Chapter 53
VICTORIA
I’m pacing up and down our narrow balcony when my mother rings. I accept the call, hoping a chat with my children might distract me from the disaster unfolding at Villa Paradiso.
‘Victoria!’ my mother shrieks. ‘Thank God. I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.’
‘Hello to you too.’ I roll my eyes. My mother has a tendency to catastrophise. ‘What’s the panic? Are the kids OK?’
‘They’re fine. This isn’t about them. The papers are saying you were the one who evicted that poor homeless man who died. The one on the news.’
My stomach goes into freefall.
‘What?’
‘They’re calling you a rogue landlord, darling. The housing secretary was on the lunchtime news calling for your resignation! Daddy says you should take out an injunction immediately. He’ll have a word with Roger for you if you like.’
My godfather, Roger Steel, is a successful solicitor who specialises in libel law. His success rate in shutting down journalists is legendary. But even he can’t wave a magic injunction wand this time.
‘There’s no point,’ I say heavily.
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because it’s true, Mummy. I did throw him out.’
‘I don’t understand, darling.’
‘He was the last tenant at Twelve Claremont Crescent and I needed him out before I could sell the place. Landlords do it all the time.’ I try to sound airy, but I know I just sound rattled.
My mother’s disappointed silence on the other end of the line is worse than if she’d ranted and railed at me for my poor choices. I close my eyes and tilt my head towards the sky, my hand on my brow as if I can stop my brain from exploding under the stress of it all.
‘Mummy, are you still there?’
‘I am.’
‘Tell Daddy I’ll… I’ll sort it, OK?’ My phone pings again and I glance at the screen.
It’s another missed call, this time from Grace Chambers, Chairman of the Trustees of The Anchorway Trust. A hatchet-faced woman with a bosom like a shelf and a sense of humour bypass.
Can the day get any worse? ‘Look, I need to go. I’ll call you later, all right?
And in the meantime, if you’re contacted by the media, tell them no comment and hang up. ’
My fingers are trembling so badly as I open my laptop that I misspell my own name twice before Google corrects me. Not that it matters – I’m trending so high the search engine knows exactly who I am.
The headlines leap off the screen, stark and unforgiving.
Charity boss exposed as landlord who evicted tragic Owen
Rogue landlord blamed for death of vulnerable tenant
Minister calls for resignation of homeless charity chief
And, as I refresh the page, another pops up at the top of the list of results.
This is the face of disgraced charity CEO Victoria Wyndham, the landlord at the centre of the eviction scandal
Fearfully, I click on the headline which leads straight to the online edition of the Daily Tribune.
Below the familiar, red-topped masthead is my official photo from the trust’s website.
I’d worn my favourite outfit to the photoshoot: a mint-green Jaeger pussy-bow blouse and black Jaeger tapered trousers, both bought before the label was taken over by Marks & Spencer, obviously.
I’d paired nude lipstick with Granny Aggie’s pearl earrings and had worn my hair in a low chignon.
I’d been delighted with the results. I looked both patrician and authoritative, exactly the image I’d been aiming for.
But seeing the photo with fresh eyes, I fear I just look supercilious.
I scan the article.
Exclusive: Homeless charity boss evicted man who died on the streets
By Johnny Nelson
The chief executive of one of Britain’s leading homeless charities has been accused of hypocrisy after it emerged she ordered the eviction of a vulnerable tenant who later died sleeping rough.
Victoria Wyndham, 45, who heads The Anchorway Trust, has been described by a trustee of the charity as ‘the worst kind of rogue landlord’ after allegedly using unlawful tactics to remove 32-year-old Owen Evans from a property she owned in Camberwell earlier this year.
Mr Evans, a long-term tenant of Mrs Wyndham, was found dead from a suspected overdose in the doorway of The Anchorway Trust’s headquarters in Kingston.
Documents seen by the Tribune reveal that Mrs Wyndham, whose charity received more than ￡2.5 million in public funding last year, sold the multi-occupancy property in Claremont Crescent shortly after Mr Evans was forced out.
Speaking exclusively to the Tribune, Mrs Wyndham’s former property manager, Shane Chapman, said he suspected Mr Evans was agoraphobic as he rarely left his basement flat.
‘Mrs Wyndham had put the place on the market and was desperate to evict all the tenants before it was sold. She paid me to get rid of him, “whatever it took”,’ he said.
Mr Chapman refused to reveal what tactics he employed to convince Mr Evans to leave. But just a few weeks later, the 32-year-old computer analyst was found dead. An inquest is due to take place later this year.
‘I’m not proud of what I did, and I hope that by speaking out I can make amends,’ Mr Chapman told the Tribune.
Neighbours said Mr Evans had become ‘withdrawn and frightened’ in the weeks leading up to his eviction. One, who asked not to be named, said: ‘Owen was terrified of losing his home and often said he had nowhere else to go. By kicking him out, Victoria Wyndham signed his death warrant.’
Today, Housing Secretary David Williamson joined calls for Mrs Wyndham to resign from her role as chief executive of The Anchorway Trust, saying her actions had been ‘beyond reprehensible’.
In a holding statement released by the charity this morning, Deputy Chief Executive Dee Hanning confirmed an internal investigation was underway and a full report would be published by the end of the week.
The woman at the centre of the scandal has yet to comment on the allegations amid reports that she is currently enjoying a holiday in a luxury villa on an exclusive Greek island off the coast of Corfu.
I slam the laptop shut. I’ve seen enough.
There’s no getting away from it. I’m Public Enemy Number One.
The best spin doctor in the world couldn’t save my reputation now.
Not that I can afford to hire anyone, thanks to Barney’s stupidity.
My career’s in tatters and my inheritance gone.
I think of our huge mortgage, the repayments on our leased cars, the skiing holidays at Easter and the summers in the Dordogne.
Barney’s mediocre job in finance barely covers the children’s school fees.
For years, our lifestyle has been shored up by the income from Twelve Claremont Crescent.
Now that’s gone too. My parents can’t help.
They’re property rich and cash poor, and there’s no way my mother would agree to sell their former rectory and move somewhere smaller just to keep the wolves from my door.
I have to face it: my carefully constructed life, complete with all the middle-class trappings you could wish for, is about to come crashing down around my ears and there’s sod all I can do to stop it.
I no longer feel angry, just numb. And there’s a flickering of an unfamiliar emotion I can’t at first pin a label to.
Not worry – I don’t do worry – but a kind of creeping dread.
As I tramp across to the window and stare out at the horizon, I wonder if this is what people mean by an existential crisis.
I feel, for perhaps the first time in my life, helpless.
And genuinely afraid. Not just for me, but for the children.
None of this is James, Sophie or Amelia’s fault.
Yet they’re the ones whose lives are about to be turned upside down.
And with the dread comes guilt, another emotion that rarely troubles me.
Because I can blame Barney all I like for investing my money in Felix’s doomed development, I can hold Shane and the media responsible for the career-ending headlines, but when push comes to shove everything, from Owen Evans’s death to the slur I’ve brought on the family name, is all my fault.