A Home in the Sun

by Sue Moorcroft

  Judith turned away from the memory and clanged through the fancy, golden-tipped gates.

  It was an odd sensation to knock at the door of what used to be her home, especially since it was a different door now, with mock Gothic hinges and an ornate black letterbox. She wondered what had happened to the gracious old one with the stained glass panel. Tom had probably sold it to a reclamation yard.

  Tom answered the door and looked stunned to see her. He also looked dishevelled, with food spots on his shirt and his hair on end. The contrast between him and Giorgio struck her like a slap. Tom looked slack and pale and all of his fifty-four years. A cynical person might say she’d done all right for herself, exchanging this husband for Giorgio’s dark good looks and fewer years on the clock. Giorgio’s body had been firm beneath her hands. Tom’s typically English appetites for fatty food and too much beer had combined unhappily with the effects of gravity. He was showing definite signs of wear and tear, his hair leached of colour and both face and body pouchy.

  She arranged her features into a smile. ‘Hello, Tom. Sorry if I woke you from a Sunday nap.’

  A familiar parade of expressions flitted across Tom’s lived-in face. Pleasure to see her, then the resentment he harboured towards her so unreasonably. Lastly, resignation, because no matter how angry he’d become it had been futile. She’d left him anyway. ‘Judith! What are you doing here?’

  ‘I just came to tell you that I’m living in Brinham again, just so you’d know. I’d hate Frankie to surprise you with the news.’ She could imagine Frankie dropping in at Tom’s yard with a caustic, ‘Your old missus has turned up again,’ probably in front of Tom’s employees.

  He blinked and stroked his hair back over his head. She was sure she’d been right about the nap. Perhaps he was wondering whether she was part of a dream.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about Liza.’ She congratulated herself for actually sounding sorry, rather than smug at his comeuppance.

  ‘Yes.’ He hesitated. ‘It was a bad time.’ Then, ungraciously, ‘Well. I suppose you can come in.’

  She remained where she was. She’d never cared for the bluntness of Tom’s manners and marvelled that once she’d seen him as a rough diamond, rather than just the rude man she saw now.

  After a second he sighed, and amended with overdone courtesy, ‘Why, Judith, how lovely to see you. Would you care to come in, perhaps for some refreshment?’

  She grinned at his exaggerated air of indulging her. ‘A cup of tea would be very welcome. Thank you.’ She stepped into the big hall with the dogleg staircase rising from it.

  He closed the door behind her. ‘You know where the kitchen is. Get me a cup while you’re at it.’

  She opened the door again and stepped back out. ‘You don’t change much, Tom.’

  ‘It was a joke!’ he shouted after her as she strolled down the drive. ‘Judith!’

  Her hand on the large gate latch, she paused. Had she overreacted? Couldn’t she take a bit of wry humour any more? Maybe she should turn back and have a civilised cuppa with this big bluff bloke who was once her husband.

  But Tom yelled on. ‘You don’t have to be like that … you stroppy, awkward mare! You always were flitty or we’d still be together.’ Flitty, from Tom, was an insult usually reserved for exasperating female customers who changed their minds mid-job. Flitty was an insult, when associated with Judith deciding to leave him over his infidelity.

  She stepped through the gate, calling back, ‘I might be stroppy and awkward but deciding not to be married to you doesn’t make me flitty. It makes me sensible.’ With a cheery wave, she left him behind. Again.

  Why had she bothered? Tom never improved.

  Chapter Six

  For two weeks, Judith continued on in Molly’s spare room. It was still odd and uncomfortable. Her sister and brother-in-law, she sometimes suspected, only made the effort to converse when there was a witness.

  At the end of every day, Frankie climbed out of the van with Francis O’Malley Construction on the side. Molly would have already prepared a meal for him to come home to – a proper, cooked, two-course dinner from fresh ingredients. After eating, Frankie retired behind the paper and Molly sat before the television watching, without any change of expression, soaps, dramas, reality shows and comedies. Judith soon began to spend most evenings reading in her room, which at least gave her hosts the privacy to ignore each other. She wondered how on earth her sister shared a bed with someone she hardly spoke to.

