Old Friends in Paradise Ch. 02

He got lazy though and was eventually caught when he tried to sell a timeshare in a flat he didn't own to the brother-in-law of a previous landlord, who arranged to meet him at the parade of flats the next morning where the police were waiting for him.

He was prosecuted in Spain for fraud and given six years and was then sent back to England to stand trial again after three and it made the papers.

He'd had two pages all to himself in The Daily Express seeing as not only had he done for some small trust funds and pensions schemes, committed all of the rented timeshare and lottery frauds, he'd defrauded then left his own mother and his wife and two children homeless.

Julie had written a long statement outlining what he'd stolen and how, and the effect on her and her children's lives. His Mum had refused to write one, still convinced that six years on he'd be back with her money, the scheme he'd told her about fool-proof after all.

I happened to be staring over someone's shoulder and asking to be next in line for the two day old English paper in the cookhouse during a trip to Canada when I saw a big colour picture that looked like my parents house. Putting down my tray of food and lifting the paper from the table and its current reader I saw that it was.

I explained to the reader, pointing out the black hardwood door I had a key for in my locker and that two of the girls across the hall had walked through. I told them the man in the photograph walking through Madrid airport dressed in chains and an orange jumpsuit was the ex-husband of my Mum's best mate and what an absolutely bastard he was, missing off that his eldest son had been my best mate.

That best mate was now sat across a restaurant table from me, occasionally checking out my cleavage and long, smooth tanned legs.

*

"He was in prison last I heard - probably still is," said Christian, "finally caught and finally given six years in Spain of which he did three, loaded onto a Gatwick bound plane where Fraud Squad detectives were waiting for him.

He went on trial again and was given three lots of three years and eighteen months for stealing a load of other people's money as well," said Chris with a sigh, "he took down several small pension funds and lots other monies he'd conned out of people."

"I remember Mum telling me that people kept turning up at your flat looking for him," I said.

"Yep, we had everything from bailiffs with their court orders, private detectives hired by his many creditors going through the bins looking for letters, receipts, bank details and delivery boxes, even just straight-up fucking thugs come to our crappy place above the Tesco Express looking for all the hidden cash and expensive goods we must have had.

The thugs got really cross and threatened us, threatened to smash the place up unless Mum got in touch with Dad and got some money back.

Mum just told them that she'd didn't have the first clue where that thieving bastard was so they'd better just get on with smashing up what we had, if they could find anything worth the effort. They looked at our old TV and laughed, our electric cooker was clean but older than me, and we had an electric kettle, not toaster, no microwave, nothing. Some toys, board games and books but not to any kind of value, they'd taken our X-Box from the house because it was on the insurance list, left us the games mind you - I sold them and gave Mum the money mind you, nearly made her cry." he smiled but sadly and took another sip.

"So Mum told the big lads our story and how she'd lost more than anyone else thanks to Dad's fraudulent ways, they had a look through our cupboards and drawers and that was that. They left and told us they'd come back, but ever did."

He sat up straighter,

"There was a positive side to it, we'd had some interest in us from the locals, nothing nasty, but this stream of mean looking people turning up at our door with regular visits from Uncle Pete the policeman meant my Mum had quite a reputation on the estate, and lots of the other Mum's told their kids to leave me and Stevie alone just in case she was a drug baron's girlfriend or something.

I can remember Mum opening the door of our maisonette wide to the bailiffs and solicitors and telling them to come and help themselves.

That old fourth or fifth-hand fat-backed TV was inspected about two dozen times, after all they'd taken anything else of any kind of value at the old house, including all Mum's expensive clothes that had been listed on the house insurance so went into the seizure order.

Mum had started divorce proceedings against him in his absence a year before that, but we had people turning up to serve papers against us for eighteen months afterwards," Christian had the strangest of smiles, part triumph and part embarrassment, "they all looked so smug thinking they had caught up with Dad when all they had done was contact the Royal Mail and got his abandoned wife's forwarding address, Mum cancelled it after the thugs visited."

