Chapter 17
Seventeen
O nce patched up, Steph was able to travel home with Charlie while Lindsay drove her car.
Safely in the confines of the vehicle, Charlie brought up Jon again. “So, are you calling Jon or am I?”
“I should be seeing him later, so I might leave it and tell him face to face.” This was not something he’d be best pleased about but she had no intention of intruding on his weekend doing whatever he was doing with whoever.
“He won’t like that you haven’t told him, but on your head be it, no pun intended. If for any reason he calls me I won’t lie to him about it.”
“I’d never expect you to.” It had never crossed her mind to ask her friend to lie for her, and it was right that they should have trust and honesty between them as the two men were old friends. Her phone suddenly sprang into life. “Jon. It’s like he has some kind of sixth sense. Hello.”
“Hi darling, are you still with Charlie and Lindsay?”
“Yes, but I’ll be home soon,” she replied honestly.
“Please don’t rush home on my account because I may not make it to yours tonight. I am snowed under with a new business deal and I’ve got a meeting in Manchester in the morning so it may be tomorrow or even the following night before I see you.”
She suddenly felt very alone and even more vulnerable than she had when she’d been in her car with Simon. Swallowing hard she willed herself not to cry because apart from anything else she didn’t want him to view her as weak, or for her upset to affect the business he was busy with.
“Steph? Are you still there?” he asked with what sounded like real concern now.
“Yes, sorry,” she stammered slightly. “Don’t worry about it, sort your deal out and I will see you when you’re done.” She tried to sound supportive and upbeat.
“You can sound a little disappointed,” he laughed.
“I really am.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked with increasing concern and confusion.
“Yes, fine, really.” She sniffed back tears and reverted back to trying to sound positive again.
“Okay, darling, if you’re sure. I’ll call you later.”
After hanging up she stared at her phone in her hand.
“You appear to have forgotten to tell Jon that you’ve had the back of your head split open, your nose punched and your cheek and eye blackened by your ex-boyfriend. Oh, and that you were told not to stay on your own, which was fine when you assured me Jon would stay with you tonight,” chastened Charlie.
“Charlie, I am fine, really.”
“Come and stay at ours, please. I’m worried about you and you really shouldn’t be alone.”
“Charlie, I love you, but you worry too much. I will be fine, honestly,” she said trying to convince him that she would be, but as she looked at his face it was obvious that he was far from convinced.
“If I feel unwell in any way I promise I will call my dad or one of my sisters and go and stay with them, but I really just want to go home to bed and lick my wounds in the privacy of my own home.”
“I will be phoning to check up on you and Lindsay will.”
“That’s fine.” She smiled at him and remembered all of the reasons why she’d dated him in the first place. “You really are a very nice man.”
Steph had changed into candy striped, shorty pyjamas and gone to bed, just as she’d told Charlie she would. The problem was that she couldn’t get comfortable; she couldn’t lie on her back because of her glued head that was sore and swollen, she found lying on her right side painful as it was the right cheek and eye that was becoming more bruised with each passing minute and as she never slept on her front that only left her with the option of sleeping on her left side, but she could only settle in that position fleetingly, so decided to get up.
She grabbed a glass and was just about to pour a large glass of wine when she remembered that she had been given some painkillers at the hospital, so put the glass away and made some tea. Sitting on the sofa with her tea she began to watch a romantic comedy on the TV that had just started when her phone rang again.
“Hi, darling,” came the familiar sound of Jon’s voice. “Change of plan again. I will be with you in about, ooh five seconds,” he said as she heard a key in the door, which was a shock on two levels. Firstly she wasn’t expecting him and secondly she had no idea that he had a key to her flat.
“No!” she shouted panicking. “There’s something I need to tell you,” she cried, still speaking into her phone.
“No, there was something you needed to tell me hours ago,” he said from behind her, sounding a little annoyed.
She turned slightly from the left side, “Sorry, but . . .”
“Fucking hell, Steph!” he shouted as he moved round and saw the extent of the damage to her face. “Oh darling, why didn’t you call me straight away? Let me see the back of your head.” He was already leaning over her. “Shit!” he exclaimed as he saw the size of the cut to her head.
Sitting next to her, Jon wrapped his arms around Steph, holding her tightly while she simply sniffed back tears. Neither of them spoke for several long minutes.
“I am seriously pissed off with you for not telling me that this had happened, but I really am relieved that you’re okay. You should call the police though, darling,” Jon said seriously, but without the annoyance of earlier.
“No, it wasn’t quite as it seems. I actually did this to myself.” Her claim sounded implausible even to her own ears.
“To yourself? So Simon wasn’t sitting in your car with you after following you from the supermarket to Charlie’s and he wasn’t being a complete arse and grabbing you and bullying you until you ended up in this state?” His anger was reinstated now, although she knew it was aimed at Simon and not her.
