Leah Ashton - Behind The Billionaire's Guarded Heart

He yanked off his boots, grabbed his laptop out of his bag and then on thick socks padded over to the grand staircase ahead of him. To his left was the first of two reception rooms on the ground floor—but he wasn’t going to work in there. Instead he settled on a stair third from the bottom, rested his laptop on his jeans and got to work.

Or at least that was the plan.

Instead his emails remained unread, and the soft beep of instant message notifications persisted but were ignored.

Who was he kidding? He was never going to get any work done in here.

It was impossible when his attention remained on insignificant details: the way the weak morning sunlight sauntered through the wedged-open door to mingle with the dust he’d disturbed. The scent of the house: cardboard packing boxes, musty air and windows closed for far too long. The light—or lack of it. With every door but the front door sealed shut, an entryway he remembered as bright with light seemed instead gloomy and...abandoned.

Which, of course, it was.

He hadn’t stepped foot in here since the day he’d moved into the basement.

Back then—three years ago—it had been too hard. He hadn’t been ready to deal with this house.

Hugh stood up, suddenly needing to move. But not out through the front door.

Instead he went to the internal door only a few steps away and with a firm grip twisted the brass knob and yanked the door open.

He hadn’t realised he’d been holding his breath—but he let it out now in a defeated sigh. As if he’d expected to see something different.

But he’d known what was in here.

Once, this room had been where his mother and her second husband had hosted their guests with cups of tea and fancy biscuits.

That would be impossible now. If any antique furniture remained, it was hidden. Completely. By boxes. Boxes that filled the room in every direction—stacked neatly like bricks as tall as he was—six foot and higher.

Boxes, boxes, boxes—so many he couldn’t even begin to count.

Hugh reached out to touch the nearest box. It sat on a stack four high, its plain cardboard surface slightly misshapen by whatever was crammed within it.

Some of the many boxes that surrounded it—beneath, beside and beyond—were occasionally labelled unhelpfully: purple treasures...sparkly things.

Others—the work of the woman Hugh had employed to help his mother—had detailed labels and colour-coded stickers: a relic of Hugh’s attempts to organise his mother’s hoard into some sort of system.

But his mother had resisted—joyfully creating ridiculous categories and covertly shuffling items between boxes—and in the end her frustrated assistant had correctly informed Hugh that it was an utter waste of time.

Which he’d already known—but then, what option had he had?

Doctors, specialists, consultants...all had achieved nothing.

How could they? When his mother knew exactly what she was doing?

She’d been here before, after all. Before Len. When it had been just Hugh and his mum and her hoard. And her endless quest for love.

With Len she’d finally had the love she’d searched for for so long. A love that had been powerful enough to allow her to let go of all the things she’d collected in the years since Hugh’s father had left them. Things she’d surrounded herself with and held on to so tightly when she’d been unable to possess the one thing she’d so badly wanted: love.

Without Len his mother had believed that her hoard was all she’d had left. And, despite still having Hugh, despite his desperate efforts, it hadn’t been enough.

He’d been helpless to prevent the hoard that had overshadowed his childhood from returning.

Hugh closed his eyes.

There was so much stuff in this room that if he walked another step he would walk into a wall of boxes.

It was exactly the same in almost every room in the house—every living space, every bedroom. Except the kitchen, halls and bathrooms—and that was only because of the staff Hugh had employed and his mother’s reluctant agreement to allow them into the house each day.

So that was all he’d managed: to pay people to keep the few bits of empty floor space in his mother’s house clean. And to clear a safe path from her bedroom to the front and back doors in case of a fire.

Really, it was not all that different from how it had been when he’d been ten. Except this time he’d had loads of money to outsource what he’d only barely managed as a kid.

And this place was a hell of a lot bigger than the tiny council flat he’d grown up in.

He opened his eyes, but just couldn’t stare at those awful uniform boxes any more.

Back in the entry hall, Hugh grabbed his laptop and backpack, ready to leave...but then he stilled.

The new paint on the door was still wet. He wasn’t going anywhere.

But he also wasn’t going to be able to work—it would seem that three years had done nothing to ease the tension, the frustration and the hopelessness that those damn boxes elicited within him.

Even waiting another three years—or ten—to deal with them wasn’t going to make any difference.

They’d still represent a lot more than they should.

They needed to go. All of them.

This house needed to be bright and light once again. It needed to breathe.

So he sat back down on the bottom step of the grand old staircase, knowing exactly what he was going to do.

It was time.

* * *

It had started with confusion at the supermarket checkout.

‘Do you have another card?’ the checkout operator had asked.

‘Pardon me?’ April had said—because, well, it had never happened to her before.

It had, it seemed, happened several times to the not particularly patient operator—Bridget, according to her name tag. She’d studied April, her gaze flat, as April had tried what she knew to be her correct PIN twice more.

And then, as April had searched hopelessly for an alternative card—she’d cut up every single card linked to the Molyneux Trust back in Perth—Bridget had asked her to move aside so she could serve the next in a long line of customers.

April had dithered momentarily: was she supposed to return the Thai green curry ready-meal, the bunch of bananas and bottle of eye make-up remover to the shelves before she left?

But then the weight of pitying stares—possibly only imagined—had kicked in, and April had exited the shop as fast as she’d been able, her sneakers suddenly unbelievably squeaky on the supermarket’s vinyl flooring.

Now she was at home, still in her gym gear, on her butter-soft grey leather couch, her laptop before her.

For only the second time in the four weeks since she’d been in London she logged in to her internet banking—the other time being when she’d set up her account at the bank. Her fully furnished flat didn’t come with a printer, so she’d have to scroll through her credit card statement onscreen.

But it was still easy to see the reason for her mortification at the checkout—she’d maxed out her credit card.

How was that even possible?

She’d been so careful with her spending—more so as each still jobless week had passed.

She hadn’t bought any new clothes for weeks. She’d stopped eating at cafés and restaurants, and had instead become quite enamoured with what she considered a very English thing: convenience stores with huge walls of pre-made sandwiches in triangular plastic packaging. And microwaveable ready-meals for dinner.

They must only be costing a few pounds a meal, surely?

She had joined the gym, but that had seemed very cheap. And fortunately the flat came with Wi-Fi, so she hadn’t had to pay for that.

So where had all her money gone?