‘When will that be?’
‘A day. Two or three days. A week at the outside. I shall pay you back in full, naturally. Every penny. You don’t have to take any notice of that sixty per cent. That’s just for the others.’
Elsie relaxed and he let go of her hands. ‘Oh well,’ she said. ‘That’s different then.’
‘It’s just the big firms that are the trouble,’ Rigg went on. ‘People like Jaffa Jewels. They’re the very devil. Won’t give you time to pay. Want their money yesterday. That sort of thing. That’s why I’ve asked for this arrangement, do you see? It’s to give me a few months to sort things out for them.’
‘Yes,’ Elsie said. ‘I see.’ But then she thought of something else. ‘But it says here I’ve got to prove my claim.’
‘Nothing to it,’ her son-in-law said, picking up the statement. ‘All you have to do is fill in this claim form. See. You enter the amount I owe you there and sign at the bottom there. Simple.’
‘And that’s all I’ve got to do?’
He smiled at her lovingly. ‘That’s all.’
‘I haven’t got to go to court?’
‘Good heavens no. Not if you don’t want to. In fact it would be better for Ali and me if you didn’t.’
‘Would it?’
‘That’s the other thing I was going to ask you. My consultant’s very good and he says it would be better all round if Ali could get to the court and appear with me. Supportive wife and all that sort of thing. Only we couldn’t take the kids…’
‘I’ll look after them for you,’ Elsie offered at once. ‘Was that what you were going to ask me?’
‘You’re a darling,’ Rigg said. ‘An absolute darling.’ He kissed her warmly. ‘Just one other thing before I go. You won’t say anything to Ali about all those stupid figures, will you? There’s no need to worry her and I shall have it all sorted out in a week or two.’
‘No, no,’ Elsie assured him. ‘Leave it to me. I won’t say a word, not if you don’t want me to. What time will you bring the kiddies?’
‘About ten o’clock.’
In fact it was nearer half past nine because, for the first time since he left boarding school, Rigg was up early. He arrived at Shore Street, dapper in his grey suit, at ten past eight on the prescribed October morning. There was even time for a cooked breakfast before he and Ali set out for Brighton.
Alison was so nervous that she burnt the bacon, and spilt cornflakes all over the table. Even though Rigg had explained everything to her and planned it all down to the last button – arranging for Mum to look after the kids, which was kind of him, and issuing strict instructions as to what she was to wear – she couldn’t help worrying about this meeting. It could so easily go wrong, particularly in a recession. It had come as a shock to know that he had got into real debt, but he had explained that it was all due to Harry Elton running off with the money and, in any case, they were all negligible amounts and he could pay them off in no time. Even so it was cold comfort. It was all very well saying the creditors would be bound to vote for him to go on trading. They might not. And what would happen to him if they didn’t? Poor dear Rigg, it’s so unfair, she thought, admiring him (that pale grey colour always had suited him). It was all this awful recession causing the trouble, of course. He couldn’t help it
‘Ready for the off?’ he said.
She finished putting on the last application of mascara, checked her handbag, straightened her skirt. The suit he’d chosen was her smart blue one (a real power-dressing affair) with a short straight skirt and a little boxy jacket with padded shoulders. She could appreciate what a good choice it was, but she hadn’t worn it since she got pregnant with Emma and the skirt was a bit too tight. She pulled in her stomach and buttoned the jacket over the bulge, standing on tiptoe to check the result in the mirror over the mantelpiece.
‘You look fine,’ Rigg said, standing behind her to comb his hair. ‘We’re a handsome couple.’
She should have felt proud at the compliment but she didn’t. In that moment and with a perversity that shamed her, she knew she didn’t want to be part of a handsome couple, didn’t want to go to court, didn’t want to be involved in any of this awful business. She wanted to be in her comfortable jeans and an old jersey, striding along the beach with the kids.
Rigg smiled at his reflection in the mirror. ‘Ready?’ he asked.
