Until There Was You (5 page)

"Okay, Nate, follow me into the office. My receptionist is bringing us coffee." Jack started speaking immediately as they walked away from the reception area and through the large building, which made Nate feel like he was in an Aaron Sorkin drama. "I've been Mr. Mangelino's financial advisor for over four years now. When he started up Bay Consultancy, I helped him put some infrastructure in place, helped him understand what he could invest. Lately I've been showing him how to consolidate some assets and try to free some capital for the business." Jack's words possessed a kind of forced breeziness—an affectation of nonchalance that just didn't ring very true. Nate's body began to grow a little cold as he walked into Jack's spacious, modern office. It looked just like an office in a film: the typical nice-but-pretentious space of the boss character.

"Nate, I'm sure that you know a bit about what has been happening with Mr. Mangelino's business affairs. The trouble that it has been facing and the—well, the financial difficulties and stresses that he has been under." Jack was professional, his words straightforward and matter-of-fact but not unkind. The receptionist came into the office with a tray of coffee, milk, creamer, and sugar. Nate picked up his mug and started to drink; he preferred his coffee black. The sensation of the warm liquid rolling down his throat felt comforting and routine, like seeing something familiar in a foreign environment.

"Actually, I was under the impression that the business was doing okay. I know that Joshua has had to work a lot more hours recently, but I thought that was because everything was beginning to take off. Did you want me to come here to talk about the business? Because I don't know anything." Nate finished off the coffee and placed the mug back on the desk.

"Well, it's slightly more than that. It involves 127 Meadowvale." Jack's tone was sympathetic but practiced.

Nate felt the color drain from his face. "That's my home, it's, uh, my son's home… What do you want to talk about?" Nate swallowed hard, trying to clear the lump stuck itself in his throat. He could feel an invisible weight pressing down on his shoulders.

Outside, heavy silver ropes of rain fell from the sky, streaming down the large window behind Jack like tears down a face.  The hammering of the precipitation sounded like gunshots inside of Nate's head, disorientating him and mingling with the Jack's words.

"I've been trying to get a hold of Mr. Mangelino for a while now. He seems to be avoiding me, or at any rate has been out of contact. The last time we spoke… it was a little bit… well, intense." Jack shifted in his expensive leather seat.

"I wish that I could tell you where he was or what is going through his head. But I can't. So you'll just have to tell me what's going on."

"All right. Mr. Mangelino started the business and it was doing very well for some time. But then something changed, I don't know what, and Mr. Mangelino didn't seem to know either. Mr. Mangelino recruited some pretty high-profile staff members for large, multinational companies, but for a multitude of reasons they didn't work out the way that anybody would have hoped. Two of the more prestigious clients the company represented quit within two months, and some did not have their contracts renewed after a probation period. From what I understand, the bigger companies lost faith in Mr. Mangelino's ability to meet their staff recruiting needs. It seems to be an industry in which your name is everything—the company has fewer established contracts now than on the day it started and expenses didn't decrease to reflect that." Jack spoke slowly and carefully, as if he was trying to soften some kind of blow, scraping down the edges. It did not help to calm Nate's nerves.

"Can you just call him Joshua?" Nate asked.

"Of course. Joshua was forced to use the house as collateral, to use his assets to gain a little bit more finance. Joshua wasn't prepared to lay off any of his staff, so he had no choice but to take out loans in order to maintain the daily running of the business. It looked like things were turning around, and there was a bump in the company's fortunes. But it wasn't enough; the interest rates were eating into the profits and the final step was to remortgage the house in order to keep things afloat. You signed the remortgage agreement—the earnings from your books were taken into account when the terms of your loan were worked out. Unfortunately, the loan rates got more overwhelming and there wasn't anything else that could be done. It wasn't what I advised Joshua to do. I'm surprised you don't know more about this. Your name is on a lot of the paperwork. Joshua knew what he was getting into and he hasn't kept up his end of the deal. Naturally, this means that his assets have been placed in significant danger."