“That’s not quite what I meant.” She tried to bury the good side of her face into his chest at the same time as curling her legs beneath her.
“You should have called me though, Steph. This is not something I expect to find out about from somebody else.” With his tone calmer, he gently kissed the top of her head.
“Did Charlie call you?”
“Yes, he was worried about you being alone after you refused to go back to his or call a member of your family, especially as the hospital said not to stay on your own in case of concussion.”
“Sorry.” A loud yawn sounded around them as Steph fought the call of sleep and tried to figure out what she was sorry for.
“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked curiously, his voice softening further.
“Because I thought you’d be mad that I had put myself in that position in the first place and I didn’t want to cause you any hassle by phoning you and I knew that you were busy with work,” she explained honestly and yawned again.
“I’m not thrilled that you gave him the time of day. You couldn’t have known how it would turn out, but no more, Stephanie. If he so much as appears coincidentally in the same crowded shopping centre as you, we involve the police or at least solicitors. And you could never be a hassle to me.” She attempted to interrupt.
“But . . .”
“But nothing, Steph. You would never be a hassle and yes I was busy with work, but I’ve brought it with me. Now as you seem to be struggling to keep your eyes open, you sleep and I will work, but I will be here if you need me, okay?” He cupped her face and tilted it so that she had no choice but to gaze up, his eyes fixed on hers.
“Yes,” she said nodding at him, determined not to ask where his wife was or if he had been with her and what he had told her in order to come over now.
“I will have to make an early start in the morning to get to Manchester, but I will be back here tomorrow night, okay?” he asked again.
“Yes,” she repeated as he released himself from under her.
“Now go and get into bed.” The words almost came out as an order.
“I can’t get comfortable in bed.”
“Fine.” He disappeared into the bedroom for a few seconds and reappeared with a pillow and the soft touch throw from across the bottom of the bed and made her a makeshift bed on the sofa.
“Sleep,” he definitely ordered her now.
Steph fell asleep almost immediately and as Jon turned on his laptop he pulled out his phone and Eddie’s business card, quickly punching the number into his phone.
“Eddie, it’s Jon, Steph’s boyfriend,” he opened with.
“Hi. Is everything okay?” asked Eddie with a hint of concern in his voice thinking a call on a Sunday afternoon from your baby sister’s new boyfriend was unlikely to be anything other than bad news.
“Steph has had another run in with that idiot Simon after he followed her from the supermarket in her car. I was wondering if you could find her a new one,” he said without sharing any details of what had happened yet.
“Yeah sure, what is she after?”
“She doesn’t know she’s after anything yet, but you’d probably know better than me what she’d like, so just get it and let me know how much.” He hoped not to sound too cocky. A weight settled in his stomach, partly at her being hurt but also that he couldn’t answer Eddie’s question about the car Steph would want. He wanted, no, needed to know everything about her, and he didn’t. Not yet.
“Jon . . .” The other man’s use of his name broke his thoughts. “Is she okay? I mean did he lay a finger on her?” asked Eddie more concerned now.
“I haven’t got all the details of what happened, but she has a few bruises on her face and her head got cut,” he told Eddie honestly.
“Bloody hell! I would be more than happy to give him a taste of his own medicine,” said Eddie.
“Yeah me too and if the opportunity presents itself then I am up for it, but I think that’s why Steph was reluctant to get in touch.”
“Mmm, well, we will keep this between us. Dad would worry and Jason would find Simon and do him over good and proper; he is completely over the top where Steph is concerned,” he told a confused Jon. “So, leave the car with me and I will get on it in the morning.”
Jon was sitting at the table a couple of hours later still poring over the figures for his new business deal, struggling to make sense of them when Steph began to stir. She made her way across the room and squeezed onto his lap, brushing his hair back off his furrowed brow.
“Problems?”
“I don’t know. This just doesn’t quite make sense,” he explained as he kissed her on the lips. “How are you feeling?”
“A bit groggy, but okay.” She smiled. “Do you want me to look over the figures?”
“I would be very grateful if you would because there’s something amiss. I will make dinner while you take a gander.” He stood her up with him then sat her back down at the table.
She was skimming through the papers and the details on his computer screen and frowned. She sat back in her chair as she became aware of Jon moving around in the kitchen behind her. She got up and grabbed a notepad and her calculator. As she tapped away at her calculator and jotted figures down on her pad she frowned again.
“You’re right, there is something missing from these figures,” she called to him.
“What?”
“Ah, now that is the question isn’t it?” she asked. “This is a bit shoddy. Who has prepared all of this, the company you’re looking to buy?”
“The figures came from them and then Dave has put together the overview,” he explained.
