A Building Job

The police investigation into the circumstances of Roland's death turned up a lot of reasons for his action; he had fallen out with his girlfriend the previous weekend and she was blaming herself, he was deeply in debt, his company was insolvent and his land-lord had sued for non-payment of rent, his office had closed. There were several personal creditors who were unlikely to see any of their money, and there was, for a short time, the suggestion that he may have been pushed under the train, but CCTV footage of the incident showed that there was no-one near enough to have pushed him.

Juliette was contacted by his lawyer and went to his office to talk to him. It seemed as if she was his sole beneficiary, but that wasn't saying much, the property would have to be sold to repay debts and there would be little left over. "If it wasn't for Roland and the way that he behaved I would have liked to have kept the house, it was a lovely place and it wasn't its fault that my life there was unhappy, if we'd lived there I would move heaven and earth to keep the place."

"Maybe we can."

"What do you mean?"

"What if I were to buy it, would you be happy living there with me?"

"Darling I'd be happy living in a bark hut if you were there. Do you think you could do it?"

"It'll be a bit of a struggle but I'll see what I can do. In the mean time I think that we should get back to work and take our minds of this. I have a job to do for a lovely old lady that I've done work for before, you'll love her. I'll ring her to see if we can start tomorrow."

"I know this place." Juliette said as we pulled up out front. "It's Mrs. Hitchens' place."

"That's right, I bet she has a cup of tea waiting for us." She had a cup waiting for me, she wasn't expecting Juliette to be with me but a cup appeared very quickly.

"Good morning Mark, how are you this morning? I see that you have a new assistant." She looked at Juliette for a couple of minutes while she poured the tea. "I know you, it would have been fifteen years ago, you were a young girl at school helping your father during school holidays, Juliette isn't it?"

"Yes, you've got a good memory."

"I'm was sorry to hear about your father, he was a good tradesman, very thorough, but what are you doing with this reprobate."

"He was doing a job for my husband and I decided that I needed to be doing something so I insisted on giving him a hand, we got on really well as a team and I've been working with him ever since."

"But it hasn't been long has it, and you've left your husband because of Mark, haven't you?"

"How. . ."

"I'm not in the same league as Miss Marple, but you've recently taken off your wedding ring and because you've been working outdoors there's a white line around your ring finger. You were married to that Roland Sampson that jumped in front of a train the other day, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"Can't say that he'll be terribly missed, he was a shifty character, never liked him myself. What are you going to do now?"

"I have to decide, we have to decide, if we want to buy the house, it has to be sold to pay off debt and Mark is looking at buying it because it is a lovely house for all of the problems of late."

"Mark, can you see yourself living in that house?"

"Yes I can. I have worked on that place over the past ten years and if the asking price is reasonable it would be worth buying, it is structurally sound and I should know."

"Then young man, you do it. Get yourself a good lawyer who can sort out the financial mess and negotiate with the creditors to see if you can arrange favourable repayment terms, it could be that a repayment scheme to pay off the debt might be a better proposition for them than you having to take out a mortgage. And don't worry about any scandal, I'll spread the word that you had nothing to do with his financial situation and that the two of you are a wonderful team. Actually, come to think of it, I know some of the people he borrowed from, I'll have a chat to them and explain the situation, they may be in a position to help you out in some way."

Juliette hugged her. "We don't know how to thank you, my father always had a high opinion of you."

"You two just do your usual good job here and if you decide to have children, and you should, just don't name your daughter after me, you don't know how hard it is to live down having been christened Temperance."

I took her advice and approached a lawyer that I had used from time to time and he had a look at the situation and called me in for a meeting. Juliette and I sat in his office and after introducing him to her, we got down to business. "Your husband was in a financial mess, he was over-exposed to some marginal deals and decided on a ponzi scheme as a short term solution, hoping he could cover his debts. Unfortunately those schemes only get you deeper in debt and it all got too much for him. I have separated his company debt from his personal debt and, as you were not involved in that debt, you will not be involved in recovery. As for his personal debt, I have spoken to the people involved and put to them your proposal to buy the family home and for Juliette to use the money from the sale to repay the debts, they have promised to consider it once we crunch the numbers, I'm hopeful that they will accept.

When we began to crunch numbers we found that we were in for a pleasant surprise; the amount that I would get on the sale of my house would cover the debts and then some. We paid off the debts, and Juliette moved back into her house and I moved in with her.

Juliette and I stood in the Registry Office in front of a Celebrant and close friends and made our relationship legal. A limo took us to the airport for our interstate honeymoon. I carried my wife over the threshold into the bedroom of the hotel suite and our formal marriage bed. "Mark, darling, I am happier than I have ever been, I want our first time to be better than our last." I helped her out of her clothes as she helped me out of mine and we slipped between the sheets in each other's arms. "Be gentle with me."

What began as a simple building job ended up as much more. Juliette and I have entered into a building partnership in more ways than one; we have our business partnership that seemed to be going from strength to strength. We have our emotional partnership that could not be better, our physical partnership that keeps getting better and better. And if I know my lovely wife, we will soon be building on an expansion of our family partnership, so I guess that you could say that all in all it has been a pretty good building job.