It didn’t seem to take any time at all to drive to the Ship Inn. Rigg kept to the fast lane all the way, overtaking everything else on the road, and Alison sat beside him and worried. Usually, she enjoyed a trip to Brighton but now she took no pleasure from the familiar landmarks. Under the elegant curves of the white bridge, over the Adur, buffeted by cross-winds, along the long Hove promenade where the hotels reared up like honey-coloured cliffs, past the wreckage of the West Pier and the new frontage of the Grand Hotel where Maggie Thatcher had nearly been blown up … it was all simply a journey. And a journey, what’s more, with a trial at the end of it.
They parked the car and she followed Rigg into the hotel foyer, feeling bemused and trying to look as though she was a guest. It was a very grand foyer, all panelled walls and thick carpets and elaborate flower arrangements. There was a dark-haired man in a business suit waiting for them at the reception desk and Rigg introduced them, ‘Harvey Shearing, my insolvency consultant – my wife.’ Alison was too keyed up to notice what he was like.
Then they were walking along a carpeted corridor, up a short flight of steps, along another corridor, and being ushered into a plain, square, empty room. It made Alison feel demoralised because it looked exactly like a classroom, with the teacher’s desk at the front – covered in green baize and immediately under the window – and chairs set out in long rows as though they were waiting for the class. If there’d been a cane on the green baize she wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.
Handbag on her lap, she sat down at the far end of the front row while Rigg and the man called Harvey stood beside the teacher’s table and talked in low tones like conspirators. People began to arrive, ordinary people, but all of them holding brief cases and official looking folders. The seats filled up. A waitress served coffee and biscuits. Rigg and Harvey continued to talk. Two important people made an entrance and took up their positions in the front row. One was a woman with red hair and a lot of dangly jewellery, the other a young man with glasses that he had to keep pushing up his nose. The man called Harvey went over to stand behind the table and gave a warning cough. Rigg took a seat beside his wife.
‘Is it going to start?’ Alison whispered. She was so nervous that her hands were sweating.
‘They’re the Inland Revenue,’ Rigg whispered back, jerking his head towards the redhead and the man with glasses. ‘They’re the ones we’ve got to watch.’
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Harvey said, oiling a smile over everyone in the room. ‘If you’re ready, I suggest we proceed. I have a few opening remarks to make and then I shall ask Mr Rigby Toan to give you a resume of his proposal, if you’re agreeable.’
Afterwards Alison couldn’t remember anything that was said in those important opening speeches. Harvey’s seemed to go on for hours, explaining procedure and talking about the Insolvency Act. Then Rigg stood up and told everyone what a marvellous money spinner the video shop was, how his difficulties were all due to the recession, how he could cover the sixty per cent payment easily by selling his flat in Spain and how he could continue trading profitably in two of his outlets if they would agree. She worried because he hadn’t said anything about Harry Elton and the missing money (which meant that he hadn’t told them the exact truth). And when the meeting was thrown open to questions, her heart was pounding with anxiety in case they asked him something that would catch him out.
But Rigg was smooth as velvet, answering every question with an expression of transparent honesty which could have charmed trust from a cynic.
He agreed with the redhead from the Inland Revenue that his income tax would be p
aid within a twelvemonth. ‘No problem. Once the flat is sold.’ He estimated that the flat would sell ‘well within the allotted twelve months.’ He explained that the new rent for his largest shop was more than he could afford and that consequently he would have to close it down, ‘no matter what the outcome of this meeting.’ He smiled when they asked him if he had any other problems with any of his businesses. ‘None that you don’t all know about,’ he said. ‘Trade is down, but then it’s down everywhere. My video shop – which is a limited liability company and doesn’t come into the terms of this proposed agreement as Mr Shearing explained to you – my video shop is doing excellent business.’
‘What’s your weekly turnover in this business?’ the Inland Revenue man asked, pushing at his glasses again.
‘Well I haven’t got the exact figures with me,’ Rigg said, ‘but I should say we average out at about a thousand a week.’
There was a murmur of approval at that, and the two from the Inland Revenue whispered to one another.
‘Any more questions?’ Mr Shearing asked when the buzz had died down. ‘No. Then I suggest Mr and Mrs Toan and I adjourn to another room while you consider what you’ve heard. Is that agreeable to you?’
