The Party Season (18 page)

'From what our PR people can tell, the tenants were a little disgruntled to say the least. Apparently they spilled the beans quite happily.'

'But Rob found out about them from me. Oh God, I had no idea what he was doing, I thought he was just being interested in my work. And I didn't tell him those things maliciously, I never said anything about the takeover. I wouldn't do that – I signed the confidentiality agreement.' Oh well done, Izzy. Bring that up, why don't you? He had probably forgotten all about it until you carefully lobbed the idea into his head. You might as well put a sign over your head saying 'SUE ME PLEASE'. I move swiftly on: 'He just asked me a couple of questions. Could we tell that to the newspaper? Get them to retract the story?'

'Isabel, it's all true. Okay, it's not been portrayed in the most sympathetic light but there is an essence of truth there.' We fall into silence. Simon pulls over two bean bags from the corner of the room and we sit down. One bean bag has pictures of little pigs all over it. I think I recognise it.

'I'm sorry I shouted at you. I just couldn't believe it wasn't a coincidence. Dad said you would never do something like that.'

'He's right, I wouldn't. But I am sorry about Rob. I really didn't know what he was up to.' We fall into an uncomfortable silence. 'When did you find out about the burglary?' I ask suddenly.

'No burglars, Isabel. The bailiffs took the furniture. The bank sent them in.'

'
What
? Bailiffs? The bank?'

'Yep. We personally, as in the house, owe them over half a million.'

'Oh no!' I whisper.

He nods and continues, 'When they read in the paper that the takeover had fallen through, I couldn't persuade them to hold off any longer. They arrived first thing this morning. Some of the furniture is valuable.'

This is my fault.

'Are you okay, Isabel?' he asks in concern. 'You look a little ill.'

I whimper in answer. Simon gets up and goes back to the pile of stuff in the corner and extracts something. He throws a packet into my lap. 'Nicotine patches. I got Dad to buy some to help you give up. The bank didn't want them.' He smiles and sits back down opposite me.

'Why don't you put one on now?' he says after a pause. 'You look like you could do with a cigarette.'

Oh, I could. As a non-smoker I could really do with a cigarette. A drink wouldn't go amiss either. I shakily take out two patches and slap one on each knee. I wonder how he can be so calm.

'So why did you owe the bank all this money? Couldn't you have mortgaged the house or something instead?' I ask.

'It's already been mortgaged. Several times. And if we can't figure out a way to keep the payments up, the mortgage company will take it.'

He sees my bewildered expression and explains further. 'Isabel, when my mother died, I was at university. It was the middle of my second year and I was having a whale of a time. Her death was quite sudden, a heart attack, and I came home immediately. I was devastated – we all were – and Dad didn't want to run Pantiles any more, he just kind of gave up. I thought we could employ an estate manager for a couple of years until I finished university and then I could take over.' He pauses as there is a knock at the door. Mrs Delaney brings in a cup of coffee. For Simon, not me. I wonder if she has had the foresight to put a shot of brandy in it.

'Simon, come through to the kitchen.' There is real affection in her voice.

'In a minute, Mrs D.' He grins up at her. 'They didn't want the kitchen furniture; Mrs Delaney has obviously been ragging it up too much.'

'Good thing too,' she says rather stiffly, without looking at either of us. 'What else would I have to cook on now?'

'Go on,' I urge after she has left because I really need to hear all of this. I need to know the extent of it all. Simon hands his cup of coffee over to me. As he does so, his hand grazes mine and I unthinkingly flinch. Our eyes meet and he looks taken aback.

'Go on,' I say quickly, to cover the discomfort, 'what happened then?'

'Em, well, when I took a look at the accounts, I couldn't quite believe my eyes. Thank God I was doing economics at uni or else we would all have been turfed out years ago. I found that instead of the estate making a comfortable amount of money, enough for everyone to live on, it was losing money and rather a lot of it. The house had been mortgaged and re-mortgaged. We had an overdraft at the bank which we never came out of. Dad has always been not much of a businessman and too much of a philanthropist, but the whole thing really wasn't his fault. Over the last fifty years there has been a huge decline in farming. And the foot and mouth situation hasn't helped matters either; in fact, it plunged the whole estate much faster into bankruptcy.'

I nod at this. I had read about it, of course, seen it on the TV, but I had never had first-hand experience of it.

'Most of our land is farmland,' Simon continues. 'We rent a lot of it out but when things got tough Dad, being the man he is, lowered the rent. He also never raised the rent on the cottages, not in twenty years. The last chunk of our earnings, although it's marginal, comes from forestry and that has also suffered a decline.' I remember the abandoned sawmill on my tour with Will. 'Put all this together and we had virtually no income. Once I realised this, I knew I couldn't go back to university.'

I think of my own carefree existence at university and wonder what I would have done if this had happened to me. I wouldn't have been able to spot a profit and loss account back then if someone had brought it to me on a plate with watercress around it.

'Couldn't you have sold it all?'

'I thought about it. But I knew it would break Dad's heart and I couldn't do that to him after he'd just lost Mum. There were so many people to consider – Dad was beside himself with grief, Will was about to go to Cirencester and then Aunt Flo came to live with
us
. They all depended on the estate. Besides, I thought there was a chance I could turn it around. I didn't really tell anyone how bad it all was. I had to dismiss every member of staff we had, which left me extremely unpopular in the village, and then figure out a way to keep us afloat. I couldn't do anything in the short-term regarding the farmland and the forestry but I tried to let the cottages out. The problem was they had fallen into so much disrepair. We've managed to restore a couple but I then had to evict the tenants when they wouldn't pay the market rate for them, which is, of course, nearly three times the price they are paying now. I wanted to diversify. Have pheasant shoots, open up the house, outdoor concerts. But when I did the maths, I found that it all needed so much money to start up.'

