Chapter 5
5
Early on Monday morning, Courtney hugged Rosie goodbye on the doorstep of her house just as her Uncle Colin and Aunt Lorraine arrived on Foxglove Street to pick her up for the drive to Southampton.
“Thank you for letting me stay here and for being so welcoming,” Courtney said to her cousin. “This has been the best weekend I’ve had in a very long time.”
“Don’t be a stranger,” Rosie smiled. “You’re welcome anytime. I’m working a rota of seven days in a row now, but when I’ve next got a day off, maybe I could come over to Southampton and we could get together for a coffee?”
“I’d love that.”
After a final hug goodbye, Courtney headed towards her uncle’s car. In her hand, she clutched a plastic bag containing the change of clothing Rosie had kindly washed for her. Yesterday, once Rosie’s parents and sister had departed following dinner, Rosie had surprised Courtney by giving her some brand new clothing items she’d picked up at work that day—a pair of leggings, a maternity top, and some fresh underwear—which she’d bought with her staff discount while working on the theory that her father would delay driving Courtney home for another night following his long day out and about enjoying himself.
As Courtney’s weekend stay in Hamblehurst had been unplanned, and she’d arrived on Friday with nothing to tide her over for a weekend away as a guest in someone else’s home, she was grateful for her cousin’s generosity.
Rosie had refused to accept money for the purchases, but Courtney left cash on her kitchen table anyway to cover the clothing items, along with a note thanking her cousin for being so sweet, which she hoped she’d find once Courtney was gone.
It felt good to wear the lovely brand new clothes as she got into the back seat of her uncle’s car. With her baby bump growing by the day, the oversized top Rosie had picked out would likely last all the way until Courtney’s delivery date.
After exchanging greetings with her aunt and uncle, they set off. Courtney admired the pretty front gardens that lined Foxglove Street as they drove past, then admired the high street and its array of lovely shops before they turned west. She felt a punch of sadness to be leaving the sweet town of Hamblehurst behind. Her time here with her new family meant the world to her and marked, she hoped, a new chapter in her life.
If she had any regrets, it was that she hadn’t taken the time to explore the picturesque town more during her stay. Although she’d seen some of Hamblehurst on Friday afternoon while walking from the café where she’d met her Uncle Colin to Rosie’s house on Foxglove Street, she hadn’t ventured outside otherwise, because she’d spent most of her time at Rosie’s house, half-unconscious with exhaustion and napping the hours away.
Which was a pity, because she would’ve liked to meander around the town and explore its lovely sights. Perhaps another time, she thought to herself. Perhaps the next time she caught the bus over here to visit her aunt and uncle and her cousins, she’d suggest they all go for a nice walk around the pretty town where they lived.
Assuming she wasn’t so pregnant by that point that she’d be shambling rather than walking.
Or perhaps the next time she came here, she’d be pushing her new baby in a pram? That idea sent a bump of excitement bubbling through her heart.
Within minutes, they reached the edge of Hamblehurst and joined the road that led west to Southampton. Colin focused on driving while Lorraine made easy conversation with Courtney and pointed out this and that feature of the countryside as they motored along. All too soon, they were approaching Southampton, the city gobbling them up into rush-hour traffic and busyness as Colin followed Courtney’s directions to the home furnishings shop where she worked.
The shop, Ashford Furniture and Furnishings, was located in a small retail park on one of the main arterial routes around the city and nestled in a bustling suburban area. A family-owned business, it had been trading for over thirty years and sold a wide range of products including sofas and chairs, dining and coffee tables, sideboards and shelving, lamps and lighting, curtains and cushions, decorative items, and more besides.
A much-loved business in and around Southampton, Courtney was thrilled when she landed a job there two years ago, working in the office dealing with administration and paperwork. The extra shifts she’d worked recently on the shop floor to top up her pay packet had shown her a different side to the business, and although her skills were in the organisational side of things rather than sales, she was willing to learn whatever she needed to learn in order to earn money.
As Colin turned the car into the small car park in front of the shop, Courtney’s eyes widened at the sight of a dozen people gathered outside the doors. Although Ashford Furniture and Furnishings was popular with local shoppers, it rarely had a queue waiting for the shop to open, and certainly not on a Monday morning, which was typically the quietest time for the business in terms of footfall.
Courtney wondered if there was a sale starting this week that she hadn’t heard about and which had drawn bargain-hunters. But as Colin parked the car, Courtney realised she recognised the people standing outside the shop doors.
They were all her fellow employees. What were they doing standing around outside the shop, instead of going inside to start the day? Checking her watch, she saw it was just a few minutes before nine o’clock, which meant the store owner, Lee Ashford, would certainly be inside by now to unlock the staff entrance so his employees could arrive and be ready for the doors opening at nine.
So why were her colleagues outside the shop instead of inside it?
