Martin Edwards - I Remember You

‘Mrs Graham-Brown must have been on the phone half a dozen times since you left,’ Suzanne told him as he headed for the door. ‘I said don’t blame me, I haven’t a clue when he’ll be back. I’m only the poor receptionist, no one tells me anything. If you ask me, she’s on the point of taking her business elsewhere and then what will Mr Crusoe say?’

‘Good riddance, if he has any sense,’ said Harry. ‘Listen, I may be out for the rest of the afternoon.’

‘What if Mrs Graham-Brown…’

Harry rapped the bundle of deeds against the reception desk.

‘I’m going to sort her out. Never fear.’

On his way to Formby, he kept cursing his failure to see through Debbie’s scam. All the oddities in her behaviour, from their first chance encounter in the waiting room at Fenwick Court, finally made sense: her air of nervous excitement; her desire to use a solicitors’ firm not associated with commercial work or Merseycredit; her anxiety to speed the transaction to its end; her refusal to involve her husband and her insistence on contacting Harry rather than waiting for his call or letters. All the pieces fitted only one pattern.

During the day, with Stuart and Rosemary out at Exchange Precinct, she had had the run of the house and, somehow, she’d gained access to the title deeds. The rest was simple, given the eager co-operation of professional advisers equally susceptible to a pretty face and a fat fee.

As he pulled up outside Crow’s Nest House, he felt as though he were being watched. She’s bound to be petrified , he thought. Having to live with the Graham-Browns, knowing she was about to cheat them out of house and home, and suffering the trauma of the Ambroses’ default. In a moment of insight, he imagined her tension, her frantic longing to have the whole business over and done.

He strode up the path and rang the bell. She must have been waiting on the other side of the oak door, for she opened it within seconds. He hardly had time to take in her expression of relief before she burst into a torrent of words.

‘Harry, it’s you! Where have you been? I’ve been ringing your office every half hour. Your girl didn’t have the faintest idea where you were. But thank God you’ve come. This threat that the Ambroses are going to pull out — they can’t do that, can they? I’ve been beside myself since I saw you this morning. What they’re doing is immoral! Surely we must be able to do something to force them to honour their side of the bargain?’

He swallowed hard. ‘Do you really think you would be able to honour your side of the bargain, Debbie?’

Her jaw dropped as she absorbed the impact of his use of her name. It seemed to hit her like a physical blow knocking the breath out of her, making her gasp for air. Harry stood and watched with his hands in his pockets. On his way over here he had rehearsed phrases of sardonic reproach, but now they seemed irrelevant. Her face had turned the colour of chalk.

‘Shall we talk inside?’

She nodded dumbly and led him into the sitting room. Her whole bearing had changed in a matter of seconds; as she sat in the same chair which she had occupied on his earlier visit here, she seemed to have shrunk. No longer was she the lady of the house, entertaining her trusted man of business — she was a servant, a paid help with ideas above her station.

‘How much do you know?’

‘Enough.’

‘Since when?’

‘Less than an hour ago. I was introduced to Stuart Graham-Brown and his wife. Rosemary herself.’

‘Oh God! What did you tell them?’

‘Nothing. I couldn’t believe either my eyes or my ears, if you want to know the truth. But all the information I need is only a phone call to Merseycredit away, so I hope you’ll make life easier by telling me the whole story.’

She gazed at the ceiling, clearly summoning strength, and ran both hands through her hair.

‘I don’t know where to begin.’

‘Start with yourself,’ he suggested. ‘Who you are, where you came from…’

She mustered a ragged smile. ‘There’s not enough material for a This Is Your Life . I’ve never been anywhere or done anything. My name’s Debbie Warrington and I’m the eldest kid in a family of eight. I’ve lived in Liverpool all my life. I like children and I always wanted to be a nanny, but this is the fifth family I’ve worked for since I left school and I’m ready for something new.’

‘In Puerto Banus?’

‘Why not? I went there on holiday in the summer, not long after I’d started working here. I’d gone to Marbella with a girlfriend. We were determined to live it up, have a bit of sun and sex. She works in a bacon factory out in Halewood and I’d been dancing attendance on Rainbow, who’s a right little madam, so we were dying for a break.’ She sighed, as if mourning an irretrievable past. ‘In a bar we met these two lads from Liverpool, they’ve settled permanently in Spain. I think they were in trouble with the law here, but neither of us wanted to ask too many questions. Anyway, Phil, that’s my feller, kept telling me about all the money you can make in the south of Spain. He reckoned if I started selling time-shares, there are so many dozy punters, I’d make a fortune.’

And he might be right, Harry thought, remembering the leopardskin lady from Empire Hall.

‘Phil was keen for me to stay out there, but I couldn’t make the break just like that. I needed to think about it back in England. Anyway, a few more weeks working for the Graham-Browns convinced me I’d be mad to spend the rest of my life flogging my guts out for a pittance. Even a saint could get sick of drying tears and wiping a baby’s bum.’

As if on cue, Rainbow began to bleat in her playpen next door. Debbie groaned, half-rose to her feet, then subsided.

‘So when did you hit on the idea of selling this house?’

‘I’d already decided I wanted out before I went on holiday. Stuart’s a crook, if you ask me.’

‘You have moral objections to working for him?’

‘No need to be sarky. No, but I bet he’s up to all sorts of fiddles. What really bugs me is that he acts as if I wasn’t there.’

‘You resent him for not fancying you?’

‘Listen, I’m not looking to be groped by the man of the house! I’ve had my share of that from so-called respectable husbands and fathers in my other jobs, I can promise you. No, what I hate is that he simply takes no notice. He’s a millionaire and I’m just a slave.’

‘And Rosemary?’

‘What a bitch! You’d think she owns me body and soul. She married Stuart for his money, that’s all she cares about. She was his PA before she got her claws into him. But to answer you, I’d already decided I wanted to escape from Merseyside in any case — see a bit of the world while I was still young.’

Someone else who wanted to get away, Harry thought, like the girl on the desk at Radio Liverpool. Why didn’t they share his love for the city of their birth? Why couldn’t they see beyond the fog and the dirt?

‘So I said to myself, give Spain a chance, why don’t you? Things might work out with Phil and the timeshares, and if they didn’t, I could try something else. I was all set to hand in my notice when that fence at the back blew down in those gales we had a few weeks ago. Stuart wanted to know if he could sue someone — he seems to get off on tax dodges and litigation. So he got the title deeds out of the bureau in his study. I happened to be passing by the door at the time.’

‘Convenient. What I can’t understand is why the deeds were here. Someone streetwise like Stuart would want the tax relief on a mortgage, so the deeds should be locked up in the safe deposit of some financial institution.’