He smiled sardonically, "There was one though," he said with a genuine smile this time, "Mrs Pearce... lovely ol' Mrs Pearce..." He smiled and shook his head. He stopped a waiter and ordered a couple of large Cokes then continued, "She was this angry little old lady that turned up at our flat demanding to see Dad one evening. She heaved tiny Stevie out of the way when he said we hadn't seen him for ages and stormed in demanding her money back. Mum said that we hadn't seen Dad in nearly two years and she howled at Mum, 'a likely story!'

"All of you dole bludgers and benefit cheats are the same - sneaky, underhanded, thieving reptiles! How many holidays have you had this year hmmm?! Hmmm?!"

Mum shook her head as we hadn't been on more than a day trip since Dad left and that was supplied by the social worker, so the Old Dear perched on the sofa and said she wasn't leaving until she had got back at least half of the money she had invested.

Mum made her a cup of tea, gave her a blanket because the heating was off and said she was in for a bit of a wait because if all the PI's that had called upon us, the Serious Fraud Office, Dorset, Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and the Metropolitan Police and Interpol couldn't find him what chance did she have.

She sat there with her stiff upper lip until about six when Mum had to go out to work.

"I'm staying!" snapped the lady and complained bitterly but the over-washed overall Mum was wearing kind of gave the truth of it. Mum picked up her bag and handed me my 10p emergency phone money (ours was incoming calls only) so I could ring the offices' security man from the call box in front of the shops if I needed her, then waved goodbye expecting the old lady to follow her, "stay if you like, I can't afford to lose this job - Christian, you're in charge!"

Angry old Mrs Pearce flapped a bit, then demanded of Stevie and I who was going to cook our tea seeing as Mum had just walked off. I said that we'd eaten in school that day, but we'd have some toast before bed.

Angry old Mrs Pearce mumbled about such nonsense and stormed into the kitchen,

"Where's all the food?" she demanded seeing only half a loaf of white label bread and a quarter full jam jar and a few tins in our empty cupboards.

"Mum gets paid tomorrow," I said, "we'll shop on Friday."

Stevie started to cry, telling her to go away.

Stevie hated it all; hated his new school and his new classmates that thought he talked posh, hated school dinners, hated that Mum survived on sandwiches and tea, hated our reduced circumstances, hated the unfairness of it all. Dad had gone and taken everything, including Stevie's self-confidence.

"You can still afford satellite TV though I can see!" she pointed out of the window.

"Left by the last residents," I told her going back into the living room and indicating the wire coming through the wall but no receiver box or indeed a TV to plug it in to.

Stevie was sat on the sofa with his bottom lip protruding and wiping the tears he couldn't stop, and I knew he wouldn't get any better so I told him to go to bed and I would bring his toast through later, and to leave the hall light on so he could read seeing as our bedroom light fitting was broken and still waiting for the housing association to come and repair it. He pushed the door open and pulled off his school polo shirt for me to put in the wash showing a figure just as skinny as mine. She did look a bit shocked by that.

"Who is actually going to mind you now that your mother has walked out?"

"I am," I said.

"So where has your mother actually gone? Bingo? The Pub?" she said with a self-satisfied, eye-fluttering grin.

"Enterprise Court, she's a cleaner."

"Reeeally?!" she hissed contemptuously, "that's MILES away!"

"About two and a half," I was getting really pissed off with her now, "it's that big glass building down on the new industrial estate, if you drive past slowly you'll see her inside; if you'll excuse me I've got homework to do."

"I'm waiting for your no-good father to come home!" she said with raised eyebrows.

"Yeah..." I said, "so are we!"

After sitting bolt upright on the couch she buggered off after I went to bed. Strangest thing, she did go via Enterprise Court and waited. I think she was convinced that Dad would suddenly appear out of the mist or something.

As she left the office for the evening, Mum saw her and said she was really sorry but however much her almost-ex-husband had stolen she didn't get paid until the next day and that went straight into the bank and most of it would go to last month's overdraft.

She wished her a goodnight and started to walk home. The old dear asked her where her car was, and Mum said the last she heard it was clamped and getting parking tickets in Southern Spain and that the tax and MoT test certificate had expired a year before, "It's still in my name but if you can get to it before the Repo men, you're more than welcome to it."