"I remember all of that, but I was just told it was for expansion. I thought that everything was going well and they just needed some money to grow the business, not to stop it from falling apart." Nate put his face into his cupped hands for a second so that he felt like he was in his own private space. "You keep saying his assets. But surely they are
our
assets? They were things that we built together—part of the relationship we shared and the kind of people we wanted to be. The kind of parents we promised ourselves that we would be. We weren't married, but, you know, what was mine was his." Nate felt useless and childish, his face red with his warring emotions.

"Maybe, Mr. Grace, but the reverse was not true. The house…" Jack looked through a folder in front of him, "… two cars, and some smaller assets are all primarily in his name. They were all used to secure loans, and frankly, his time has run out. He has nowhere to run, no assets left to leverage. I thought it was only fair to give you warning." It was obvious that Jack was struggling with this information; his voice had turned gentler.

The skin on Nate's face felt hot and the world was beginning to go out of focus, but he braced himself and straightened his spine out so that he looked at least a little dignified.

"What are you saying?" he asked. He didn't really want to hear an answer. Melting into the seat and disappearing forever would be preferable to knowing, but there was Bailey to think of.

"Do you know what repossession is?" Jack asked.

"Yes. I'm twenty-six, not sixteen." Nate's voice adopted a hard edge that he hadn't intended. "I'm sorry. It's just that I never... I never thought that Joshua would gamble like this. I never thought to question Joshua. Because he was so smart and strong and responsible." Nate got up from his seat and began to pace around the office; he needed to move so that he didn't feel so trapped.

He thought back to that day that he had come to Jack's office the first time. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Nate could remember how safe he had felt sitting next to Joshua, how secure he was in the knowledge that everyone around him knew what they were doing. It had been an unremarkable day until time had turned it into a tragic one.

Nate's mind was reeling between anger, fear, sadness, and loss. He felt pathetic because he wanted Joshua to swoop in and save the day. The desire to run into Joshua's arms was unbearable. Even after all the things that Joshua had done to jeopardize everything, Nate couldn't help but see him as the solution to the mess that had occurred. He was angry, but he couldn't focus the anger on anything but himself for being so stupid and naïve. He wanted to focus on Joshua's betrayal and process how he felt about it, but all he could do was replay the image of himself signing the remortgage payment.

The sound of Nate's shoes on the wooden flooring was the only sound in the office. Nate looked over at Jack, who was sitting patiently behind his desk, making some notes on a legal pad. "I'm sorry. I'm going to sit down now. I know that I'm acting like a crazy person."

"I understand, and you're not acting like a crazy person. And I didn't mean to suggest that you were ignorant. I hate to have to tell you this, but your house is going to be repossessed. All of the paperwork has been drafted up. You have to leave in the next two weeks. You would have had more notice if Joshua had contacted me. I'm surprised you're so in the dark. Some people that work for me came to your house a couple of times in the last month."

The word
repossessed
drummed inside of Nate's brain, reverberating around and turning everything else into white noise. Nate reached up and wiped a tear from his cheek. He just couldn't match the Joshua that he had spent half of his life loving with the man who would sacrifice the life that they had built together. He felt like his whole understanding of the world had been ripped away from him and he'd been thrust into a life that he didn't comprehend or want. The gap between the Joshua that Nate had thought he had known and the one who had risked and lost everything felt too awful and vast to think about.
How could Joshua do this to us? Why would Joshua do this to us? How could I have been so blind?

He wanted to talk to Joshua, scream at Joshua, embrace him, and push him away. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't hold onto one emotion for long enough to make any sense of it. He knew that he was furious, but he also knew that he would give anything to walk into Cecily's house with Joshua beside him and see him pick Bailey up. The neatness of the room was cartoonishly at odds with the storm of thoughts and feelings that was causing havoc in Nate's brain. Nate felt more tears roll down his cheeks. Thinking about Bailey threw Nate back into reality, and he knew that he had to do everything he could do to make things better.

