.’

  Flora and Maddy said nothing.

  ‘We just need to meet one major buyer there,’ said Maddy at last. ‘It’s an outside chance …’

  ‘But it’s the best chance we’ve got,’ said Serena.

  Simon had emailed the pitch he and Maddy had to prepare for the massive two-year contract. As always, he had her down as half of a double act, the operations guy to his strategic genius, whilst cunningly making sure most of the work was hers. She worked hard on her presentation, knowing preparation was the one thing that stopped her being paralysingly nervous. Their slot was down first thing, so she would be driving up or catching a train early in the morning, getting up in the dark, which always made her feel depressed.

  Maddy was relieved when the day of the Development Committee meeting arrived. She drove Patrick and Helen there and arrived early so they could sit near the front.

  Other people drifted in, most of them giving Patrick a wave of greeting, although Maddy recognised only a few. Zach had planned to meet them there.

  ‘That loathsome Dennis is here,’ Maddy whispered to Patrick. ‘Don’t look now, but he’s talking to a greasy-looking bloke in a suit. Do you suppose he’s the property developer who want
s the land?’

  ‘Does he look like a property developer?’

  Maddy checked him out. Shiny suit, red face, greased-back hair. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Do we know if or when the property is up for sale?’

  ‘Nope.’

  The Committee were now filing in, looking pleased with themselves.

  Maddy flicked through the printed agenda, copies of which had been left on the chairs.

  ‘This is absolutely vast,’ she said, her heart sinking. ‘They’re hearing about fifteen applications before ours. It’s alphabetical, by the look of it.’

  ‘Lucky we don’t come even further down the alphabet, then,’ said Patrick. ‘Zach did warn me. You don’t have to turn up at the beginning, you can just come in for your bit, but it’s a dangerous game working out when that is.’

  Given Patrick’s agitation, Maddy really hoped Zach didn’t play it too close to the wire.

  As if he was reading her mind, Lord Havenbury slid around the door just as it was closing for the meeting to start.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, as he slid in next to Maddy. ‘Trustee meeting. Nightmare.’

  Despite the stress and the high stakes, Maddy found the whole tenor of the meeting deeply soporific. Interminable discussions about development plans and reports from highways seemed to accompany every planning case. Zach occasionally leant over to whisper explanations and comments to Patrick and to Maddy as they went along.

  ‘You know an awful lot about it all,’ whispered Maddy.

  ‘Land management,’ he whispered back. ‘It’s having an estate to run that does it.’

  ‘What’s this bit?’ asked Maddy, pointing to the recommendation at the bottom of each application. Generally, the ‘recommendation’ was to ‘approve’.

  ‘That,’ whispered Zach grimly, ‘is the steer from the paid planning officers. Basically, they’re telling the Development Committee what to do.’

  ‘Do they listen?’

  ‘Almost always.’

  She checked the recommendation for their one. ‘Approve’, it said. Her heart sank a little more.

  He gave her a grim smile. ‘Just the battle not the war, remember,’ he murmured, but she thought they were losing an awful lot of battles recently. It would be nice to have a win for a change. Maybe they were saving up their luck for the auction, whenever that was going to be. That was really the bit that counted.

  Then they were on. Zach was the first up to speak and was commanding. He swept his gaze across the entire room and also gave a brief nod acknowledging the councillors sitting on the stage. Then he spoke. ‘I would simply like to observe,’ he said, ‘that the Havenbury Arms has been so named after my family, and serving the community as a hostelry since the seventeenth century. The present incumbent,’ he gestured to Patrick, ‘has been running it with nigh inexhaustible energy, for at least the last thirty years, despite being – in more recent years – weighed down by the frequently unreasonable demands of the pub company who have taken control over the last decade. This extraordinary and unattractive application to convert this key town centre plot to a residential building site does at least indicate that Top Taverns may be ready to relinquish control and put up the property to auction. We must exploit this opportunity to return the Havenbury Arms to those who put the community first, preserving it as a community asset and ensuring its continued viability into the future. One cannot overestimate the importance of maintaining the diversity and energy of our high street. It is an organism that cannot survive if any part of it is taken away. It is a credit to the strength of community feeling that our landlord here has managed, in a staggeringly short period of time, to obtain financial promises from community members amounting to just over two hundred thousand pounds. I am delighted to use today’s event to confirm that I am prepared to contribute a further one hundred thousand pounds to that sum, providing the community control is maintained.’

  Maddy was watching Dennis’s face when it came to that bit and was pleased to see him puff up with rage.

  There was only one other speaker and – surprise, surprise – it was the oleaginous property developer who presented a slick and, Maddy felt, almost entirely untrue argument about the wide range of licensed restaurants and bars remaining in the town if the pub were to close and how they were answering housing need with high-quality design respectful of the high street’s unique heritage …

  ‘Blah, blah,’ muttered Patrick. ‘Just creating some hugely expensive, totally unaffordable Frankenstein building with every stylistic feature you can think of doesn’t make it classy or relevant.’