  During the day, Judith got out of the house as much as she could and tried to get the hang of living in Brinham again. Brinham was a perfectly pleasant market town in an OK part of Northamptonshire. The town centre had grown up in the era of dark-red Victorian buildings with moulded brickwork and steep roofs and what remained of that period was worth a second look. It wasn’t always beautiful but it definitely had style.

  Unfortunately, in the seventies it had been acceptable to demolish streets and streets of that Victorian heritage and replace them with an enormous shopping centre like something a five-year-old might make from Lego – if Lego made only mud-brown bricks and long, narrow, wired-glass windows. The Norbury Centre was a development Judith had never cared for but at least the council had paved Market Square and the pedestrian arcade, installing olde-worlde black lampposts hung with baskets of vermilion petunias, so the blemish of The Norbury was less conspicuous.

  English weather she was finding a bit moist, even in summer, but there were lovely days, too, with sunshine that caressed the skin. In Malta, summer sunshine could still hit you like a sheet of hot metal.

  She visited a hairdresser for fresh highlights – Sparkling Embers – and to have her shaggy barnet cut back into a new low-maintenance feathered style onto her shoulders. She liked it. It swished when she turned her head.

  She bought a small car, two years old and bruise purple, then collected Wilma from The Cottage to take her to a coffee shop with yellow café lace and green gingham curtains.

  ‘You’re too thin by half,’ declared Wilma, struggling out of the car and patting her pearly white perm while she waited for Judith to wrestle her walking frame out of the hatchback. ‘I’ll have a nice pot of tea because I can’t bear coffee in these places – it’s nothing but froth. And you only get a dab of jam with a scone.’ With a lightning change of subject she added, ‘I wish I knew what really made you come home. You never really confide, Judith. You didn’t fall out with Richard and family, did you? Isn’t it about time Richard retired? He might be my baby brother but he’s knocking on.’ She smiled as she took the walking frame, her jowls lifting and becoming part of her cheeks. ‘I wish you’d brought my wheelchair.’

  Judith made sure Wilma had her balance before she let go of the aluminium frame. ‘You said you wanted to walk.’

  Wilma laughed. ‘Don’t take any notice of me. I can’t walk.’

  ‘Piggyback?’ Judith turned and crouched invitingly.

  Wilma’s chuckle was more of a wheeze. ‘Serve you right if I hopped on.’

  It was a lovely couple of hours. Wilma’s worst fears weren’t realised as the scones came with thick jam and the only uncomfortable moment was when Wilma declared loudly that she didn’t like the way things were done in 2004 because Judith had to get up to the till to pay instead of the bill being brought by wait staff.

  A couple of days later, Judith arranged to see Kieran, who had Bethan by his side. They met at a pub – not The Punch, which had once been her local, because it was now overrun by under twenty-fives. The Prince was more multi-generational. When Bethan asked for a vodka shot, Judith automatically asked, ‘How old are you?’ Kieran frowned at Judith.

  ‘Seventeen,’ Bethan admitted, and pulled at the fronds of the two-tone hair hanging around her face.

  Judith bought the vodka shot without arguing but glanced at Kieran. ‘And you’re twenty-two.’

  ‘I know that.’ He took the bottle of strong lager he’d ordered from the bar and led the way to a table
by a window. ‘There’s no law against it, is there? You don’t seem to worry about age gaps in your own relationships.’

  Judith stared down into her cold white wine as she took her seat, thinking of the years between her and Giorgio and suddenly didn’t want it. She put it on the table.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.

  ‘It’s OK. Age gaps are all a question of perspective and …’ – she fumbled for a word – ‘wisdom.’ She didn’t point out that Bethan wasn’t yet lawfully an adult, which Judith found more significant than Kieran seemed to.

  He frowned, and she knew he was searching for her meaning and suspecting her disapproval.

  When she’d had enough of Kieran and Bethan’s in-your-face conducting of their courtship, all those yawning kisses even when Judith was halfway through a sentence at the time, she left them to it, stepping out into the late-evening purple darkness.

