I Own You

by Dawn McConnell

  ‘I thought we were friends . . .’ The tears now started again. ‘We were like sisters . . .’

  ‘Come on.’ Bryce picked me up off the floor. ‘I’m taking you home.’

  ‘He must have told her a pack of lies,’ I went on, letting Bryce take me by the elbow. ‘He must have promised her a better job, better money. I don’t know! Oh, how could she do this to me?’

  For the rest of the day, I was a mess, unable to believe the scale of Hannah’s betrayal. She must have been working with Stuart for the past month at least to plan something like this. Why? What have I done to her that was so bad? Did she hate me? If she didn’t hate me, why not just walk away? Why take everything from me? What made her go over to his side? The questions went round and round in my head, over and over again.

  I went through all the things I could have done differently. I should have been more supportive of her when I left Stuart, I thought, I should have been more grateful. But would it have made any difference?

  Now I questioned everything we had said and done in the past few years – and even further back. My mind went over conversations we’d had decades before. How long has she been working with him? I wondered. How long has she been on his side? My whole world was shaken; I didn’t believe in anything anymore.

  And I now found myself in an impossible financial situation. The mortgages for the Portuguese villa and the office were all in my name, meaning I personally owed £4,000 a month. And yet, because Stuart was now collecting all the rents, I had no income. So I was snookered. If I didn’t think of something quickly, I was going to go bankrupt within a few months.

  This wasn’t a war anymore; it was an assassination. Stuart and his team wanted to kill me financially – and I knew that Adam Kelly was the man with the gun. After all, I had exposed his scheme years before and driven a wedge between the cousins. Now it was payback time – and he wanted me out of the picture altogether.

  I couldn’t even afford my divorce lawyers anymore, so Bryce stepped in to help me out with cash flow, but he was struggling too with a divorce of his own. How much longer before we both went under?

  I couldn’t think straight; that was the cousins’ plan, of course. I was exactly where they wanted me to be. I had seen the way this family had behaved in the past to former business associates and ex-wives. First they took the things they believed would hurt you most, immobilizing you, and then, when you were at your weakest, they forced you to take whatever pathetic deal they had on the table. I had seen it too many times before not to recognize the pattern.

  But what good did the knowledge do me? I was helpless. Stuart held all the cards: my family, my friends and now my business too.

  In those first few days, I simply crumbled, engulfed by the enormity of my problems. The betrayals had been overwhelming and I had never felt more alone in my life. The banks were closing in, the money was gone . . . Only one thought remained.

  What the hell am I going to do now?

  Chapter 26

  A Change of Luck

  ‘What? Not another writ?’ I ripped open the envelope which the courier had just handed to me. Immediately, I recognized the heavy ivory stationery from Stuart’s lawyer’s office and my heart started to race. It was the third in the last fortnight. I couldn’t cope anymore; I couldn’t afford it anymore. Already my lawyer’s bill was up to £5,000 this week alone. I had to pay it by Friday or they would stop acting for me.

  My eyes scanned the letter. This time it was a demand for £3,524, half of the amount due on Stuart’s credit card bill. Stuart was fighting me on everything, and since all our debt had to be split too, this was another painful way to bleed me dry of all my resources.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ I erupted as I slung the letter onto the desk. My whole head throbbed and, instinctively, I reached into my handbag for my packet of co-codamol. Quickly, I popped four out of the silver foil and knocked them back in one go, followed by a large glug of cold black coffee. My heart was racing and I was breathing heavily but I knew it would only take twenty minutes for the drugs to kick in.

  Just calm down, I told myself as I paced up and down the office, fighting for every breath. It felt like someone had tied a rope around my chest and was pulling hard, squeezing all the air out of me. I just couldn’t get enough air into my body and if I didn’t breathe hard, I felt like I would suffocate. It was panic, pure panic, but I knew the drugs would help. Come on . . . come on . . .

  This had started the month before. After a particularly gruesome day, I had discovered that the strong painkillers helped me to weather the worst of my emotional storms. At first I had just taken two at a time – but it wasn’t long before I needed more.

