Authors: Katie Fforde
Bella felt very tired and not just because she hadn’t slept. ‘Nevil! You can bluff and bluster as much as you want. You can pick me up on the details or the lack of details – whatever you like – but we both know you’ve been thoroughly unethical and I want you to stop.’
‘Will you marry me if I stop?’
She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t care about his feelings any more – he’d gone too far. ‘I can’t. I have tried to explain.’
‘Then why should I stop doing anything I like? Why should I stop making money – amazing money – just to please you?’
She closed her eyes for a second. ‘It’s not just to please me! It’s because it’s wrong!’
‘No it’s not. Anyway, why should I care? This is my chance to become rich. Really rich.’
‘Money isn’t everything!’
He laughed. ‘You are bloody mad, you know that? That is one of the most ridiculous clichés ever invented! Of course money isn’t everything, but if you’ve got money you can buy all the other things!’
Bella felt suddenly exhausted by it all. ‘Nevil, I don’t know how we managed to stay together for so long. Our basic principles are so different.’
He glared at her. ‘They are, aren’t they? Totally bloody different. And because of that I’d like you to clear your desk and be out of here within the hour.’
Bella stood up. ‘You’re firing me?’
He nodded.
‘On what grounds?’
‘I think “irreconcilable differences” would probably cover it.’
‘We might have broken up but I’m good at my job. You know that.’
‘You are but right now you’re a pain in the arse so get out.’
‘You loved me—’
‘Past tense. Not any more. Now get the hell out.’
‘I could get you for wrongful dismissal.’
He obviously didn’t care about possibly being sued. ‘Maybe, maybe not. But I’ll worry about that if it happens. Now leave.’
Bella found herself outside Nevil’s door in a state of shock. Not in any of her mental rehearsals of this meeting did it end up with Nevil sacking her. She had always been in charge.
‘Are you OK?’ said Tina. ‘You look a bit flushed.’
‘No, I’m not OK actually, Teens.’
‘Cup of tea? Always helps.’
‘Not sure I’ve got time for one. I’ve been sacked.’
Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and looked over.
‘You’ve been sacked?’ Tina repeated.
‘Yes.’
‘What for?’ asked the sixth member of the team. ‘I thought you and Nevil were an item.’
Bella felt herself blush. It sounded so impossibly sordid. ‘Not any more. Which is why I’ve got the push, I suspect.’
Nevil’s door opened and he emerged. ‘If you could just clear your desk and leave, Bella. Tina, maybe you could help her.’ He paused. ‘I don’t want to have you escorted off the premises.’
Bella still couldn’t move. Fortunately Tina could. ‘There’s a really big box in the back I haven’t crushed for recycling yet. I’ll get it.’
A few moments later she was methodically packing everything on and in Bella’s desk apart from her computer.
‘I don’t think I should steal the stapler, Tina,’ said Bella.
‘I think you should take everything,’ said Tina, carrying on with her chosen job. She tipped up an empty drawer so all the paperclips and bits and pieces fell into the waiting box. ‘You can always give it back. OK, I reckon that’s everything,’ she finished.
Nevil appeared again. ‘Oh good, you’re nearly out of here,’ he said to Bella.
‘I’m going to help her with her stuff,’ said Tina.
‘She can manage a cardboard box on her own,’ said Nevil.
‘Yes, but she can’t manage a bottle of Pinot,’ said Tina.
‘You can’t go with her,’ said Nevil.
‘It’s my lunch hour,’ declared Tina.
‘It’s ten in the morning!’ said Nevil.
‘So?’ said Tina.
Nevil went back into his office and slammed the door.
‘Come on, Bella,’ said Tina. ‘Let’s get you out of here.’
Bella had always liked Tina and known her to be a friend, but it’s only when things are really tough you actually strain-test a friendship. Tina stayed strong.
‘OK, here’s what we’re going to do,’ she said to the still-dazed Bella. ‘I’m going to follow you home and we’re going to dump the box. Then we’re finding somewhere nice where you can get gently rat-arsed and tell me all about it. Or not, depending.’
‘It’s a bit early for getting rat-arsed, isn’t it?’
‘By the time we’ve dumped your things and gone somewhere, it’ll be past eleven. Perfectly respectable time for getting pissed.’
Bella shrugged. She was enjoying being told what to do. She’d had so much decision-making to do lately, it was lovely to just follow Tina around like a child after its mother.