  It was drizzling. ‘Bloody British weather,’ she muttered, turning up her collar. She was aware that she might not be wise to wander the streets of this area late at night on her own. This wasn’t Malta, where the world and his wife would be strolling in the comfortable evening temperatures along the promenade from Sliema to Spinola. This was Brinham, which had its bad areas like most towns, and a sensible British personal safety code must be followed. It didn’t pay to wander back streets with a handbag on show, late at night, alone. She turned towards the taxi rank.

  But then her phone beeped and she fished it from her pocket.

  A text message from Richard flashed up. Must speak, can u get 2 landline?

  She stared. It would be nearly midnight already in Malta. She returned, Will be @ Molly’s house 30 mins and turned towards the couple of taxis standing in the rank, heart hurrying as fast as her feet. Easy-going Richard never before sent her a dramatic, urgent-sounding message.

  Chapter Seven

  When Judith quietly let herself in through Molly and Frankie’s front door she found Molly had already gone to bed. Frankie was asleep in his chair, paper collapsed on his lap, glasses skewed, mouth open. The house was dark except for a small reading lamp reflecting on Frankie’s head and a weak bulb that lit the stairs.

  Creeping quietly, Judith collected the cordless phone from its stand in the hall and carried it to her room. The instant it rang, she pressed the key to accept the call to ensure the others weren’t disturbed.

  Richard’s voice filled her ear, warm, friendly, reminding her sharply of Malta. She pictured him at home with the doors and windows open to the night, stroking his smart little moustache, his feet bare on the tiles. His wife Erminia would be reading a magazine or knitting in the background from the light of the lamp with a pink tasselled shade. He said, ‘I rang Molly’s and she told me you were out with Kieran – sorry to have to bring you home early.’

  She tried to keep her breathing calm. Could he have news of Giorgio? ‘No problem. What’s up?’

  He sighed. ‘Are you alone?’

  She gripped the handset more tightly. ‘Yes.’ She could hear a tremor in her voice.

  ‘It’s bad news.’ Another sigh. After a lengthy pause he added, ‘It’s just that … well, Sliema Z Bus Tours has gone bust.’

  Bust. She turned the word over in her mind. Bust? Bust. She couldn’t, for a moment, see its relevance to Sliema Z Bus Tours. Or, of course, she could. But it couldn’t be that. That would be too terrible. That would mean …

  Her mouth went numb. She fought to remain calm. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘As we agreed, I wrote to the directors advising them that you wished to sell your share, and offering them the option to buy it from you. In view of the informal nature of the agreement between you and Giorgio, it seemed the best way. What I got back was a notice about insolvency, and the address of the liquidator.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she breathed.

  ‘I didn’t bother you at that stage, because I thought it was simply a mistake. I didn’t think it could be insolvency. I thought it was probably something to do with structure, because of Giorgio not being able to administer his own affairs. A technicality.’

  Her voice echoed oddly in her ears. ‘But it isn’t?’

  ‘No.’ He gusted a sigh. ‘I’ve been to your apartment today to collect the mail. It included a notice to say they’re in liquidation.’

  Disbelief made her blood thunder. She snapped, ‘That’s ridiculous. They’re not in liquidation, I invested thirty thousand liri. They’re negotiating to buy new buses. If they were in trouble, they would’ve cancelled the expansion and used the money to trade out of their difficulties.’

  Richard’s voice was heavy as he said flatly, ‘Your money’s gone.’

  Wordlessly, she wiped sweat from her top lip and the base of her throat.

  ‘Your money’s gone,’ he repeated, as if he thought she hadn’t heard. ‘I’ve had a long talk with Giorgio’s business partners, Anton and Gordon. I’ve been with them all evening, in fact. Although you and other individuals supposedly invested to fund the planned expansion, actually one of their drivers had caused a fatal road accident. The company’s insurance had lapsed.’

  Judith closed her eyes tightly, feeling sick. ‘But that can’t have taken all the money?’