  Now, I flopped down in my chair and tried to think calming thoughts. In a little over fifteen minutes the familiar warm, soothing feeling came over me, bringing my heart rate down and allowing me to breathe normally again. Something clicked in my brain and now I experienced a lovely floating feeling; the painkillers were working their magic on me. I knew it was wrong, taking drugs to fight my panic attacks, but right now, it was the only thing that worked. And now that I had returned to Planet Earth, I picked up the letter and reread it. Time to phone the lawyer, I thought grimly.

  I ploughed through the rest of the morning, mostly on the phone to the bank, trying to explain why the mortgages had not been paid that month. It made no difference to them, of course, that I had lost control of the company and Stuart was refusing to pay. My name was on the mortgage deeds so I was responsible.

  At 1 p.m. an email pinged into my inbox from Melvin, my accountant: ‘I have good news. Can I come and see you later?’

  I replied straight away: ‘Of course! Good news is always welcome. Swing by any time.’

  An hour later the intercom buzzed and when Melvin walked in, he was grinning like the Cheshire Cat. Instinctively, I smiled back. It was so lovely to see him in his smart, three-piece tweed suit, looking like he had just come from a shooting party in the country. Not that he was from the upper classes. No, Melvin was an ordinary boy from the projects with a sharp brain and an even sharper eye. He just liked to look posh so that people never underestimated him and he certainly carried it off, with his charm and easy manner. Nothing was too much trouble for Melvin and he had even managed to take the divorce in his stride. He’d told both Stuart and me early on that he wouldn’t take sides.

  ‘Dawn,’ he announced as he walked in. ‘I’ve got something for you and I think it’s going to change your life.’

  Now that sounded very good.

  ‘I don’t like what Stuart’s done to you,’ he started. ‘I really don’t. It’s just not fair, trying to steal from you in this way. But I think I have the solution.’ And, with a flourish, he pulled out a piece of paper from his briefcase and held it above his head.

  ‘This! This piece of paper is going to solve your problems.’

  ‘I’m all ears,’ I replied. God knows I need something – anything!

  Now Melvin sat down opposite me and put the paper down on the desk. He leaned forward conspiratorially and said: ‘Dawn, do you remember when Stuart and Adam fell out and I advised you to set up a new company to hold Mayfair Holdings’ assets?’

  ‘Erm. Sort of . . .’ I wracked my brains.

  ‘Hexagon Properties it was called, do you remember?’

  ‘Oh yes, Hexagon!’

  ‘Do you recall that we held a board meeting and the transfer documents were signed by yourself and Stuart in front of an independent solicitor? They transferred all the shares from Mayfair to Hexagon, but you didn’t want to pursue it for whatever reason, and the company was struck off.’

  ‘Okay . . .’

  ‘I have the original share transfer document signed and stamped by the Treasury which proves that that transfer happened. And, funnily enough, you are the sole director and shareholder of Hexagon. So now we can apply to have the company reinstated. If we do that, you, Hexagon, will own Mayfair and you will be able to put yours
elf on the board and sack Stuart and Adam as the current directors.’

  I felt the smile spreading across my face: ‘Really?’

  ‘You’ll be in complete control of the company again.’

  It almost sounded too good to be true. Could I really hope to get the company back so easily?

  ‘Oh Melvin, you are a genius! When can it be done?’

  Melvin said he would get started straight away but it could take up to two weeks for the whole process to be completed. In the meantime, I was to tell no one our plan so that the other side couldn’t scupper it. I couldn’t wait but, at the same time, I hardly dared hope that it would work. After all, so much had gone wrong recently and I was terrified that this was just another useless roll of the dice.

  So I was stunned when, exactly two weeks later, Melvin called me up to say it was complete.

  ‘That’s it, Dawn. You own Hexagon, which owns Mayfair. The company is yours. The rest is up to you.’

