Chapter 26

26

Bess finished up in the shower and got herself dressed. Marianne was out at a cleaning job and it felt good to have a bit of quiet time on her day off. She planned to call the Citizen's Advice Bureau today – she'd been putting it off long enough. Hopefully, whoever she talked with could perhaps help her steer her way out of the mess she was in with money.

She drew her bedroom curtains and looked out at the wintry scene. The snow was lingering enough that it still looked like a winter wonderland, but they hadn't had a fresh fall and it was on track to melt over the next day or so. Bess hated the slush they got after a pretty layer of snow and always hoped a downpour would wash it all away quickly, but it didn't always happen like that.

When someone knocked at the front door, Bess assumed it was the neighbour come to pick up a parcel Bess had taken in for safekeeping.

But it wasn't the post lady.

She was so stunned to see Malcolm, without her mother at his side, that she stood there letting the cold wind blow its way inside and her bare feet already felt the chill.

‘Hello, Bess. Would it be all right if I came in?'

She snapped to attention. ‘Of course.' She closed the door behind him.

Malcolm pulled off the woolly hat, the static sending a few strands of grey hair comically into the air. ‘I'll come out with it right away. I'd like to help you, Bess.'

‘Help me?'

‘With your current situation.' He held up a hand. ‘I haven't been gossiping about you behind your back; I just want to help.'

‘Malcolm, I?—'

His voice didn't have its usual steadiness when he told her, ‘This morning, your mother gave me your information so I could make a transfer, into your account. It's a loan, she's sent you an email about it, sent it after I left the house, but I thought I'd come and explain myself.'

Bess was pretty sure she'd been standing with her mouth hanging open.

‘Why would you do that?' she eventually stammered. ‘Why would you loan me money?'

‘I care about your mother, Bess. And, if I'm allowed, I'd like to care a bit about you too because you are your mother's whole world.'

Tears pricked her eyes and she turned round to head to the kitchen. ‘Cup of tea?' she trilled over her shoulder. She didn't know what to feel, or think, she just knew she wanted to do something as what he told her sank in.

When he appeared in the kitchen, where she'd taken out the mugs, he'd taken off his coat and hung it on the back of a chair.

‘Sugar?' she asked, unable to meet his eye yet .

‘Not for me, thank you.' He cleared his throat. ‘I understand you don't find this easy. Accepting help, especially from me.'

She looked at him now. ‘It's not that I don't like you, or that I resent you being with Mum.'

‘I know that. But I lost my dad when I was only twenty-one. Nobody would have ever replaced him. I promise that is not what I'm trying to do here.'

No preamble, just like that, he'd addressed what she'd found so hard about this aside from her mum sharing her financial problems. ‘I'm sorry you lost your dad so young.' She turned her focus back to the mugs and poured the boiling water onto the tea bags.

She passed Malcolm one of the mugs when she was done. ‘You're incredibly generous lending me money, but I really can't take it. It wouldn't be right.'

‘You're not taking it; you're borrowing it.'

Bess sat at the table and gingerly, he sat down next to her as though he still wasn't sure about how she might react.

He cleared his throat again; maybe he did it when he was nervous. ‘In exchange for loaning you the money to pay off some of what you owe, I want you to do something for me.'

Bess's heart sank. This was where she found out he was a dodgy dealer, someone she didn't want in her mother's life, a criminal, about to bribe her and ask for goodness knew what.

But when he spoke, it proved he was none of those things. ‘I want you to sit here with me and make a proper plan.'

‘A plan?'

‘One that sorts out your finances, gets you out of this mess.'

‘That's it?'

‘It'll take us time, I won't lie.'

He wanted to help. She'd doubted him, she hadn't been overly welcoming and yet he was still here .

‘Okay.'

Malcolm beamed as though she was the one doing him the favour, not the other way round.

‘I have my own condition, though…' Bess said.

‘And what's that?'

‘If it's going to take time, then we need a decent packet of biscuits.'

He reached down to the leather bag he'd brought with him. He took out a laptop and then a carrier bag which he passed her. ‘Your mother knows you well.'

And when she peeked inside, she saw a supply of some of her favourites. ‘Then I guess we should get started.'

The surface of the kitchen table was soon covered in paperwork – statements, bills, loan information, correspondence. The first thing he had Bess do was pay the council tax bill in its entirety, which removed the threat of being taken to court. And once that was done, Bess felt as though it was a giant leap in the direction she needed to go in.

They got through almost a whole packet of custard creams and what felt like a gallon of tea. Malcolm went through all her paperwork with her and slowly, the shame every time he picked up another piece of paper gave way to a calm that came with dealing with something she'd put off and then been befuddled by for too long.