  Richard’s voice was gentle. ‘Your money was used to meet their legal costs, and it’s gone. The liquidator’s selling the bits and pieces they owned but the premises were rented and the vehicles leased. You know how these things are arranged. I can meet with the liquidators on your behalf but there’s no point until their enquiries are complete.’ He paused. ‘The liquidator is making the usual enquiries about directorial negligence. Eventually, you might be able to bring action against them but …’ His voice tailed off doubtfully.

  Judith tried to grasp what was happening. ‘The business can’t be insolvent.’

  ‘It can, I’m afraid. The case has been going on for two years. It’s a complete house of cards. I’m sorry, Judith.’ A long silence. A slow breath, then he added, in a rush, obviously knowing this would be unwelcome news but that Judith had the right to know it, ‘Anton says Giorgio was responsible for insurance matters.’

  ‘I see,’ she said dully. Bright, happy-go-lucky Giorgio. She could imagine him forgetting something as mundane as insurance. Or, even more likely, gambling that they’d never need it and the money could be better employed in printing flashy brochures for more luxurious tours. It was like falling on a knife to think that he’d hidden the enquiry into the fatal crash from her. No wonder he hadn’t been his usual self in his last days.

  ‘I wish I could offer to return the money you invested in Richard Elliot Estate now, but I don’t think I can at the moment,’ Richard added awkwardly. ‘We bought into that new hotel development in Sliema …’

  Hollowly, she said, ‘I know. It’s OK. We agreed a schedule and none of this is your fault.’ The knowledge that she was nowhere near as comfortably circumstanced as she’d thought settled heavily in her stomach. They’d been so bloody excited to be involved in the small hotel; she’d been as enthusiastic as anyone. She hadn’t realised she’d become so short of capital.

  They talked money a while longer. There was about two thousand pounds on its way to her from the sale of her car in Malta and all she had on top of that and her dividend payments was a couple more in savings and Adam Leblond’s rent, which wasn’t exactly an income. After eventually concluding the call, she scarcely slept. In the early morning, too restless to remain indoors, she let herself quietly out of the house and went out to pace the misty streets of Brinham, hoping the sun would soon burn off the dampness and her whirring brain would quiet.

  Oh, Giorgio. You’ve let me down.

  But she still loved him. On a massive heave of sadness, her eyes boiled at the memory of the hospital, the tubes and beeping machines.

  Cass had been right to say she should never have seen him that way. How much better for her final memories of Giorgio to be of him smiling, laughing, plunging his unbroken body into the sea, spending a
raucous day on a fishing boat with his mates, drinking golden Cisk beer or bitter black espresso, eating sun-dried figs. Or swaying with the movement of an impressive, modern, air-conditioned coach, eyes sparkling and hands gesticulating, captivating his passengers with tales of village festas, bareback donkey races, parades and ghannejja or folk singers. Had he really been hiding how close disaster loomed as he’d ushered tourists around ancient stone cities, catacombs and prehistoric temples, old film sets and bustling markets?

  The impression Sliema Z Bus Tours gave had certainly been one of prosperity. The shiny cream coaches with rainbows on the sides had plunged visitors into itineraries bursting with fun, history and culture. It hadn’t looked, as Richard termed it, like a house of cards, which one bit of mismanagement would send fluttering to the ground.

  It must have been oversight or false economy that led to the vital insurance policy being allowed to lapse at least … mustn’t it? But had Giorgio known that she’d never see her invested money again? Had he considered his seeking of private venture capital legitimate?

  Inside, she knew it didn’t matter. He had left her high and dry and she could hardly challenge him about it now.

  Living free at her sister’s house could scarcely continue; she was the kind who felt an overwhelming need to pay her way. And when she got her house back from Adam she’d have electricity bills, gas, water, food … She sighed. Even without a mortgage to pay, she’d have to get a job, part-time, at least.

  Her feet took her into town where the market traders were setting up stalls and the butcher was optimistically winding out his canopy to shade his window display from sunshine. A postman pushed a pram-like mail carrier up the street, pausing to force packets of letters through letter flaps set low in shop doors. Paperboys cycled on the pavement with baseball caps far back on heads of tightly cut hair.