Old Friends in Paradise Ch. 02

The hormones had well and truly kicked in and everyone was getting precious about who they were hanging around with. I walked to McD's with Gav the first Wednesday like we had for three years before but of course I had no money to buy anything and Simon was very quick to point that out, and I became the butt of the jokes not the comic." I nodded, I remembered that very evening. "Suddenly Simon was the comedian with Gav not me, and he liked it.

Gav wasn't the nerdy stand-up anymore, he let his hair grow long and hung with you guys, the A-Team. His jokes stopped being clever and relevant and instead were stupid one-liners insults about me.

It became not only funny to pick on me but a requirement, a rite of passage to the cool gang. It became clear that I wasn't Gav's mate anymore when my skinny frame, which wasn't that different to HIS skinny frame, was because I was poor and from the council estate not because I was skinny - like him.

My spots were because I was the dirty housing benefit boy which also meant I must have had nits, pubic lice, ringworm and scurvy; that was Gav's joke, none of Simon's friends knew what ringworm or scurvy was of course.

The next day in school I asked him why he had been so nasty to me and he said it was just a laugh, I said I hadn't found it that funny.

"It's just a joke Christian!" he insisted as if I was being unreasonable.

I said would it be OK if I made jokes about him, he told me to fuck off and went and stood next to Simon and Brett, and made more nasty comments about me, shouting "come on Tucker, make some jokes about me!" Twat.

The final nail in my pubescent coffin was finding out I needed glasses, they got broken once a fortnight and were held together with sticky tape after a while - another thing that Simon's friends enjoyed doing, another rite of passage for his dickhead rugby mates."

*

His mates. My boyfriend was the most popular boy in school, was a great sporting success - athletics in the summer, rugby in the winter and spring, and the son of wealthy and successful parents who probably spoiled him. He was used to the best and expected it.

His charm rubbed off as well, all the pretty girl's hung around him - and me of course - so the rugby boys hung around him as well. Everyone wanted to be Simon's friend.

Simon's friends - that was me of course. Although I never knocked Christian's glasses off his face, I made a very glamourous point of never getting that close to him.

I felt my shame rise as I remembered my slip into school bully territory, assistant school bully at least; after all I'd been the one that gleefully informed Simon, and by implication the entire school, that 'HE was on housing benefit' after his Mum told my Mum and she told my Dad in the kitchen about what 'that whore-mongering bastard husband of Julie' had reduced her best mate to.

Next morning Christian was the 'son of a whore-mongering bastard' throughout the school; I begged Simon to stop, to not let my Mum find out we were saying that, as it would come straight back to me.

Simon had laughed and issued the edict to the group that it was 'our secret', which meant somehow it got back to my Mum in three days and I was grounded for a fortnight. I was also conscious that Mum stopped talking about things when I was around or including me in the grown- up conversation. Simon continued to ask me how it was going with the Tucker family of course, keen to hear and relish their latest misery, taking the strangest pleasure in their collapse.

I didn't blame myself for telling, or Simon for repeating it, or the gang for laughing with such glee at it for that matter. It was obviously Christian's fault and I resented him for it, even though when we sat together in class he was still always really nice to me like always.

I was hurt - Christian had been there for all my growing up, we were always there for each other, now he wasn't - there was just a scruffy, thin, spotty copy of my best friend that only appeared at school where he no longer fitted into that comfortable world, didn't even have a phone that we could text or chat on, and only had access to computers at school or at the library for email.

Following Simon's lead everyone joined in, convinced by groupthink that it was his own fault he had no money, and he shouldn't have been around us 'normal' kids; he should have stayed away, gone somewhere else if he didn't want to be made fun of.

That too was a crock of shit, wherever he sat on his own in a classroom, the playing fields or in the dining room with his free lunch, the gang would follow just to keep up the fun until the eagle-eyed lunchtime ladies saw, verbally clipped Simon's ear and watched free-lunch boy Christian like hawks for the rest of the year, which was something else for the gang to take the piss about.

