Читать книгу Personally, I Blame my Fairy Godmother - Claudia Carroll - Страница 17

Somehow I manage to get out of bed and haul myself to the one meeting I’ve been postponing all week but have now run out of excuses for. My accountant. You should see me; I’m like a dead woman walking. Literally. Dead on the inside and dead on the outside. The whole way there, all I can think is, If I were to getrun over by that bus…it wouldn’t necessarily be the worst thing that could happen. Given the rate at which my entire life is unravelling, I’d be surprised if Satan wasn’t waiting at the gates of hell for me with a fruit basket and a complimentary robe.

My accountant is called Judy: she’s a widow with four sons all of whom she’s single-handedly putting through schools and colleges, and I’d say she’s never been in debt once in her whole life. I think she realises that there’s rock bottom, followed by another 500 feet of crap before you finally arrive at where I’m at right now. So, for once, she’s going easy on me.

She sympathises over my being turfed out of the house and even manages not to invoke the one phrase that really would send me over the edge, ‘I told you so.’ Then, for a full hour, Judy goes through every sickening, nauseating entry on my credit card statements, household bills, the works, trying to figure what we can write off against my tax bill versus debt that just has to be saddled onto all of my other loans and toxic debts. I’ve even come clean with her about the secret Visa card I’d been hiding all along. At this stage, on the brink of bankruptcy, what’s another few thousand? But, try as I might, even in my numb, deadened state I still can’t tune her out entirely and snippets of past extravagances keep filtering through, stabbing me right in the solar plexus.

Shopocalypse Now. Story of my life to date. Veni, Vidi, Visa.

‘The fifteenth of last month, crystalware from Louise Kennedy, €485.’

I remember. Six beautiful long-stemmed champagne flutes. An anniversary gift for Nathaniel and Eva. Who by the way, I rang this morning to ask/beg/plead for a temporary roof over my head. Eva didn’t even have the good grace to sound concerned about me; just said that they’d now decided to stay down in Marbella with the kids for longer than they’d thought, so it just wasn’t a runner. Anyway, she’d spoken to Sam and knew about our break-up. Knew about it before I did, I’ll warrant. And her final word on the subject? ‘Yeah…you know, we’re really sorry but I suppose these things happen. Shame you won’t be coming away with us this Easter. You’re always such fun to be away with.’

Like I’m some kind of court jester. But however vague and dismissive she sounds, the subtext is clear as the crystal I bankrupted myself to buy for her; Sam was their friend long before I came along, so, foursome or no foursome, if anyone is going to get jettisoned, it’s me. Of course it is. I’m utterly dispensable. In Eva’s eyes, I’m broke = I’m out.

In fact, the only real friend that’s come out of all this for me is Emma. Before I’d even had a chance to ask, she said that I’d be more than welcome to stay at her flat in town. The only person I know who actually offered to put me up. There was a catch though; she’s on a few months’ paid leave from Channel Six and is going down to stay with her parents in Wexford for a few weeks, so she’d already sublet the flat before she’d heard about my, ahem, domestic difficulty. Nice of her to offer though. More than some people. A lot more.

‘So to recap,’ Judy the accountant is still droning on, ‘I’ll have to get on to credit control at Visa and explain the situation. Needless to say, your card will be cancelled forthwith. But, with luck, maybe we can stall them from referring this to their legal team.’ She smiles at me. God love her, she must think this’ll cheer me up. ‘Obviously with a commitment from you to come to a long-term payment arrangement with them,’ she adds.

‘A payment arrangement?’ I say, temporarily stunned out of my deadened stupor. ‘Emm…sorry to state the obvious, Judy, but payment from what exactly? I have nothing.’

‘Come on, you must have valuable items you could possibly sell? When you were earning, did you invest in paintings? Jewellery? Anything?’

I’m too embarrassed to tell her that the only investments I ever made were in handbags/shoes/designer clobber etc, so instead I just focus on dividing the snotty Kleenex that’s lying on my lap into half, then quarters, then eighths and not bursting into tears. Yet again.

‘Jessie,’ she says, softly, ‘you have to understand that I’m trying to help you as much as I can. And I want you to let me know if there’s anything else that I can do for you.’

‘You could lend me the bus fare home.’

‘Please, be serious.’

‘I was being serious.’

‘What I meant by that was, do you have any assets at all which I could liquidise for you? Something that would give you a cash injection to get you through this?’

Me? Assets? For a second I want to laugh. I’m a live now, pay later kind of gal.

‘Jessie, I hate bringing up a distasteful subject but needs must I’m afraid. When your father passed away, didn’t he leave you anything at all?’

‘No,’ I mutter dully. ‘Poor Dad had nothing to leave. Well, apart from the house that is.’

Her eyes light up.

‘He left you a house? Explain, please?’

‘Nothing to explain. Dad left our family home equally to my stepmother and me. That’s all.’

‘So this would be the house that you grew up in?’

‘Yup.’

‘And he left it to be divided fifty-fifty between both of you?’

‘Ehhhh…yeah.’

‘So, all this time, you’ve been part-owner of a house and you never told me?’

Swear to God, the woman’s eyes look like they’re about to pop across the room like champagne corks. ‘And was it sold? Is it rented out?’

‘No, my stepfamily still live there. The three of them. But I have absolutely nothing to do with those people and they’ve nothing to do with me. Trust me; it’s an arrangement that suits all of us.’

‘But you’re the legal owner of half of this property.’

‘Judy, I’m not with you. What do you suggest I do here? Turf them all out and sell the place from under them? They’d get a hit man after me. You have no idea what these people are like; they’d have me knee-capped. This is their home.’

‘You needed somewhere to stay, didn’t you? Well here’s the answer staring you in the face.’

For a second I look at her, my mouth I’m sure forming the same perfect ‘O’ that the kids do in the Bisto commercial.

‘Jessie, welcome to the wonderful world of “Got no choice”.’