They adjourned to a cloakroom a bit further along the corridor, a dark, chilly space like something long abandoned. There were no seats but by that time Rigg and Alison were so tense they couldn’t have sat down even if there had been. Rigg prowled the length of the counter and back, up and down like a caged tiger. Alison fidgeted from foot to foot, as their new ally smoked one cigarette after another and told them he thought it had all gone extremely well.
‘Having a flat in Spain as your major asset could well prove decisive,’ he said. ‘They were all impressed by that.’
‘Do you think so?’ Rigg said.
‘It’s a strong proposal,’ Mr Shearing said. ‘If the Inland Revenue will buy it, you’ll be home and dry.’
Privately, Alison thought the Inland Revenue would be most unlikely to ‘buy’ anything. But her mouth was too dry to venture an opinion.
‘They liked the sound of my takings, didn’t you think so?’ Rigg was saying, when the man with the glasses appeared before them to say that they’d finished their discussions and were ready to proceed.
With her heart in her throat, Alison followed the three men back into the schoolroom. Papers were passed to the teacher’s table. Mr Shearing made two neat piles of them, took a pen and a notebook from his brief case and did a few sums. Then he stood up and announced, with a perfectly straight face, that the meeting had voted in favour of the agreement. Mr Toan was to be allowed to continue trading, on certain conditions laid down by the Inland Revenue, which he was sure would be entirely acceptable to Mr Toan. The debts were to be paid off within two years, at sixty per cent which would be raised by the sale of Mr Toan’s flat in Spain. And that was that.
Rigg maintained his self-control until the creditors had left the room and there was no one to see him but Mr Shearing, who was beaming, and Alison, who was too stunned to realise what had happened. He gave a roar of delight, seized his wife round the waist and lifted her off her feet to kiss her.
‘We’ve won!’ he crowed. ‘We’ve won, Kitten! I never thought we would, but we’ve won. It’s all right. We’re off the hook. This calls for champagne.’
There were all sorts of things that Alison wanted to ask but they were private and had to wait until she and Rigg were driving home. By then her head was so muzzy with the champagne that she found it hard to concentrate. Nevertheless she struggled to put the important questions together and to pronounce the words clearly.
‘You’ll have to pay all these debts eventually, won’t you?’ she asked.
‘That’s years off,’ Rigg said. ‘We don’t have to worry about that for months and months.’
‘Does this mean you’ll be able to come home now, Rigg?’
‘Not quite yet,’ Rigg said expansively. ‘Have to wait till the dust settles.’
‘But … if you’re going to sell the shop you won’t have anywhere to live, will you.’
‘I’m not selling the shop.’
‘But you said…’ Surely he’d said … something about the rent being …
‘That was just for the punters,’ Rigg said, ‘No. I shall keep the shop and close Baubles. Don’t worry Kitten. We’ve got it made.’
Alison closed her eyes and gave herself up to the rhythm of the car and the euphoria of champagne. Rigg was right. They’d won. There was nothing to worry about.
Chapter Eleven
‘Mummy! Mummy! Come quickly!’ Jon’s voice shrilled from outside the front door. ‘Something terrible’s happened!’
Alison was icing cakes in the kitchen. Mark was waiting to take them to Mum’s in his car for Friday tea, so she was working quickly. Which was why the door was opened and the kids were out in the street, even though it was none too warm and getting dark.
Jon rushed into the house, holding something round and dark in both cupped hands. He scampered towards her, with Emma toddling after him, yelling, ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ at the top of her excited voice.
‘Steady on!’ Mark said, putting out an arm to stop their onrush. ‘What have you got there?’
It was a baby hedgehog.
‘It can’t walk,’ Jon explained. ‘It keeps rolling about. Look.’
‘Put it down on the floor,’ Alison said. ‘It won’t walk on your hand, now will it.’
The animal was lowered, very gently, on to the lino. It lay on its side for a few seconds while the children squatted beside it and they all watched it. Then it gave a shudder and tried to curl itself into a ball, tucking its sharp snout down between its front paws and hauling up its hind quarters, painfully and with obvious effort. As it rolled they saw what was the matter with it. One of its back legs was sticking out in a most awkward way and bent at an impossible angle.