  ‘“Gob-ons”, they call them,’ replied Zach, in agreement. ‘When they chuck pastiche features onto crappy brick boxes.’

  Surely the Committee won’t have their heads turned by that silly nonsense, thought Maddy.

  ‘Any more representations?’ said the Chairman. ‘I’m afraid we really don’t have time to hear everyone … You, sir,’ he said, pointing to a red-faced, belligerent-looking man in the front row.

  Maddy winced. She wouldn’t have chosen him herself.

  ‘Lord Havenbury makes a damned good argument,’ he said forcefully, jabbing his finger at the committee. ‘You lot are up there to represent us. I propose you hold a vote in the audience before you decide.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ came the murmur rolling around the room like thunder.

  ‘No … no …’ said the Chairman nervously. ‘Now, that – that’s not quite right,’ he said. ‘It’s not that we are supposed to “represent” you – well, no, we are supposed to represent you – what I mean is that we don’t have to … at least, we represent you by making my – our – own minds up. Yes,’ he nodded sharply. ‘That’s what we’re supposed to do.’ He took a swig from a glass of water and smoothed his tie.

  After a further brief bit of self-important faffing, the Chairman invited the councillors to vote. A kind-looking, grey-bearded guy immediately voted against the application. The others squirmed, whispered to each other and then – extraordinarily – with nervous glances towards the audience, the others, one by one, voted: in favour.

  There was a brief, stunned silence and then a surge of noise as the audience realised what had happened.

  ‘Unbelievable!’ burst out Patrick. ‘Absolutely unbelievable. You’ve got a lot to answer for,’ he said, jabbing a finger at the town council chairman – a slimy little man who Patrick knew vaguely from town events. He shuffled in his seat and refused to meet Patrick’s eye.

  ‘Come on,’ said Zach, catching Helen’s eye without Patrick seeing, ‘time we weren’t here.’ Ushering Maddy ahead he gave Helen his arm and led her out, giving Patrick no choice but to follow. As they made their way down to the door at the back Maddy saw that – again – Jonno and Ben had snuck in and were standing at the back of the hall. Jonno was nodding at something Ben was saying. They both looked cheerful enough at the outcome but Ben, seeing Maddy, limited himself to a brief wave as he and Jonno slipped out of the room ahead of them. When the little group got to the foyer the two men had already gone.

  ‘Did you see him?’ said Patrick. ‘That Jonno chap from the nightclub? I bet he’s bloody loving this. Take me out of the equation and he’s laughing, isn’t he?’

  Maddy didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even know what to think.

  Just as she thought she and Zach might be able to get Helen and Patrick out of the building without anything else happening, the odious Dennis came out of the room, obsequiously holding the door open for his little property developer mate.

  ‘Ah, Patrick,’ he said cordially, as if they’d met at a cocktail party. ‘How are things?’

  ‘That’s a bloody good question coming from you, isn’t it?’

  Helen raised her eyes to heaven.

  ‘What else have you got up your sleeve?’ he continued crossly. ‘I take it you appreciate you can’t just knock down the pub and build whenever you like,’ he said, this time addressing the developer. ‘You may have got your the
oretical building plot, but there is the small but important matter that it doesn’t belong to you.’

  ‘Doesn’t belong to you either,’ interjected Dennis.

  Maddy and Helen groaned in unison.

  Patrick went a further shade of purple. ‘But I am – you seem to forget – still in possession of a current and legitimate lease.’

  Disappointingly, Dennis seemed unmoved. ‘Aaaanyway,’ he went on, with extraordinary courage under the circumstances, ‘we will see what tomorrow brings because – as you may know – it is more than possible to sell a property with an incumbent tenant, especially with a lease which is just about to expire.’

  ‘When?’ interjected Zach sharply.

  ‘When?’ echoed Dennis, turning his attention to Zach for the first time.

  ‘Yes, when? When is the pub up for sale?’ Zach repeated, with heavy patience.

  ‘The auction is tomorrow, as you well know,’ said Dennis.

  ‘As we well know?’ exploded Patrick again.

  ‘Don’t give him the satisfaction,’ muttered Helen, putting a calming hand on his arm.

  ‘The property is being auctioned tomorrow?’ repeated Zach.

  ‘Of course!’ said Dennis. ‘Did I not say?’ He didn’t bother waiting for a response. ‘I suppose I assumed the office might have informed you, otherwise I’d have mentioned it myself – but no matter, the auction lists have been out for weeks so the information has been “in the public domain”,’ he said, doing the rabbit ear thing with his fingers, which made Maddy want to punch him even more than she usually did.

  ‘Fine,’ said Zach, again grasping Patrick’s arm and leading him away. ‘Fine,’ he repeated, over his shoulder. ‘We’ll see you there.’

  ‘Tomorrow, for God’s sake,’ blurted Patrick as they stood outside.

  ‘Tomorrow’s fine,’ said Helen. ‘We’re as ready as we’ll ever be. I’ll be glad to settle the matter one way or another,’ she said to Patrick. To Maddy and Zach she added, ‘Patrick needs to know where he stands; he can’t cope with much more of this.’