TINA KNEW OF
a lovely pub with a garden, and because it was early, they were the only ones in it. She ordered wine, water and chips. She pushed a glass of wine towards Bella.
‘Of course you don’t have to say anything . . .’
‘But anything I do say will be taken down as evidence and used against me?’
Tina took a sip of her water. ‘Something like that.’
Bella laughed. ‘I don’t suppose I should tell you any of it really. It’s all such a muddle.’
‘Well, of course you don’t have to say a word. We can just sit here in peace and quiet and slag off Nevil.’
‘Don’t you like him, then?’
Tina shook her head. ‘Not much. I like everyone else there though.’
Bella sipped her wine. ‘Me too.’ She closed her eyes, trying to take in that she had been sacked. The lovely job she so enjoyed was no longer hers. And to think she’d held off dumping him to spare his feelings. Ha!
‘You’d probably rather talk to Alice about this,’ said Tina, obviously desperate for all the details.
‘She’s away.’ Bella looked at Tina. ‘In Marrakesh.’
‘Oh wow! Good for her!’ Tina was impressed.
Bella nodded. ‘With a man.’
‘Double wow!’
‘A younger man . . .’ Feeling slightly guilty for sacrificing Alice’s privacy to save her own, Bella gave Tina a few key facts. Then she said, ‘Golly, I do hope she’s OK.’
‘Of course she’s OK! She’s with a gorgeous younger man, in Marrakesh! What could possibly go wrong?’
‘Anything could really. But I hope it hasn’t.’
‘You’re worrying about Alice so you don’t have to confront your own problems,’ said Tina. ‘She’s fine; you’re not.’
Bella didn’t reply.
‘You don’t have to tell me . . .’
Bella smiled. ‘But if I don’t, you have thumbscrews in the car?’
Tina nodded. ‘That’s it.’
There was no one else she could talk to, and Bella felt maybe airing her problems out loud might help. She took a sip of wine. ‘OK, so you know me and Nevil were engaged?’
Tina nodded again.
‘It was supposed to be a secret!’
Tina gave the kind of laugh reserved for people who thought it was possible to keep anything like that secret in a small office. ‘So why did you break it off? You found out at last he’s a dickhead, or another man?’
‘Actually neither,’ said Bella, feeling defensive. ‘I always knew – well, found out quite early on – that Nevil had his faults . . .’
‘So it’s another man?’
‘Well, there might be, but that’s not why I broke it off.’
‘Why “might be”?’
‘It’s complicated.’ She thought about how Celine could stop Dominic seeing her if he had Dylan with him and it was a weekend.
‘You mean he’s married?’ Tina’s gaze hardened slightly.
‘Not any more.’
‘Custody problems?’
‘Kind of. But more complicated.’
‘Oh.’ Tina didn’t seem to have an answer for this. ‘So why did you break it off with Nevil?’
‘I found out he’s been doing very dodgy things.’
‘Like?’
‘Apart from some deal I wouldn’t have ever found out about if he hadn’t left some plans in the photocopier –’
Tina shook her head regretfully. ‘He doesn’t get enough practice with that photocopier. That’s a schoolboy error.’
This made Bella smile. ‘Well, the really condemning thing is I caught him digging holes outside properties at eleven thirty at night! On a tape, not in real life. And before you ask, no, it wasn’t a dead cat.’
Tina’s quick-fire questioning stalled. ‘So what was he doing?’
‘I don’t really know. I can only guess. And he wasn’t alone, which is more significant, I think. Don’t know who it is, either. It’s a very indistinct video.’
‘Sweetie, no offence, but how did you get a video of Nevil digging a hole with A. N. Other?’
‘It is a bit of a funny one. The Agnews. They wanted to be sure there was wildlife at Badger Cottage. They set up a camera to check. Instead of Mr Brock the Badger, they got Nevil. Thank goodness they didn’t recognise him.’
Tina giggled. ‘And that was what showed you the light? About marrying him?’ Tina seemed to think Bella had been very slow to realise Nevil was not the man for her.
‘Well, no, frankly. But I think I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay with Rutherfords if I broke up with him and I didn’t want to leave. I love my job! I love you lot! And I even wondered if I would have to leave town.’
‘Really?’
Bella shrugged. ‘Well, Nevil could tell all the other estate agencies not to employ me. It might be hard to get another job. Anyway, it’s all out of my hands now. And I think the leaving-town thing is a definite.’