  Melvin gave me the codes for my login to the Companies House website and, half an hour later, I was staring at a screen which had the names of the directors of Mayfair Holdings. Now I appointed myself as director and I lined up my husband and his cousin for ‘removal’. It gave me great pleasure to punch the return button over each name, the sound of the key firing like a bullet from a gun. First my husband – bang! – gone. Then the cousin – bang! – gone. Smiling, I printed off confirmations of their removal and read each, line by line, just to make sure they were fired. Mission accomplished.

  The next day I sent the documents to the bank which held the company accounts; they checked and confirmed they were all legal and correct and they contacted Stuart and Adam themselves. Yes! All the assets from Mayfair were now transferred over to me, giving me instant cash to pay the mortgages. I also now had the funds to fight my divorce case.

  But it wasn’t all good news. Once I had hold of the company accounts, I discovered the cousins had already sold six properties in the company and pocketed the money. They had turfed out the tenants of several more flats, presumably ready to sell them quick and cheap. Worse, they had failed to keep up payments on the company loan, plunging Mayfair into special lending.

  I knew what they were up to – they were trying to liquidate the company before the divorce so they could take the money and run. Typical! Stuart was going to sell everything for cash. It was the same old story; they would rape the business, claim it was worthless and piss off with the cash. The thing was, I knew my husband well and I had anticipated this course of action; so, through my very expensive lawyers, I had supposedly put a cap on the properties which prevented them from being sold without a court order. It was called an interdict – a fancy name for a stop order – and it was bulletproof, or so they had told me. Yet now I could clearly see six bullet holes in my company.

  How the hell did we lose six properties with my very expensive interdict in place? I was straight on the phone to my lawyer – and I could not believe what she had to say. Sheepishly, she admitted that the conveyancing for the sales had actually been done by their own firm, on the floor upstairs! Of course I sacked her on the spot.

  Now I needed a new lawyer, my third in this bloody battle for my freedom. It wasn’t easy. I had already been to the top firms in my area and nobody wanted to deal with my divorce. It was too tricky, too dirty. Finally, I was given the name of a solicitor, a lone wolf by the name of Tim Haddon.

  Well, if Tim was a wolf, he certainly didn’t look the part. He was a thin, frail man with thick-rimmed glasses and a brown cardigan with suede elbow patches. Surrounded by books and papers, he was less like a wolf and more like an owlish academic and I wondered if he was made of the right stuff for this fight. So when we had our first meeting, I didn’t sugar coat it. I told him about the kind of people we were up against. I explained that this was a family with a lot of money stashed away in suitcases, people who always played dirty and would go to any lengths to try and destroy me. I told Tim about all the nasty and vindictive things I had witnessed over the years, about Stuart’s conviction for attacking Bryce, about the way they had tried to take my companies away from me twice already – and I warned him that this was just the start.

  ‘So I’ll understand,’ I concluded, ‘if you don’t want to act for me.’

  To my surprise, an impish little smile broke out across his face.

  ‘Of course I’ll act for you!’ He even grinned. ‘It sounds like fun. I’m looking forward to the challenge!’

  I don’t know why but, immediately, I knew this man would be as good as his word. He explained that he had worked for many of the big companies in his time but always preferred to be his own boss. Straight away, he instructed a QC as he said we were going to need counsel to work with. Within two weeks we had our QC, a fearless firebrand from Newcastle called Deirdre, who was highly respected in the courts. Now I had both money and might in my corner, but the battle was only just beginning.

  My first job was to secure Mayfair. Adam and Stuart’s raping of the company – selling our properties but pocketing the cash, rather than reinvesting – had left a huge hole in the company accounts, but that wasn’t the only problem. Right now, the rents didn’t cover the company loans; an all-too-familiar story thanks to the recession. Everywhere I looked I saw previously rock-solid businesses going to the wall. The banks weren’t lending anymore so if you needed money, you had to find it yourself or fold. I only had a short timeframe to get my finances in order or Mayfair and I would also go the same way.

  So, first, I rented out the house in Portugal to cover the mortgage. Then I got a court order to get Stuart removed from our Glasgow house. He wasn’t paying rent, so he had no right to be there. This would be another uphill battle but, after seven months, he was finally evicted and I managed to rent that out too. But still the rents from the properties weren’t enough to cover the bank loan to the company and I needed cash. Fast.