Nate sat up straighter in his chair. His spine was strong, and a solidity rose from the back of his stomach and built a wall between his heart and his chest. He ran through his thoughts so that he could grab onto any ones that felt remotely practical. "There were a lot of things that I didn't know. A lot. But, um, I will buy the house, or at least put down some kind of deposit that secures it for me and my son. And Joshua—when he comes back, when he comes back to me. I mean,
if
he comes back to me. To us. I write books, and they're pretty successful, and I've just signed a new contract. So I have some money."

Nate decided that he was going to be a warrior—that he was going to at least try to fight for the things that he wanted. For the first time in a long time, he didn't have someone in his corner, someone taking the blows and kicks for him. There was no longer any shelter. Nate felt betrayed by Joshua; he had never thought for a second that he would be in this kind of situation without Joshua by his side. The betrayal felt like darts in his back. He just wanted to be in a room with Joshua so that he could shout and ask questions and try to pick through the situation. Nate didn't want to be alone and that made him feel stupid; he wanted to be strong and capable and adult about everything.

"You don't have the money. Believe me, I have tried to think of ways,
any way
, for you to keep the house. My wife is a huge fan of your books. She reads passages out to me all of the time. I suppose we feel like we know you. All of this time, Joshua assured me that you knew what was happening. If I had known that you were in the dark, I would have contacted you sooner.

"Your main account is a joint account with Joshua, and he never said that you raised any concerns about what was happening. Everything you have earned for the last ten years has been put into an account that Joshua has been using. You don't really have anything in your name alone. When you came into the office to sign the remortgage agreement, Joshua gave us the impression that everything had been explained to you." Jack maintained his professional demeanor, but a flash of sadness in his eyes made Nate wince. Nate could suddenly see himself the way others would: as an idiot who didn't even think to question the basic financial foundations of his own life.

"How do you know that I don't have the money?" Nate asked.

"Because I am the person in charge of your financial affairs. They are all bundled in with Joshua's—you two are a package deal. You are in a strong financial position, but you are quite a long way off from being able to save the house. It's an expensive property and, as such, it's out of your price range. Even with the new book contract. A lot of the lump sum you received has already been used to pay the last two months of staff wages, administration fees and a big advertising push that Joshua green-lit a couple of months ago. You have some money, but it's just not enough to pay off the missing mortgage payments and fees and then still have enough money to live your life. It would be tantamount to throwing your money into a hole. Staying in the house would make your life
very
difficult."

"Are you sure? Maybe I could get a second opinion, or a loan?" There was still a slight glimmer of hope in his voice, a kind of strained faith, a muted expectation that the universe would somehow provide a little bit of light.

"You could try—but in my professional opinion, it would be a lost cause. I'm very sorry to tell you this, to be the person to deliver the blow."

Nate stood up, a quiet act of defiance and a desire to feel the solid ground underneath him, confirmation that the world was still in place. "Thank you, Mr. Clark. It's nice that you seem to care. I'm going to go and spend some time with my son. And drink my weight in red wine and then perhaps do some writing that will no doubt be horrendously awful. And just… try and build a semblance of a life—or of something like it."

Jack stood up, and Nate noticed that he was taller than he had realized. "Are you okay to get home? You've had a big shock and the roads are a nightmare because of the construction."

"I'm okay. I'm not going to fall apart; I think all of my mental faculties are intact. Thank you again. I assume that I just pack up all my stuff and someone will... will deal with my—the house. I supposed it's not mine anymore. I guess it never really was. Anyway... You have my number so you can just tell me when we need to be out." Nate pushed his short blond hair back with his right hand and picked up his bag with his left. He knew that he had to get out of the room—somehow, leaving it would make everything better.

In the outside world, the rain would still be falling and people would still be living their lives, completely oblivious to the hurt and desolation this office now contained. Nate needed that sense of forward momentum as an antidote; he needed shopping bags, bustling children, and the constant march of the rain to battle the suspended animation he felt.