Malcolm talked through the finances succinctly and so kindly, Bess found herself thinking how similar he was to her dad in many ways. Her dad had always listened, he'd rarely got irate, he was always looking for solutions rather than throwing his hands up in the air when things got too hard. Malcolm explained the concept of a debt consolidation loan but recommended other routes instead, given those loans came with high interest rates and might also be difficult to obtain. ‘Your credit history so far, from what you tell me, isn't awful.'

Her eyebrows raised. ‘It's terrible!'

‘Not from what I've seen and what we've talked about. Yes, there are missed payments, late payments and a lot of only paying the minimum on your credit card each month. Believe me, it could be a whole lot worse.'

‘It might have been if you weren't helping.'

‘Then I'm glad I could.' He cleared his throat again, perhaps emotional rather than nervous this time. ‘Now, going by your credit card statements, you haven't made a habit of frequently withdrawing cash on your cards, which doesn't build a very good credit history. I think we've caught this in time and if we get on top of it, you shouldn't have too much trouble building up your credit score again.'

Between them, they came up with a plan. They took it one step at a time, the phone red hot all afternoon as Bess sorted her finances out. She cancelled cards, secured a better deal for car insurance, reducing her monthly direct debit, she got better deals for internet and on her mobile phone, she dropped unnecessary subscriptions including extra channels on the television. She got another person on the end of the phone when she called the gym again and this time, they listened and eventually agreed to end the contract early. She and Malcolm talked about simple measures like fewer takeaways, more planning before supermarket shopping, not splashing out on holidays unless she could really afford to. He also advised using credit cards only in emergencies or when she knew she could pay off the entire balance before it incurred interest. All of these things were basic common sense, it was just that Bess had been blinkered, living in her own world for so long, she hadn't known how to do any different .

When Malcolm first sat down with her he'd asked her to find all of her physical credit cards along with their statements. She had a few. She'd been drawn in with zero interest on balance transfers and ended up with more cards than any one person should have and of course she'd soon been restricted to paying off the bare minimum and had got herself further into debt as time went on. With the money Malcolm had put into her account, Bess paid the final payment for her car, which meant she owned it now. And then one by one, she paid off the balances of her credit cards.

The whole time they were taking steps to get on top of her finances, Malcolm kept saying ‘we'. We've caught this early, we've got on top of this, we'll get your credit score back up.

He might be a relative stranger but as she watched him diligently go through the mountain of paperwork, one thing at a time, dealing with each, it struck her that he really was a very good man. And she needed her mother to know that. She deserved to be happy. She'd lost the love of her life and nobody would ever replace him but that didn't mean she couldn't find a second love. It would just be different, that was all.

They looked at Bess's payslips next and came up with a structure for her to repay Malcolm's loan as well as the money Fiona had given her. It was very doable, if she made the changes they'd discussed and if she kept her head and changed some of her behaviours. She really wanted to, she had to, she wanted to be Bess, sensible and fun Bess, the homeowner who had a bit of an idea how the real world worked. Not the Bess who had been burying her head in the sand and living life like each day was her last.

Malcolm picked up the pile of credit cards, the stack of six pieces of plastic that had played their part in getting her into trouble. He held one apart from the rest. ‘This is the only one I didn't get you to cancel. It's got the best record of payments looking through your statements, you've had it a long time and you've made more than the minimum payment several times over the last eight months. It also gets you points with your bank, which gets you vouchers. So, use it wisely and any points earned will help you too.'

‘What happens with the rest?'

He went over to the knife block and pulled out the big kitchen scissors.

‘I should cut them up?'

‘Yes.'

‘But I cancelled them all.'

‘Call it symbolic.' He handed her the scissors.

And he was right. As he held up each in turn and she sliced through every one, each chop was a slice of victory at getting on top of things once and for all.

‘And this one?' He held up the one remaining card they hadn't cancelled. ‘This one needs to be used correctly and it'll help build up that credit history of yours again.'

She took the card. ‘I can do it. I can keep that in my purse and I know after all of this, after all this panic and shame at how I've let this get out of control, that I won't be silly with it.'

Malcolm smiled. ‘I believe you, girl.'

She put the credit card safely in her purse before turning back to Malcolm, who was putting all the bank statements back into the manilla folder. ‘My dad would've liked you, you know.'

He closed the folder. ‘I think I would've liked him too. He sounds like a wonderful man.'

He was and Bess hoped that if he was looking down on her today, he might be proud of what they'd accomplished and proud that she was letting someone new into their lives.