Risking It All
Risking It All
ANN GRANGER
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Copyright © 2001 Ann Granger
The right of Ann Granger to be identified as the Author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2010
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
eISBN : 978 0 7553 8205 7
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Table of Contents
Ann Granger has lived in cities in many parts of the world, since for many years she worked in British embassies as far apart as Munich and Lusaka. She is married, with two sons, and she and her husband are now permanently based near Oxford.
To Christopher, a source of stories and on hand
when something goes amiss with the computer . . .
Chapter One
‘What’s more,’ I said to Ganesh, ‘there’s my independence to consider.’
Ganesh replied, rather rudely I thought, ‘What independence? You’re broke, you’re homeless, you’re dossing here in Uncle Hari’s garage. You keep all you own in a plastic binbag and the only family you’ve got is that perishing dog.’
At this point, Bonnie barked. Ganesh looked at her and she flattened her ears and uttered a throaty whine.
‘Dogs are worried by eye contact,’ I told him. ‘They see it as a challenge.’
‘Oh? Well, in my experience, you don’t turn your back on them.’
Ganesh doesn’t get on well with dogs. I suspect he’s afraid of them. He may have a phobia like some people do with cats. Whatever it is, dogs know it and they give Ganesh a terrible time, even little dogs like Bonnie.
I explained to him that he was being illogical. None of the things he’d listed meant I wasn’t independent. If anything, they meant I was.
‘You’re the one who’s not got any independence,’ I argued. ‘You’re tied to your family. You either work for your dad or you work for your Uncle Hari, which wouldn’t matter if it was work you enjoyed. But you don’t. You hate it.’
‘That’s different,’ said Ganesh sniffily.
We were sitting on a couple of upturned crates in Hari’s garage at the rear of the newsagent’s he runs. Ganesh and I had seen in the New Millennium on Blackfriars Bridge with a horde of others, watching the fireworks and popping champagne corks. I couldn’t help thinking at the time, as I raised my plastic tumbler of bubbly to the New Year, that the majority of people there had a home to go to when it was all over. It was something they probably took for granted. I never have, nothing permanent, nothing I could think of as my home, at least not since I was sixteen.
Correction: recently I’d enjoyed the rare comfort of a basement flat, just for a brief but wonderful while. But I didn’t slip into the mistake of letting my guard down, thinking at last I was ‘home’. I’ve learned not to do that, not to let myself become dependent on anything. Dependent means vulnerable. Perhaps that was what I was trying to explain to Ganesh.
As to that flat, I’d always known it couldn’t last, and sure enough it didn’t, proving I’d been right not to count on it. Shortly before Christmas, Fate in the form of burst pipes took a hand and I’d been flooded out. My then landlady, Daphne, invited me to spend Christmas with her so I wasn’t forced to turn to the nearest seasonal charity shelter. But no sooner was Boxing Day over than things began to plummet downhill with a vengeance.
Daphne, urged on I’m sure by her unspeakable nephews, Bertie and Charlie, announced she was putting the house up for sale with immediate effect. She was planning to live in a cottage in Cornwall and it just so happened that nephews B and C knew of one with vacant possession as of the instant. What’s more, an old chum had invited her to accompany her on a millennium cruise which involved drinking a glass of champagne at midnight on some remote atoll. Despite the short notice (owing to someone else dropping out), she felt she couldn’t turn it down.
So Daphne jetted out to join the party, leaving it to nephews B and C to arrange to send nearly all her furniture to the saleroom, except what she wanted for the cottage, which would be put in store until her return. We spent the last day in each other’s company going round sticking Post-It notes to everything she wanted to keep. If I felt there was indecent haste in all this, it was hardly for me to say so. But it was a lowering occasion. Even Daphne murmured it was like valuing the estate for probate.
One thing she had insisted on was that I be allowed to stay on in the empty shell of the house until it was sold. But there was never a chance of that. The minute she was out of the country, the horrible Bertie and Charlie began making my life a misery. On the excuse of packing up the house and ‘keeping an eye on things’, they virtually moved in themselves.
‘After all,’ said Bertie nastily, ‘we can hardly leave security in your hands.’
‘I can look after the house,’ I argued. ‘I’m quite capable, you know.’
‘You,’ said Bertie, ‘will fill the place with people like yourself. That’s what people like you do. You’ll turn it into a squat. Your friends will take up the floorboards for fuel, be overdosing on every banned substance known to man, writing obscene limericks on the walls and urinating in the garden.’
‘I will not move anyone in!’ I yelled at him. ‘And what do you know about squatters, anyway? What makes you think they all behave like that? Any squat I’ve lived in has had house rules and everyone’s stuck to them. Either that, or they were out. I bet I know more about keeping undesirables, as you’d call them, at bay than you do.’