‘It’s so wrong. You’re really good at your job. It should be him that leaves, not you.’ Tina was thoughtful. ‘We’d all prefer that.’
‘Unless I can pin something definite on him, I have no power at all. Something he took great satisfaction in pointing out.’
‘Would it help if I looked at the video?’ asked Tina. ‘I’m a local girl. I might recognise someone. If they are local, that is.’
‘Well, another pair of eyes might help. I have a few ideas. You could at least rule some of them out.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Your lunch hour will be running over then.’
Tina made a sound that was almost a spit. ‘I think even Nevil knows he can’t do without me. But I will be quick.’
Back at Alice’s, Tina knew exactly who it was on the film. ‘I know him! Well, I think I do! I was moonlighting as a waitress at a big awards do a couple of years ago.’ She paused the video and stared at the image.
‘And his name is?’
‘Eeuw. Not sure. There were a few people like that at the do. A whole roomful, in fact.’
‘You want multiple choice? I can do that.’
She wrote down the names of a couple of other developers she knew, and Ed Unsworth, the person she and Dominic had suspected last night. If Tina picked him out, that would make it fairly certain it was him.
Tina stared at the list. ‘Can you find another picture of this one?’ She jabbed her finger at Ed Unsworth’s name.
‘Of course! I’ve got pictures of them all.’
A bit of work with the cursor on Alice’s computer and she summoned up the suspects.
‘It’s a bit like a police line-up,’ said Tina. ‘Oh! That’s him! Look, he’s winning a trophy. But I thought he’d moved up north?’
Bella nodded. ‘Liverpool.’
‘Looks like his time his up!’
‘So what do you think they’re doing? Him and Nevil?’
‘Let’s have another gander,’ said Tina. She studied the film again, frowning. ‘Damaging the drains. That’ll be the soil pipe on its way to the septic tank. If they break it and make sure it fills with earth, it’ll back up. I expect they’ll be making sure plenty of water goes down the loo, and so when the surveyor comes there are lots of expensive problems that’ll be taken off the price. They might even arrange for some slurry to end up in the septic tank too, so the house smells.’
‘You know a lot about this sort of thing, Tina.’
Tina nodded. ‘Yup. I used to work for a company where this sort of thing went on all the time.’
‘I’m so impressed! And grateful. I so owe you!’
Tina put her arms round Bella. ‘Anything for you, hon, and do let me know how it all goes.’
When Tina had driven away, Bella considered how to put this information to good use. She wasn’t going to go back to Nevil with it. He’d blown his chance of being tactfully warned off. He was now going to get a much more official tap on the shoulder.
She took a walk round the garden, and before she’d got to the end she’d decided to try and deal with this on her own, without Dominic. Her feelings were a bit complicated, she realised. Although he had kissed her, wonderfully and passionately, he had rejected her suggestion they take it a bit further, and this had made her feel as if she were doing the chasing. In spite of being modern in every other aspect of her life, she didn’t want that. And having loved him for so long, she had to be sure he felt the same. So she’d sort this out on her own.
She decided to go home to visit her mother, back to Whickamford, the town she had fled from nearly three years earlier. It would get her away from things for a bit, and from there she’d be perfectly placed to carry out another plan that had come to her as she walked. It might not work but she hoped it would. Then she would concentrate fully on Nevil’s dodgy dealings.
She wrote Alice a longish text explaining and then she wrote a note and left it on the kitchen table in case she didn’t get the text. Then she packed her carry-on case, got into her car and headed for home.
BELLA’S MOTHER WAS
surprised but pleased to see her. ‘Hello, darling! What brought this on?’
Bella and her mother hugged hard. ‘Lots to tell you. I’ve broken up with Nevil.’
‘Oh, sweetie. Are you very cut up about it?’
Bella could tell her mother was trying to work out if she should say ‘yippee’ or ‘I’m so sorry’. She knew perfectly well her mother had never much liked Nevil.
‘I’m fine about it, but there’s lots of other stuff going on. Which is why I’m here.’
‘Nevil gave you time off work? Or have you taken some holiday? I’m sure you must be owed loads.’
‘Actually, he sacked me, but thank you for reminding me about the holidays. He must owe me quite a lot of money. And he’d owe me more if I sued him for wrongful dismissal.’
‘OK! Do you want some lunch?’
‘No thanks, Mum, I’m fine. But am I stopping you doing something?’ Now she looked more carefully she could tell her mother had that just-going-out-of-the-front-door look about her.