  ‘I can put you in touch with some men,’ Melvin said when I told him I needed £50,000 to cover my outgoings. ‘But these are serious criminals, Dawn. You don’t mess them around. If you don’t pay them back, they will come after you.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. Desperation made me fearless. I wasn’t thinking in terms of months anymore, I just had to survive from one week to the next. Besides, I had a meeting set up with the bank in a few days’ time and I was hoping that that would help ease the pressure. In the meantime, I had bills to pay and absolutely no means of paying them. So now I borrowed £50k cash from a criminal gang.

  The transaction took place at an empty industrial estate where I met a middle-aged man in a leather jacket who handed me a Tesco’s carrier bag. He gave me one month exactly to return the money.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ Bryce was shocked when I told him about my dodgy deal that night at home and showed him the bag full of rolled-up £50 notes. ‘You could get yourself killed!’

  ‘I won’t let him win, Bryce,’ I snapped back. ‘I won’t let that bastard drag me under. I know this is a risky strategy but, trust me, I’m going to make it work.’

  ‘So what happens if you can’t pay him back in a month?’ Bryce looked worried.

  ‘I’ll pay him back.’

  ‘But what if you can’t?’

  ‘Please, Bryce, just have a little faith in me. I’ve got a plan. You’ve just got to trust me.’

  The following Monday, I walked into the bank for a pre-arranged meeting about the company loan. They had asked who would be present and I’d lied, saying it would just be me. So the receptionist was surprised when I turned up with Melvin, Tim and my QC, Deirdre, in tow. Already, I had them on the back foot and that’s just where I needed them for this crucial fight.

  Like many small businesses, we had been sold something called a structured collar loan in the heyday of bank lending, before the recession hit in 2008. They were recommended to us as the best products on the market and, admittedly, they sounded like a pretty good deal at the time. If interest rates went up from, sa
y, 2 per cent to 7 per cent, we still only paid interest on 2 per cent. So the loan repayments were capped for a certain length of time, or given a ‘collar’ to prevent them going up, hence the name ‘collar’ loans. However, if interest rates went down, we would have to pay a 10 per cent premium on the loan.

  ‘But when would that happen?’ the bank had argued. ‘Never!’

  Many of us in business at that time had been convinced that interest rates would never drop. Then the world economy went belly up and the Bank of England cut interest rates to 0.5 per cent. All of a sudden, loads of businesses were made bankrupt by loans that had used to cost £2,000 a month but now cost them £12,000 a month. It had happened to us, too, except now the Financial Services Authority had stepped in and said it was reviewing the mis-selling of these products and, in the meantime, our payments were returned to what they had been before, which was a huge relief.

  But it wasn’t enough to put me back on top. Yet Melvin and I had worked out that Mayfair Holdings was owed £500k from the mis-selling. If I could claw back some of what we were owed, I might just be able to rescue the company. That’s what I was hoping to achieve from today’s meeting. It was make-or-break time.

  I was nervous and I could hear the sound of my own heart thudding in my ears so now, as we waited for our meeting, I slipped my hand into my bag and popped open two pills. I was on about twelve pills a day, including tramadol, which had the same effect as the co-codamol. Nobody knew, not even Bryce.

  A minute later, Sadie Peach, the business development manager, appeared, flanked by two assistants, each carrying a boxful of files. We exchanged polite hellos and handshakes, then took our seats opposite each other at a large conference table, like two rugby teams squaring up for a match.

  My QC didn’t waste any time: ‘Ms Peach, we’ve calculated that in the mis-selling of the structured collar loan you currently owe my client £500,000. My client wants her money back and she wants it quickly. She has a business to run and she cannot afford to wait for the result of the FSA investigation. And because we don’t trust your bank we decided to look at another loan you made to Silverbridge dating back to 2001. Did you know that it says the interest on the loan is 4.6 per cent but you’ve been charging her 5.3 per cent for the last eleven years, so you owe her £18,000, which we want by close of business today. Plus interest, of course.’