‘I am a solicitor,’ Bertie said smugly, ‘so I do know a great deal about these things. Besides, how can we ask the estate agent to show prospective buyers round with you and that disgusting little dog camped in the kitchen? Aunt Daphne was out of her mind allowing you to stay over Christmas. Now I see you are interpreting her well-meant gesture as a virtual invitation to squat indefinitely. It was not so intended and my brother and I mean to see you don’t get away with it. You have no kind of contract to stay in this part of the house. You’ve paid no rent since you lost the basement flat. Out you go.’
‘Thanks,’ I snarled. ‘And a Happy New Millennium to you, too. By the way, why did that antique cabinet with the marquetry panels go off in a separate van to the rest? Why didn’t it go in the lorry to the saleroom with the other things?’
‘None of your business,’ he snapped. ‘However, Aunt Daphne told my brother and myself we could each have an item of our choice for sentimental reasons. I chose the dear little cabinet. It belonged to my grandmother and I well remember it from when I was a boy.’
‘Wow! Pass the sickbag!’ I invited. ‘Spare me dear old Grandma, at least. I bet sentiment’s got a whopping big price tag on it by now.’
Bertie leaned towards me, his piggy eyes sparkling with malice. This was a man who really hated me. ‘In the words of the vernacular,’ he hissed, ‘get lost.’
So I did. I knew I couldn’t win this one. He had a point about the estate agent. I suppose it wouldn’t have looked good to a possible buyer to see me there. I put together the few belongings I had left and took myself and Bonnie to Hari’s newsagent’s to tell Ganesh of my eviction.
‘This will never do,’ said Hari, listening to my tale with growing dismay. Then he brightened. ‘I have an idea. You can stay in my garage until the council houses you.’
This was a big relief. It was also the moment to tell him there wasn’t a hope in hell of the council offering me, single, childless and not even born in the borough, a home. I have what they like to call ‘low priority’. It’s an official way of saying ‘bottom of the barrel’.
But Hari had worries enough. Why add to his concerns? I thanked him and moved in towards the end of January. After this, 2000 could only get better. I hoped.
I had to share my new accommodation with piles of boxes. The air whiffed of petrol and engine oil, though it was ages since Hari had kept any kind of motor vehicle in there. Transport was symbolised by a rusty old bike with flat tyres and no saddle. When the garage doors were shut you had to keep the light on because there weren’t any windows. But at least there was electricity. There was also a small door in the rear of the place leading into the back yard of the shop, so I could come and go that way. The main doors were kept locked for security. I’d got a folding bed and a sleeping bag and a Calor Gas heater. I used the shop toilet and wash basin, and if I wanted a bath, I could go up to the flat over the shop where Hari and Ganesh lived and take one there. Some evenings I ate with them. So, to be fair, everything was by no means as bad as it sounds.
Hari was happy enough with the arrangement because he thought it was temporary. I was happy because it was free. Ganesh was grumpy and miserable because he felt it was infra dig.
‘Sleeping in a doorway is worse,’ I’d pointed out at the beginning of our conversation.
‘No one’s asking you to sleep in a damn doorway. You can sleep on Hari’s sofa,’ Ganesh had retorted.
‘That wasn’t what Hari offered.’
‘Because he thought you were only going to be here a few days. You’ve been here over a month.’
‘I told him I’ll contribute to the electricity bill.’
‘Sod the electricity bill.’ Ganesh was getting worked up. ‘I know, if you’ll let me, I can talk Hari round to taking you on as a lodger in the flat.’
‘No way! Are you crazy? Your family would hit the roof. They’d all be there before you could say knife, every uncle, aunt and cousin. You know what they think about me.’
‘They like you.’
‘Only if I keep at arm’s length. They think I’m a bad influence on you.’
At this Ganesh lost it seriously, something which rarely happens, but when it does, you have to watch out. His long hair fell over his face, he waved his arms around, and words bubbled out of him in a seething stream like lava from a volcano. Even Bonnie was impressed and retreated to her little bed by the wall.
I’d realised I had to close off the argument pretty quick or Ganesh would short-circuit. So when I could get a word in, I’d said the bit about my independence and Ganesh stomped off angrily back to the shop. I went down the road to the Chinese takeaway and bought special fried rice and took it back and ate it in solitary splendour. I didn’t want to go up to the flat and start arguing all over again. I particularly wanted to keep Hari out of it. Like I said, Hari worries. He worries on a heroic scale. He’s a nice, kindly, hard-working man and the most stressed person I know. Most businessmen worry about profits and overheads and things. Hari worries about everything, like his health (and mine or yours if he knows you), the state of the nation and the millennium bug, which then, early in the year, he was still sure was lurking somewhere ready to gum up the works. Hari mistrusts computers. He particularly mistrusts the Internet because he is convinced it will ruin newsagents like himself.