She shuffled the papers again and began to set them out across the table, then walked around them, studiously. “They have placed a rather inflated value on their company,” she observed.
“I thought that and I won’t pay what they’re asking for it, but I like things to sit comfortably with me.”
“But how have they reached this valuation?” she asked herself aloud. “The only thing I can’t see here that it could be is confirmation of advance orders, which would affect the valuation, but unless they have confirmed future orders of around half a million they are overvaluing by that amount,” she said seriously.
“No, advance orders are there.” Jon made his way over to her, knowing the information they were discussing was there. He looked through the papers and then clicked on a document on his laptop, “There.”
She studied the information. “Jon, this order for a quarter of a million will never transpire because the company filed for liquidation some time ago, so assuming the others are good, it’s only worth about two hundred and fifty thousand.”
“No fucking way!” he hissed loudly. “How do you know they’ve filed for liquidation?”
“Because they were clients at Bakers, a relatively small company and when I was in corporate accounting one of my colleagues was trying to save their arses, but it was pretty futile,” she said. With a concerned frown she added, “I am sure I shouldn’t have shared that with you.”
“I promise not to tell. Why didn’t Dave and his team check the orders?” he asked sounding cross about it.
She shrugged. “If you want a professional opinion do not pay more than a quarter of a million for the whole company and don’t agree the purchase, not even in principal until your people have gone through it all again, with the finest of tooth combs, every fact and figure they’ve provided you with.”
“I thought they had,” he muttered.
“In my experience if you uncover one lie in accounts there are usually lots of others.” She smiled warily at him. “Hang on,” she whispered with a frown as she shuffled some more papers around, then started tapping away at the computer.
“What?” Jon asked with a frown that became increasingly concerned as Steph’s own face grew more and more troubled.
“This isn’t right . . .” she began as the computer screen filled with search results. “No way! I knew the name was familiar on that other order for two hundred thousand.”
“What? What name?”
“The original company, the one you’re looking at buying had a subsidiary company that they set up in such a way that it ran independently and was apparently unconnected for all intents and purposes. It was set up so that it might support the original company in terms of manufacturing, but if one went bust owing money the other company would be untouchable. I only know this because one of the head accountants at Bakers used it as an example of working within the law but with questionable ethics.”
“Darling, is there a point to this?”
“Sorry, yes. So they’re selling the business to you and its value includes an order from the other company, however, I would put money on that company withdrawing the order after the purchase goes through, meaning the original company has about two hundred thousand pounds of yours and you have nothing.”
“What the fuck has Dave been doing?” Jon asked himself before Steph shrugged again.
“This gets better. The second company with the order . . . it hasn’t traded in any way for about three months and there is another company, another separate one that’s recently been set up. I can find the full details if you want me to . . .”
“No, I’ve heard enough. Thank you.”
“If you want my professional opinion this whole company is worth no more than fifty grand. The original company from about a hundred years ago had a decent name and reputation and it might have been tarnished in recent years, but it might be worth that amount to acquire the brand.”
“I should have brought these over first thing this morning for you to decipher and saved myself a day of going round in circles and I could have prevented the whole situation with Simon.” He frowned again and meant it, but rather than sounding angry, with her or her former boyfriend, Jon simply sounded guilty, as though the injuries she bore were in some way his fault.
“I do think I may have been indiscreet in revealing my professional knowledge of the liquidation of that company and the dodgy nature of the sister company,” Steph said, as much to change the subject as anything else.
He shook his head from the kitchen. “Technically, but those details would have been available to access through the appropriate channels. Channels my people obviously didn’t access.”
“Jon, can I ask you something?”
“Always,” he replied smiling as he pulled plates from the cupboard.
“Do you expect me to share information with you that I gain from work?”
“What sort of information?” He frowned as he drained some pasta.
“Professional information,” she said, thinking she was explaining herself.
“Be more precise, Steph,” he replied adding a tomato sauce to their pasta.
“I don’t know if I can without being indiscreet further. For example, if my role in relation to your company was discussed, would you expect me to tell you, or would you think that it wasn’t my place to?” She was unsure whether she had clarified her point or confused it further.
He lay a dish in front of her before scooping his papers together and returning them to his briefcase. “If we weren’t seeing each other I doubt our paths would cross so much and it would be unlikely that we would discuss such things and my company would deal with your company regarding your services, so I suppose it would be unfair of me to expect you to tell me such things, to compromise you. However, if Baker, or anyone at your end was intending to do something that could damage me, I would hope you would warn me because if you didn’t, and I sustained damage I am unsure that I would be able to forgive that.”
She nodded as he sat next to her and passed her a glass of water.
“Does that clarify things?” he asked her.
“Yes, thank you.” As she tucked into the dinner he had prepared for her, she was only slightly reassured.