I looked down at my wine glass and took a sip, the lump in my throat making it very hard to swallow.

I thought about how I blabbed all of the personal stuff that he'd told me that spring and through the following summer, because the more I told Simon the nicer he was to me. Simon laughed long and hard when I joked about Christian's Dad running off with the woman with tits and attitude, and how his once rich and high-flying now bankrupt Mum was a cleaner in an office block.

By coincidence the office Simon's Mum worked in. OK, she was 'office manager' for his Dad's firm based there and in name only, and in better days Julie could have financially and educationally bought and sold her ten times over but now she emptied her waste bin and wiped coffee-cup rings off of her desk and vacuumed around it. Simon thought that hysterical and it resulted in more comments.

"You see that skinny twat there?" he shouted to the entire dining hall, "His Mum's a fucking failure guys! She cleans up after my Mum Fucker, Your Mum is like... my Mum's servant!" and he repeated it - often, in his face, surrounded by big boys.

*

"No one wanted to be my friend because they would suddenly find themselves picked on and bullied just like me, and no one was that brave - not against Simon bloody Williams and half of the rugby team, especially after he issued his fatwa against me." He sipped more wine and didn't look up at me, "I hated that school, but Mum knew that it was the best in the area and I needed to stay there; a few of the kids from the estate went there but were all down in the lower groups and not up in the top set like we were." He downed his almost full glass, "Clever and poor Chrissie, not something good to be at that school."

He looked up at me seeing the tears coming down my face,

"Sorry mate," I managed to gasp through trembling lips, sipping some of my wine in an effort to restore my calm. "we were soooo shitty to you..." I hissed.

He smiled and shrugged his shoulders; Fuck but I could see only one way out of this. Fiddling with the stem of my wine glass and staring at my side plate I spoke again.

"Christian, I know this is getting on for ten years too late, but I am honestly and truly sorry for fucking up so much of your last year at school..."

"Two years..." he whispered back at me. His face cracked into just the hint of the smile he was trying so hard to hide.

"Two years..."

I pursed my lips as he started to laugh, then threw my napkin at the very real and very cheeky, wholly gorgeous grin that had escaped his sad face, "You bastard!" I laughed through my tear stained one, "you just led me through the misery that was your life and I'm trying hard to make some kind of amends here..."

He laughed back,

"And you are doing EXTREMELY well Christina! Please," he said, resuming his previous sad, serious, hang-dog look and handing me back my napkin pouring another glass of wine, "do carry on..."

I folded my arms and crossed my legs, turning slightly on my chair to express my crossness. I also knew that the move would also show off some cleavage and some thigh.

"Shan't now!" I said, my bottom lip protruding.

He laughed, I laughed; we shared the moment across the candlelit table. Something changed in that moment of shared laughter. His smile seemed to be just like it always had been and so very genuine, plus I detected a hint of that hungry, lustful look he'd been giving me since he arrived. Fuck but he was so good-looking!!

Our next course arrived at the perfect moment and it was some time before his revelations restarted.

Banishing my thoughts about my slanderous comments about her I asked about his Mum Julie and how she was; she was a lovely and kind lady and my second Mum for so many years. I had many fond memories of tea at her house and her babysitting me, soured by what we'd said about her 'for a laugh'. All that aside, she was fine and now lived in some comfort in a nice bungalow not far from where my parents lived and had a regular boyfriend.

"And your Dad?"

Chris pursed his lips and closed his eyes,

"Oh, that bastard..." his top lip rolled fractionally and thought it might have been the wrong question to ask, but he continued, "It took a few days for Mum to work out that not only had he gone, he'd given back his company car, taken the family car that was in her name AND taken her laptop. By the end of that week her cards were getting refused everywhere then the red letters arrived from the mortgage company and the utilities - she realised she was seriously up shit creek."

I could see the real anger about his childhood now, and it wasn't all about school.