‘It’s got a broken leg,’ Alison said, ‘poor little thing.’
‘You get on with the cakes and I’ll put it out of its misery,’ Mark said, bending down to pick it up.
Young though they were, Jon and Emma knew by instinct what being put out of your misery meant. They folded themselves across the injured animal, furiously protective. ‘No,’ Jon said. ‘You’re not to.’
Bending towards her children to reassure them, Alison noticed something else about the hedgehog; ‘It’s crawling alive with fleas,’ she said in horror. ‘I don’t care what you do with it, but it can’t stay in my kitchen, Jon. We shall all be lousy.’
‘It’s got a broken leg so we’ve got to look after it, haven’t we?’ Jon pleaded, but with determination in his face.
‘I’ll take it,’ Mark said, trying to be tactful. ‘Put it back where it belongs.’
But Jon wasn’t going to allow that either. ‘No,’ he yelled. ‘You’re not to.’ At that Emma began to roar and she went on roaring even though Alison picked her up and tried to soothe her.
‘It’s a poor little baby hedgehog,’ Jon yelled with tears in his eyes. ‘It doesn’t want to be moved. It wants to stay here. I’ll look after you, you poor hedgehog!’
‘Oh for heaven’s sake!’ Mark said into the uproar.
There was so much noise that Alison couldn’t think straight. The entire kitchen seemed to be screaming; the pots and pans black as open mouths, the kettle gathering itself to squeal, the cooker swollen with unnecessary heat. ‘Calm down,’ she begged. And Brad’s ordinary voice spoke into the racket.
‘Boo-ba-doo kids,’ she called from the living room. ‘What’s the problem? Blimey, it’s parky in here. D’you want me to shut the door, Ali?’
Both children stopped crying and Jon rushed towards her for support, explaining about the hedgehog as he dragged her into the kitchen.
‘Poor thing!’ Brad said. ‘We’ll have to take it to the vet.’
Jon was still suspicious. ‘What’s a vet?’
‘A nice man who makes animals better when they’re ill,
’ Brad explained. ‘Got a shoe box have yer?’
‘It’s crawling alive with fleas,’ Alison warned.
Brad wasn’t deterred. ‘What’s a few fleas between friends?’ she said. ‘Come on then kids. Look lively.’
The atmosphere in the kitchen had changed completely. Alison found an old shoe box, Jon produced a felted jersey for bedding, the injured hedgehog was lifted up and put in its new nest.
‘Now it’ll be all nice and ready for you in the morning,’ Alison said.
‘Morning?’ Brad grinned. ‘We’re not waiting till the morning, are we kids.’
‘You’re not going now, are you?’
‘Evening surgery,’ Brad told her. ‘Accident and emergency.’
‘But what about paying for it?’ Alison said. ‘It’ll cost the earth.’ She felt mean mentioning money, but she couldn’t afford vet’s fees.
‘My treat,’ Brad said. ‘Come on gang.’
‘She’s a case, your friend Brad,’ Mark admired, as he and his sister watched Jon being strapped into the back seat of the Mini and the car seat being fixed for Emma.
‘She’s a dear,’ Alison said. ‘And generous.’
The word reminded Mark of his sister’s predicament.
‘How’s it going?’ he asked. ‘Are you managing all right?’
‘We’re fine,’ Alison said, very firmly.
Mark looked relieved. ‘That’s all right then. Are those cakes packed?’
On the passenger seat of Brad’s Mini the hedgehog lay in the shoe box in an uncomfortable heap and looked at Jon with one small sloe-black eye.
‘Do you think it knows?’ the boy asked.
‘Don’t ask me, sunshine,’ Brad said, smiling at him through the driving mirror. ‘I don’t speak hedgehog.’
‘Does the man we’re going to see?’
‘Bound to. Vets speak all sorts of languages.’
He was very impressed. ‘Does he speak English?’
‘He speaks everything,’ Brad said, turning in behind a large house. ‘Horse. Cat. Dog. Colorado beetle. We’re here. Sit tight till I come round an’ let you out.’
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