"So how are you getting home?"

"Well seeing as my broomstick hasn't been mended, I'll have to walk."

"But that's over two miles," said the old lady looking at her watch and the brooding, darkened sky.

"Tell me about it," said Mum...

The upshot of it was that the old dear drove Mum home. She fell asleep at some traffic lights because the car was so warm and she was so tired. When Mrs Pearce dropped her off, she said she had seen a Tesco jacket hanging in the hall; mum said that was her 'day' job.

"Two jobs?"

"And overtime when I can get it, I do get Sunday's off - mostly - but I'm trying to get the TV fixed, my boys have got to have something in their lives other than school."

She explained to her that she had been a very well qualified senior accounts manager for a large banking group and had earned serious money but her idiot jealous husband had taken the lot and run up a load more debt leaving her with all the shit.

Being an undischarged bankrupt that had her house and property repossessed from under her with a husband that still had the police of three countries chasing after him made her virtually unemployable in that line of business, her new address didn't help either.

"You've actually lost... everything?" said the old lady with a hand on Mum's shoulder.

Mum's face creased as she fought the long-suppressed emotion,

"Everything..." Mum fought back her tears, "but not my boys or my pride!"

Mrs Pearce saw a single tear and put her arms around my Mum and held her while she wept, the first and only person ever allowed to do so as my brave, strong, indomitable Mum cried her heart out.

Mum said how her parents were both retired civil servants and lived in a small flat, and that Dad's Mum had been his mistress's very first victim and the old lady trusting the forthright passion her son had for the project had given them all of her money and financed her house as well, seeing as it was such an amazing deal with a great return promised. Nan blamed Mum, Mum explained it was Dad and the other woman, Nan cried and told us we had to go. Haven't seen her since.

Her big country house was repossessed a few months after ours when the re-mortgage wasn't paid and she found herself in a B&B until the housing association found her a pensioner's studio flat where she still lives surviving on a very small state pension, not the nest egg his late father had left that would have given her a very comfortable life in the big country house that would have eventually gone to Dad and my Auntie Claire.

Mrs Pearce got very business-like and asked how much the TV repair was and Mum said that she was £14 shy of it, so she dipped into her handbag and gave Mum a twenty-pound note, insisting it was a loan and that Mum could pay her back.

Mum complained, so she took the note back and gave her £14 exactly and wrote the amount in her pocket book, so she wouldn't forget and said Mum could give her a pound or fifty pence a week until the loan was cleared.

From that night Mrs Pearce would come back once a week to collect her one pound, bringing things 'she'd found at home'; soft furnishings mostly, coloured throws that hid the worn arms and back of our charity shop sofa, a few scatter cushions to cover the stretched springs, warm blankets for cooler nights to save putting the heating on, the sort of thing she knew Mum would like and it did make the place more homely. I remember most fondly the bedside lamps and the extension lead she brought along so Stevie and I could read in bed without all the lights being on and the doors open.

Mum got the TV repaired and the old dear bought a cheap supermarket DVD player for Stevie 'for his birthday', and after that she would collect him from school once a week and take him to the library so he could choose some films to watch, and then take him to the next door Burger King for tea and would buy him the biggest meal they sold, sometimes two if she thought he was still hungry bless her.

At one point she offered to get Mum a small car to help her out, but Mum said she couldn't afford to run it. That or the next angry bailiff would insist that seeing as the decree absolute was still some time away it would be 'goods and chattels' and take it as well, like they had taken all of our other stuff in lieu of Dad's bad debts.

Mum did accept a fortnight in Mrs Pearce's holiday home in Devon with her insisting that it wasn't 'charity'; the place was just sat there empty after all and we all still had to get there and to eat, even on holiday. So Uncle Pete and Auntie Liz would drive us there, stay the first night, then come back for us two weeks later.

It was so nice, and Stevie and I just played on the beach - football, tennis, baseball, fishing, swimming when it was warm enough." He grinned, "That place was a fucking lifesaver. On reflection I think those weeks away in Devon saved Mum's sanity each year. We'd arrive, unpack, Uncle Pete would drive me and Stevie to the chip shop in the next village for the biggest meal he could buy and would slip me sixty quid for our holiday money. I was thinking of giving it to Mum until Uncle Pete saw straight through me and said he'd already given her some and Auntie Liz had already put a load of groceries in with our bags and baggage.