"He left a note justifying his 'time away', saying he was intimidated by Mum's amazing success and wanted to prove he could do it too. He never mentioned the other woman, his 'business partner' but made the point that soon everyone would see that he could be a financial success like her rather than an assistant sales manager for Hyundai.

With the other woman's advice and Mum's laptop, he'd taken all but the four or five hundred quid the spineless twat had convinced himself would suffice to pay the bills until the vast amounts of profit started rolling in and he'd pay it all back."

*

I knew this story well; there had been no suggestion of any problem between them and it had come as a complete surprise to a really sad and hassled looking Julie sat in our kitchen telling my Mum that he'd gone and had taken not only the money he could legitimately claim to be his but hers as well, everything was in both of their names, and what he'd left in the account didn't even cover the first month of bills and direct debits.

His Mum continued to get paid of course and it was looking like she might survive until the joint credit card was overspent, frozen and then cancelled.

The mortgage wouldn't get paid for three months but that was arranged with the bank, but then large bills started to arrive for goods and services on the continent she knew nothing about, so she contacted the bank, the police and her solicitor. It took ages to get their joint accounts frozen and his 'business' had still been charging things to it and not responding to her emails and texts demanding he stop as all the money had gone.

Eventually it all came tumbling down and while her husband continued to spend their accumulated wealth, she couldn't even begin to afford to pay the mortgage for the house and the other loans he'd raised on it, so on advice from the bank it was put up for sale. It wasn't anywhere near enough to pay both the mortgage, the loans or the credit card bills and the huge overdraughts in all three of their accounts.

I can remember Christian's little brother being in our kitchen and my Mum playing and joking with him, a real choke in her voice, cuddling him as everything he'd grown up with was taken out of their house and loaded into containers, each item given a value and ticked off of a list, my Dad arguing with the bailiffs about much of it, even as he went through the boot and glove box of Julie's garage project MG sports car before it was wrapped in clear plastic sheeting and loaded onto a flatbed truck.

With a voice that I can still hear to this day, Julie asked Mum if she could borrow three or four pounds to pay for Stevie's school dinners for the next week until she could get benefits arranged and start getting them for free. Our school had agreed to pay Chris's based on a single phone call but the cow of a secretary at the Primary School that Stevie would be going to on the estate wanted sight of benefit books or letters which would take some time.

By the time the world caught up with his Dad (not his business partner) the dream life and the money-maker scheme he'd begun was over, along with the almost three quarters of a million pounds he'd raised from the secretly re-financed house and the joint bank accounts that he used to buy himself into the 'absolutely-cannot-fail' system that he'd allowed himself to be convinced would earn five times that in the first few months.

It came out during the investigation that his business partner had done this a few times before and was a bit of an expert. She'd been in his Hyundai garage actually looking to finance a new car when the over-confident salesman rang all of her fraudulent bells. They went on a couple of test drives where she started to groom him, initially for a cheaper deal, telling him how clever he was and SURELY someone with his amazing business acumen was wasted selling cars.

"My wife has all of the real brains and makes the good money," he'd told her with a hint of bruised ego and said where she worked and the kind of money she'd worked with and had made since she'd gone back to her job after having children.

Had they paid off the mortgage?

Almost.

And that was that. 'Target - vulnerable male with low self-esteem at ten o'clock' and she didn't even have to sleep with him first, although apparently she had quite often after that.

A year after the start of their partnership, she ended up taking the last of the cash and left one day in Mum's car on a supposed 'scouting for new business' trip. She also had the laptop and paperwork on 'their business' and his money which she needed to set her up with her next new business partner, another underachieving wannabe sucker with roaming eyes and a no sense of whether something was actually too good to be true. Because her scams were generally in her egotistical partner's name she'd managed to keep her head down most of the time but was last seen in Portugal where Interpol believed she owned some houses.

Virtually penniless he came home to England leaving lots of unpaid bills in Estepona, but knew he had no welcome in Dorset. He tried the same get-rich-quick investment schemes in London and the South-East using the tricks he'd learned from his missing partner and started out in business again and did make some Ponzi-type money but spent even more, doing a runner on the half dozen angry people in his 'rented by the week' office looking for an explanation or their money.