And why were there so many of them? Courtney counted at least a dozen staff lingering outside the doors, far more than would ever usually be scheduled to work on a quiet Monday morning.
“Right love,” Colin said. “We hope you have a good day at work and we’ll give you a ring tonight to let you know how it goes at that flat we’re off to look at for you and… what’s the matter, Courtney?”
Turning around in the driver’s seat, Colin at last noticed the confused look on Courtney’s face.
“I’m not sure,” she said, her gaze still on her colleagues gathered outside the locked doors of the furniture shop. None of them looked particularly happy. In fact, they looked downright… alarmed . “Would you mind waiting for a minute or two, Uncle Colin, before you drive off?”
“Of course, love.”
Courtney climbed out from the back seat and met her colleagues on the paved walkway that ran the length of the block of retail units. The closer she got, the more she realised from the expressions on their faces and the anxious tone of their chatter that something was very, very wrong.
“Morning, Mary,” Courtney said when she reached the assistant manager, a woman in her sixties who was usually a picture of calm composure, but this morning looked fit to burst. “Why’s everyone standing around outside? Is there a problem inside the shop?”
“You better believe there’s a problem!” Mary hissed. “The place has gone bust!”
“ What? ” Courtney almost screeched the word. “What are you talking about?”
“The business has gone bust!” Mary said, throwing her hands in the air. “We’ve only just found out. I arrived here half an hour ago to find this sign posted on the door.”
Mary pointed to a sheet of A4 paper taped to the customer entrance. Courtney stepped closer to read it.
Ashford Furniture and Furnishings Ltd has ceased trading with immediate effect. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Blinking in disbelief, Courtney read the sign a second time, and then a third.
“I don’t understand,” she managed to say, turning back to Mary. “What happened?”
“Who knows?” Mary said with a shrug of disgust. “But if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that Lee Ashford has finally managed to run the business into the ground. He’s a dodgy one, that Lee, and hasn’t a clue what he’s doing. Nothing like his father, God rest his soul, who took pride in this place and looked after the staff and the customers. Ever since the old man passed away and Lee took over at the helm, this shop has been going downhill, fast.”
Courtney tried to absorb this news. “I thought the place was doing well. We’ve had plenty of customers.”
“Customers only get you so far,” Mary replied. “If you don’t know how to manage the business, you’re doomed, no matter how many customers you have. I suspected Lee Ashford was making a hash of things, but anytime I asked questions, he just brushed me off. I had no idea it was as bad as this, though.”
Mary gestured to the sign taped to the door, and then to the other staff members lingering around. “Now we’re the ones to pay the price. Out of a job, the lot of us!”
“But…but… they can’t just go out of business, can they?” Courtney said. “And we can’t just lose our jobs . That’s insane!”
“I’ve been phoning Lee Ashford for the last half hour and he isn’t answering,” Mary said. “We’re all frantic. No one knows what’s happening. As soon as I phoned a few other staff members to find out if they knew anything, everyone hurried down here, hoping for answers. That stupid sign on the door is all we’ve got.”
Courtney glanced at the faces of her colleagues. Everyone looked panic-stricken, talking to each other as they tapped on their phones, searching for information. Feeling her heart rate rocketing, Courtney gulped down some air.
“So, what do we do?” she asked. “Do we just wait until the owner comes and tells us what’s going on and what we should do?”
Mary gave her a sympathetic look and was about to answer when her phone beeped.
Courtney’s phone beeped, too. Everyone’s phone beeped.
When she looked at the message that had arrived, Courtney saw it was from Ashford Furniture and Furnishings. Exclamations rippled through the crowd of staff members as they all turned their attention to their phones to open the message they’d received.
With shaking fingers, Courtney tapped the new message on her phone screen and read the text.
Ashford Furniture and Furnishings Ltd has ceased trading. As a consequence, we regret to announce that all staff are redundant with immediate effect. While the company goes through the formal liquidation process, an insolvency practitioner will deal with all matters and will contact redundant staff in due course regarding any potential claims through the Redundancy Payments Service.
Only after reading the text message several times did the facts begin to sink in. Courtney had lost her job.
Lost her job.
A high buzzing noise rang inside her head as the ground spun and tilted beneath her feet.
“Courtney, are you okay? Oh!”
As Courtney’s legs threatened to give way beneath her, she felt a steadying hand grab her arm and keep her upright.
“Courtney!” Mary cried out, now holding her with both hands. “Oh, don’t faint! My goodness, you’re in no condition to pass out, love!”
Thoughts of her baby tucked safely inside her stopped Courtney from crashing to the ground, not in a faint, but in complete shock. But she couldn’t fall over and risk hurting her child. Maternal instinct kicked in and kept her upright, if only by the skin of her teeth.
“I’m okay,” Courtney managed to croak. “I just… I can’t believe this. I don’t understand. We’re… we’re all sacked? ”
Mary looked grim. “Yes, love. I’m afraid it looks that way.”