Mum was annoyed at him of course but he was her big brother and just used to give her 'a look'. Mum did for a bottle of wine with Auntie Liz and cried herself to sleep that night, but at least she slept - and she carried on doing so. By the end of the first week Stevie told her that she looked like his Mum again, she lay on the beach and cuddled him for an entire day thanks to that comment. Four years we went there, with Mum saving up each time so she could turn down Uncle Pete's holiday money. He never let her of course and she always cried..."

"Wow!" I hissed, "your Mum was so brave!"

"Yeah, but she worked on the checkouts in Tesco and as a cleaner, that's all yo..." he paused for a second, "...your mates ever talked about..."

Shit.

It had been going so well.

In our gang, our parents' jobs were normally the same kind of thing, own business, financial services, construction or design, IT or the professions and I remembered the day his Mum's 'bottom drawer' jobs were discussed at length and laughed about, then my Mum ripping in to me when I recounted our mirth about it over dinner that evening, grabbing my wrist snarling at me and saying she hoped that one day I might have one tenth of the strength and the guts that her brave and stoic mate Julie had in light of all the shit her twat of a ex-husband had brought down on her.

I was sure I could see that Chris still affected by it and I dropped my eyes to my plate, worried that while it was obvious that there had been some attraction between us, perhaps there was just too much history, good and bad, despite the laughing and flirting we'd shared.

Sat at our dinner table in the Cypriot heat it went too quiet for too long so I spoke up again, perhaps I could at the very least help him purge his soul of a mess of childhood shit and hang-ups.

"And you've never seen your Dad since?"

"Nope, nothing since the morning he left to 'go to work' and never came back," Christian re-made eye contact with me again, "He was a very busy man Chrissie, he'd been either conning people or in prison after all." We shared a look and giggled.

"He tried to get in touch a few years ago when I won a medal and was in the paper, he said that because he was a low category prisoner, he'd get day release for the ceremony and to send an invite as he'd really like to get back in touch - he also added a PS asking me to also send the £25 for half of the train fare." Chris sipped his cold Coke, "He wrote to me courtesy of the Royal Marines who sent it home. Stevie was there, recognised the handwriting, opened it, read the first few lines tore it into small bits and posted it back in the same envelope.

Steve was younger but did remember the better times when Mum used to wear Armani suits to work but was suddenly reduced to having just three pairs of jeans and half a dozen tops to her name and having to work 13 hour days to keep us fed and clothed with a roof over our head, while that bastard and his girlfriend lived the good life on our money all along the Mediterranean, somehow still managing to keep all of his shit landing on our doorstep." Chris ate some more, "I never saw the letter he wrote back but Stevie let go of about eight years of hatred. He wrote 'go fuck yourself you evil, thieving, spineless bastard - never contact us again, if I ever see you fucking face I WILL push my fist through it, I hope you die reeeeally slowly,' that kind of thing. He even wrote to the prison on my behalf saying that whatever prisoner Tucker might say, he wasn't invited nor welcome to any London medal ceremonies so requests for day release shouldn't be considered.

He once told the lovely and quite devout Mrs Pearce that given the opportunity, he'd cheerfully unplug any life support machine Dad was attached to just to charge the Gameboy she'd found in a charity shop and given him."

"What does Stevie do now?" I asked remembering his brother younger than us by six years with great fondness. We played families in my playhouse with six-month-old Stevie as 'our' baby.

Christian laughed out loud,

"Believe it or not he's a junior doctor!" he said a real sense of pride, "works far too hard for very little money in an A and E department but doing brilliantly, engaged to a nurse a year ago!"

"Oh how lovely! Our little Baby Stevie all growed up and saving lives."

"Yeah!" he said proudly adding, "Aggravating little tosser," when he saw my smile.

I laughed and relaxed as Christian spoke and felt us both slowly ease back into our friendship. I leaned back into my seat again all thighs and cleavage and looked him up and down.