He went to his flat and avoided the landlady that wanted her back rent and packed his bags, leaving them hidden in the back alley after he climbed out of the window.

Next it was to a second hand car dealership and 'Can I test drive this lovely Ford Focus, it's for my son to learn to drive - here's the log book and key for my two year old Hyundai you can see across there in the car park'.

It wasn't his Hyundai of course, that was still in Spain or Portugal somewhere being driven by his missing business partner, but the second-hand car salesman had smelled a sale on the rather dodgy and probably clocked Ford he'd taken for a debt and let the honest-looking, smartly suited man take it without checking the colour or even the registration number of the car he could see in the adjacent pay-and-display.

The car key was a genuine Hyundai and marked as such - as were the house keys, one for his house and one for his mother's and a few others, even the branded one for his gym locker - there was a fob with a picture of him and his gorgeous wife.

The fact that both houses had been repossessed, the gym locker long since emptied and the beauty in the photo had divorced him some months before was academic. He'd had them guiltily rattling around in his suitcase for two years for some reason but now they looked the part for what he needed.

He drove the car to behind his abandoned flat and collected his bags and put them into the boot, pulled off the price stickers and the plastic 'for sale' cone on top, and chucked them where his bags had been. He filled it with petrol at a local station and drove the back roads the thirty miles to Dover, onto the tunnel train, through France heading back to Spain where he'd found the suckers were English, older, more trusting and much more abundant.

The new owners of Julie's house were quite surprised when debt collectors arrived looking for a Mr or Mrs Tucker, the Ford and the real Hyundai, they even had a CCTV still of the man in question and the key fob picture.

My Mum was passing and sent the bailiffs on their way with the back story. 'Mrs Julie Tucker? No my love, haven't seen that poor bitch in years' she lied, but for the very best reasons. 'Her husband did what? Really? Doesn't surprise me, good luck with that thieving bastard, when you find him give him a kick in the bollocks from me for what he did to his wife and his two kids'. They backed away with Mum's increasing anger.

Back on the continent his Dad repeated his bullshit, apparently still amazed that the wealth didn't roll in as he'd been promised two years before, and was doing regular runners on a fuck load of debt in one Spanish town after another, skirting around the various Spanish Costa's setting up again, using the branding and advertising boards he'd had made by a firm in Estepona when he'd first arrived, charged to the joint account already well into the red by his former partner's removal of the almost six figure sum that had previously been there.

It would then be timeshare investments, doing what his former partner had taught him finding the older British holiday makers with the redness starting to fade around their first week tans, their comfort with purchasing food and drink and really into the second week of Mediterranean life. He'd ask how they were doing and one partner would take the bait. He'd come on quietly with the premise this kind of flat really wasn't for people like them.

After a few minutes chat he's know and run with that; too expensive, too cheap, not posh enough, too posh and he'd show them around the flat he'd only rented, letting them convince him to sign them up taking their deposit and arranging direct debits into an account he would empty at the end each week, giving them a calendar with their fortnight, month or three months holiday more than a year away along with arm-loads of meaningless paperwork that he'd have them sign six or seven times for realism, tourist leaflets, fictitious and wholly worthless money-off vouchers for their flight when they came back next year for their holiday and all of the wonderful holidays to come in the flat they now owed a part of. Finally and with a great flourish he'd hand them a key to the flat he'd only rented and slept on the sofa to keep the place immaculate.

His Spanish improved so then it was more Ponzi's, and when times got rough even charity lottery tickets he'd had printed.

It was a living but according to his interrogators and his defence counsel, he was still totally and honestly convinced he could make up the money his former partner either siphoned off, spent or absconded with to keep his promise and pay back his wife, his mother and support his sons.

He never did and would end up doing one bunk after another when the rent was two or three months overdue to pull together a month in advance for the next sucker ex-pat landlord that would fall for his bullshit car salesman patter.