In the cacophony of raised voices and shouts of anger now swirling around her from the rest of her assembled colleagues, Courtney failed to notice her aunt and uncle getting out of the car and walking over to where she stood with Mary. When she felt a hand on her back and turned to see her Uncle Colin standing there with a kind look of concern on his face, it was all she could do not to start sobbing.
“Courtney, is everything alright?” Colin asked, his gaze fixed on Courtney, while Lorraine scanned all the upset people milling around them.
“No, it’s not alright,” Courtney said, her voice a whisper. “I’ve… lost my job. The business had gone bust.”
“Oh!” Colin’s eyes widened in surprise and then a beat later, he was pulling her into a hug. “That’s terrible news.”
Courtney closed her eyes, grateful for the chance to blink back tears, while sinking into her uncle’s comforting embrace.
“I’m so sorry, Courtney,” Lorraine said, tucking an arm around her too. “Has this just happened?”
Stepping out of her uncle’s arms, Courtney nodded. “I had no idea until I turned up here. No one knew. There’s just a sign taped to the door, saying the place has ceased trading, and then while I was talking to Mary,”—she nodded to her colleague, who was already engrossed in an animated conversation with other people—“we all got a message on our phones from the company, telling us we’d been made redundant.”
Courtney held up her phone, as if it were a piece of evidence, and realised how badly her hands were shaking. While her uncle stepped closer to the shop doors and read the announcement taped on the glass, Lorraine turned to Courtney with concern in her eyes.
“You look as white as a sheet, love,” Lorraine said. “And you’re shaking like a leaf. I think we ought to get you sat down somewhere.”
Lorraine tucked her arm through Courtney’s as Colin returned, shaking his head in dismay after reading the sign on the door.
“Judging by the looks on everyone’s faces here, this has come completely out of the blue,” Colin said. “I feel terrible for everyone, and… Lorraine, where are you going?”
“I think we should get Courtney back to the car,” Lorraine replied. “She’s badly shaken, and little wonder after what she just found out. I’m worried her blood pressure might have dropped.”
Colin leapt into action, hurrying towards the car and opening the rear door. Lorraine almost whisked Courtney off her feet, shuffling her back inside.
“I’m fine. This just came as a complete shock, that’s all,” Courtney said, but she was grateful to sit down again, sinking into the back passenger seat. Her head was swirling and her knees felt like jelly.
“Just take a few deep breaths, love,” Lorraine said when she slipped into the other side of the back seat. “Nice and easy.”
Nodding, Courtney did as she was told. Lorraine took her hand in hers and squeezed it. Colin lingered beside the open rear door, hunkering down so they were level.
“Do you need to see a doctor?” he asked. “Your Aunt Lorraine is right—you look as white as a sheet. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m okay. I’m just reeling a bit from the news.” Steadier now, Courtney offered a smile to prove she was alright—well, mostly alright—and then glanced again at the text message she’d just read on her phone. “I can’t believe I lost my job. Just like that—it’s gone.”
“It’s not your fault,” Colin said. “And you didn’t lose your job. It was taken from you. Businesses go bust all the time, unfortunately, and it’s the poor employees who pay the price. I’m sorry this has happened to you.”
“I thought the business was solid, but my colleague Mary says she’s had worries for a while. I had no idea. I don’t even know what happened! How can a business just go bust all of a sudden?”
It seemed ludicrous to her. What about the customer orders waiting to be fulfilled? What about the deposits people had paid for their new furniture? What about all the invoices for payment Courtney remembered processing just last week? Who would sort all that out now?
And what about the monthly salary she was due to get paid? It was almost the end of the month. Would she still get the money she was owed for the work she’d done?
“Oh, God,” Courtney said, as the awful pieces of the puzzle began to click into place. “Will we all still get paid at the end of the month?”
She was talking more to herself than anything, but found herself glancing up to her Uncle Colin for an answer. The dismayed expression on his face told her all she needed to know.
“As I understand it, when a business goes bust, anyone who’s owed money becomes a creditor, and that includes redundant employees,” Colin said. “If the business is in liquidation, then the administrators will use any available cash to pay creditors. But…”
When he trailed off, Courtney finished the thought for him.
“But if there was enough cash to pay everyone, the business probably wouldn’t have gone bust in the first place,” she said.
Colin nodded.
“So, I’ve lost my job and I might not get the monthly salary I’m owed, either?”
Colin frowned. “I don’t know for sure. I’m sure you’ll be entitled to some sort of redundancy pay, at least. But all of this has only just happened. Maybe you’ll get more news later today.”
Courtney gave a half-hearted nod. If she didn’t get paid this month, she couldn’t bear to think about what that would mean for her already disastrous finances.