'What about something like this charity ball? You're making some money from that?'

'Hardly anything, Isabel. Besides, if you do it regularly it needs marketing, which costs more money, and events don't just fall into your lap. And I didn't want anyone looking too closely at the house in case they sussed out how much money it needed spending on it.'

'I just thought you'd neglected it.'

'The maintenance costs are astronomical. So I decided to try to make some money. I had a flair for business so I thought that if I could just make a few hundred thousand then perhaps we would have enough to start again. I had nothing to lose at the start so I took risks. Things went well, I discovered I had a talent for M&A and—'

'What's that?' I ask suspiciously. It sounds vaguely kinky.

'Mergers and acquisitions. Takeovers and so on. Take over a company in trouble, split it up and sell it off. You see, Isabel, it was all a carefully constructed façade. The investment banks were happy to invest their money in me once they had visited Pantiles. I waved a bit of the old school tie and Cambridge blue stuff around as well and used their money to take over businesses. At a healthy profit for them, of course.'

'Couldn't you use them to help Pantiles? Use them to help you diversify?'

'They would want to see the house accounts then. They would have to know how much trouble we are in. They wouldn't touch us after that. People presume you have money if you have a lot of assets. We did have some luck – Will came back from travelling and took on the job of estate manager. Mrs Delaney arrived then and was perfectly happy to live in and take a small wage. She keeps the furniture sparkling while the roof practically falls in around us. We had to close up a couple of wings but no one was any the wiser. And I make sure the gardens are kept up; old Fred tends to them in return for one of the estate cottages rent-free. I own a BMW and a few flash suits, the usual trappings of a successful businessman. There are no obvious signs that anything is wrong.'

'I didn't have any idea,' I whisper.

'You wouldn't have. No one does.'

'But you've completed other takeovers. I read about them in the paper.'

'Any money I made I ploughed straight back into the next takeover, using a little here and there to start making some changes at Pantiles. Repairing some of the cottages, that sort of thing. This was going to be my last business venture. I've ploughed every last penny of the company's money into it. We'd have had enough money to clean our slate, buy the house back and invest in the future.'

He stares down at the floor. I feel quite weak with all this information.

He looks up and misinterprets my expression, 'Don't look so worried, Isabel, I'm not going to sue you. Or tell your company.'

'I'm not worried about that.' Oh no, I'm worried that I won't be able to survive under the weight of all this guilt. Someone will find me in a few years' time, squashed as flat as a pancake like a cartoon character. Completely selfish, of course.

'But the papers,' I say. 'They always said what a success you were, how much money you had …'

'Ahh, the papers. Another carefully constructed spin. The first time they got their facts wrong about something, I found it made my life easier. Every negotiation was less of a trial. It was a bit like the old warlords; they went to huge lengths to frighten their opponents and often found they'd won before any fighting took place. My reputation preceded me. People were bending over backwards to give me money. So the stories were carefully released and I found I could walk into a boardroom and the white flag would already be up.'

'So is the takeover really ruined?'

'It is if the American shareholders really are going to back Wings. We need their shares in order to take over the company. I'm waiting for the head man to call me back.'

'What are you going to say?'

'I don't know. But I need to convince them that parting with their shares would still be a good idea. If they think for one second that I'm not going to perform my half of the bargain, they'll stick with Wings and their promises of a brighter future.' He gets up, walks over to the window and stares out. 'The press will be up here soon, they've been calling all morning. They'll find out about the bailiffs and it'll be splashed all over the papers tomorrow, which is not going to help. It will look as though I can't buy one share let alone half a million, despite what my backers say to the contrary. You'd be surprised how bailiffs panic people.'

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised at all. The mere mention of their name sent the fear of God through me.

Simon turns from the window and smiles at me. How can he be so calm when his whole world has just fallen around his ears? 'It was my own fault in a way,' he says wearily. 'I was playing a dangerous game with the press. We were careful about what we released to them, but it was only a matter of time before they started digging for some dirt. Rob Gillingham offered it to them on a plate. A pity it had to happen now, that's all.'

'Could you keep up the payments on the house while you organise another takeover?' I ask, desperately fishing about for a solution.

'They take years to set up – you need the financial backing for a start. Besides, I poured all of our money into this one. And if so much rests on reputation, what will mine be like after all this? The bailiffs have removed every single scrap of furniture from my home.' He smiles more faintly. 'Isabel, it's not your problem.'

No, buster. I'm not going anywhere until I feel better. And that won't be until I've done something to help. I struggle for a moment with the irony that I actually want to help Simon but I have to concede that he's not behaving as I thought he would. 'Simon, I grew up in this house. They might not have always been the happiest times of my life' – he has the grace to look uncomfortable at this – 'but I still care what happens to you all. And it's partly my fault because of Rob.'

'He would still have got that information, Izzy.' This is the first time he has called me that since I arrived. 'With or without you.'

'I just made it easy for him,' I say miserably.

'Come on, let's go through to the kitchen. It's a bit of a relief that the family now know. I never wanted to worry them with how bad things were. Poor things, they probably just thought I was being stingy. No fires during the day, insisting the dogs were fed out of a tin instead of with organic chickens. Only Will knew the truth.' He smiles wryly.

'Will knew?'

Simon looks at me curiously. 'Yes, he guessed. I obviously tried to make light of it for him but he's the estate manager, Izzy. How could he not have guessed?'

'But he was saying how …'