“Listen, let’s get you out of here,” Lorraine said. “We’ve been here for almost twenty minutes and there’s no sign of anyone coming to talk to any of the employees. Some of your colleagues have already left, and I don’t blame them.”
She gestured towards the pavement outside the furniture shop, where Courtney saw a few colleagues wandering away, looking bereft. Some remained outside the doors, their expressions furious as they exchanged angry theories with one another about what had caused the demise of the business they’d all worked for. But the whole place had a cold, ghostly feel to it. The shop remained dark behind the glass doors and there was no sign anywhere of Lee Ashford, the company director, and the only person who could tell them more.
“You’re right,” Courtney said. “We could wait around here for hours and still leave with nothing more than we’ve got already. The text message we all received says that the administrators will contact us at some point.”
“In that case, unless you really want to stay here for a while longer, I think we should make a move,” Colin said. “Being here won’t do anything other than upset you.”
“Okay.” Still stunned, Courtney nodded. “Would you mind dropping me off back at my bedsit accommodation?”
Colin gave her a grim nod and then exchanged a look with Lorraine, which Courtney couldn’t decipher.
While Lorraine remained beside her on the back seat, Colin got in behind the wheel and was soon pulling out of the small retail park and back into the busy traffic. The world beyond the car window passed in a blur as Courtney’s mind wrestled with the developments of the last twenty minutes.
She’d lost her job. Lost her job.
Her uncle might be right that she hadn’t lost the job so much as it had been taken from her, but the semantics didn’t change the reality.
She was unemployed. Pregnant, alone, grieving, homeless—and now also unemployed.
The stunning weight of it all, the endless battle of it all, was too much. Life kept throwing awful, painful things at her and somehow she was expected to shrug it all off and keep going?
There were limits. She had limits. There were only so many times she could pick herself up and keep going, only so many times she could paint on a cheerful smile and straighten her shoulders and march on into yet another battle where the odds were stacked so horrifyingly against her.
Glancing out the car window at the world speeding by as she fought against tears, Courtney felt her baby kick inside her. She moved her hands across her bump and thought of her tiny child—the tiny child she was failing before she’d even been born.
What sort of life was she about to welcome her baby into?
Another kick. The sweet prod of the little foot against her belly calmed her, centred her, just as it had so many times before.
She would figure this out. She had to figure this out. For the sake of her beautiful daughter, she would deal with this mess.
Somehow.
The car slowed and Courtney realised they’d finished the short journey to the bedsit accommodation where she lived. Even on a sunny morning like this one, the building still looked dank and miserable and filled with despair.
After the terrifying incident of Friday morning, she really didn’t want to go inside or return to the tiny, cramped room that smelled of damp. But with no job to go, and no other options, she didn’t have any choice.
Unclipping her seatbelt, Courtney turned to her aunt across the seat. “Thanks for the lift. And thanks for a lovely weekend. I’m so glad I got to meet you.”
“Me too,” Lorraine smiled, unclipping her own seatbelt and opening the car door even as she gave her an oddly puzzled look.
“You don’t have to get out,” Courtney said, not wanting her aunt to see any more of the awful bedsit than she already had. “I’ll be fine now that I’m back here. I’ll use the rest of the day to start looking for a new job.”
Her aunt and uncle glanced at each other and then at Courtney.
“We’re not leaving you here, Courtney,” Colin said, waving a hand towards the building where her bedsit was located. “This place is awful. While you had a job here in Southampton, I understood why you’d want to stay here while you waited for somewhere else to live. But now that your job is gone, there’s no reason for you to be here.”
“But—”
“You’re coming back to Hamblehurst with us,” Colin said, his tone firm. “We’ll clear your room here of all your belongings and then we’re leaving. You’ll either stay at Rosie’s house, where you’re already comfortable, or you’ll stay with us. But we’re not leaving you here.”
Courtney blinked in surprise. “No, I can’t let you do that. You’ve already been kind enough. I don’t want to impose and?—”
“You’re not imposing,” Lorraine interrupted. “Look, you’ve had a shock this morning, Courtney. Anyone finding out they’ve just been made redundant out of the blue would be shocked. You need people around you who care for you, which means you’re coming home with us. There’s simply no way either of us can drop you off here and just drive away and leave you to worry about this all on your own. And that’s all there is to it.”
Before she could reply, Colin and Lorraine got out of the car. Colin walked around and opened Courtney’s door, then held out his hand to help her out.
“Come on,” he said with a kind smile. “Let’s get your stuff and then let’s get out of here.”
Courtney hated the idea of imposing on these kind people whose lives she’d burst into so suddenly. But she hated even more the idea of returning to the depressing bedsit room alone and with only her endless troubles for company.
Reaching out, she took her uncle’s hand and allowed him to help her out of the back seat of the car.
“Thank you for this,” she murmured, not trusting her voice.
His smile widened, warm and comforting. “That’s what family is for.”