Risking It All Read online

  Risking It All

  ANN GRANGER

  headline

  www.headline.co.uk

  Copyright © 2001 Ann Granger

  The right of Ann Granger to be identified as the Author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2010

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 8205 7

  This Ebook produced by Jouve Digitalisation des Informations

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ann Granger has lived in cities in many parts of the world, since for many years she worked in British embassies as far apart as Munich and Lusaka. She is married, with two sons, and she and her husband are now permanently based near Oxford.

  To Christopher, a source of stories and on hand

  when something goes amiss with the computer . . .

  Chapter One

  ‘What’s more,’ I said to Ganesh, ‘there’s my independence to consider.’

  Ganesh replied, rather rudely I thought, ‘What independence? You’re broke, you’re homeless, you’re dossing here in Uncle Hari’s garage. You keep all you own in a plastic binbag and the only family you’ve got is that perishing dog.’

  At this point, Bonnie barked. Ganesh looked at her and she flattened her ears and uttered a throaty whine.

  ‘Dogs are worried by eye contact,’ I told him. ‘They see it as a challenge.’

  ‘Oh? Well, in my experience, you don’t turn your back on them.’

  Ganesh doesn’t get on well with dogs. I suspect he’s afraid of them. He may have a phobia like some people do with cats. Whatever it is, dogs know it and they give Ganesh a terrible time, even little dogs like Bonnie.

  I explained to him that he was being illogical. None of the things he’d listed meant I wasn’t independent. If anything, they meant I was.

  ‘You’re the one who’s not got any independence,’ I argued. ‘You’re tied to your family. You either work for your dad or you work for your Uncle Hari, which wouldn’t matter if it was work you enjoyed. But you don’t. You hate it.’

  ‘That’s different,’ said Ganesh sniffily.

  We were sitting on a couple of upturned crates in Hari’s garage at the rear of the newsagent’s he runs. Ganesh and I had seen in the New Millennium on Blackfriars Bridge with a horde of others, watching the fireworks and popping champagne corks. I couldn’t help thinking at the time, as I raised my plastic tumbler of bubbly to the New Year, that the majority of people there had a home to go to when it was all over. It was something they probably took for granted. I never have, nothing permanent, nothing I could think of as my home, at least not since I was sixteen.

  Correction: recently I’d enjoyed the rare comfort of a basement flat, just for a brief but wonderful while. But I didn’t slip into the mistake of letting my guard down, thinking at last I was ‘home’. I’ve learned not to do that, not to let myself become dependent on anything. Dependent means vulnerable. Perhaps that was what I was trying to explain to Ganesh.

  As to that flat, I’d always known it couldn’t last, and sure enough it didn’t, proving I’d been right not to count on it. Shortly before Christmas, Fate in the form of burst pipes took a hand and I’d been flooded out. My then landlady, Daphne, invited me to spend Christmas with her so I wasn’t forced to turn to the nearest seasonal charity shelter. But no sooner was Boxing Day over than things began to plummet downhill with a vengeance.

  Daphne, urged on I’m sure by her unspeakable nephews, Bertie and Charlie, announced she was putting the house up for sale with immediate effect. She was planning to live in a cottage in Cornwall and it just so happened that nephews B and C knew of one with vacant possession as of the instant. What’s more, an old chum had invited her to accompany her on a millennium cruise which involved drinking a glass of champagne at midnight on some remote atoll. Despite the short notice (owing to someone else dropping out), she felt she couldn’t turn it down.

  So Daphne jetted out to join the party, leaving it to nephews B and C to arrange to send nearly all her furniture to the saleroom, except what she wanted for the cottage, which would be put in store until her return. We spent the last day in each other’s company going round sticking Post-It notes to everything she wanted to keep. If I felt there was indecent haste in all this, it was hardly for me to say so. But it was a lowering occasion. Even Daphne murmured it was like valuing the estate for probate.

  One thing she had insisted on was that I be allowed to stay on in the empty shell of the house until it was sold. But there was never a chance of that. The minute she was out of the country, the horrible Bertie and Charlie began making my life a misery. On the excuse of packing up the house and ‘keeping an eye on things’, they virtually moved in themselves.

  ‘After all,’ said Bertie nastily, ‘we can hardly leave security in your hands.’

  ‘I can look after the house,’ I argued. ‘I’m quite capable, you know.’

  ‘You,’ said Bertie, ‘will fill the place with people like yourself. That’s what people like you do. You’ll turn it into a squat. Your friends will take up the floorboards for fuel, be overdosing on every banned substance known to man, writing obscene limericks on the walls and urinating in the garden.’

  ‘I will not move anyone in!’ I yelled at him. ‘And what do you know about squatters, anyway? What makes you think they all behave like that? Any squat I’ve lived in has had house rules and everyone’s stuck to them. Either that, or they were out. I bet I know more about keeping undesirables, as you’d call them, at bay than you do.’

  ‘I am a solicitor,’ Bertie said smugly, ‘so I do know a great deal about these things. Besides, how can we ask the estate agent to show prospective buyers round with you and that disgusting little dog camped in the kitchen? Aunt Daphne was out of her mind allowing you to stay over Christmas. Now I see you are interpreting her well-meant gesture as a virtual invitation to squat indefinitely. It was not so intended and my brother and I mean to see you don’t get away with it. You have no kind of contract to stay in this part of the house. You’ve paid no rent since you lost the basement flat. Out you go.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I snarled. ‘And a Happy New Millennium to you, too. By the way, why did that antique cabinet with the marquetry panels go off in a separate van to the rest? Why didn’t it go in the lorry to the saleroom with the other things?’

  ‘None of your business,’ he snapp
ed. ‘However, Aunt Daphne told my brother and myself we could each have an item of our choice for sentimental reasons. I chose the dear little cabinet. It belonged to my grandmother and I well remember it from when I was a boy.’

  ‘Wow! Pass the sickbag!’ I invited. ‘Spare me dear old Grandma, at least. I bet sentiment’s got a whopping big price tag on it by now.’

  Bertie leaned towards me, his piggy eyes sparkling with malice. This was a man who really hated me. ‘In the words of the vernacular,’ he hissed, ‘get lost.’

  So I did. I knew I couldn’t win this one. He had a point about the estate agent. I suppose it wouldn’t have looked good to a possible buyer to see me there. I put together the few belongings I had left and took myself and Bonnie to Hari’s newsagent’s to tell Ganesh of my eviction.

  ‘This will never do,’ said Hari, listening to my tale with growing dismay. Then he brightened. ‘I have an idea. You can stay in my garage until the council houses you.’

  This was a big relief. It was also the moment to tell him there wasn’t a hope in hell of the council offering me, single, childless and not even born in the borough, a home. I have what they like to call ‘low priority’. It’s an official way of saying ‘bottom of the barrel’.

  But Hari had worries enough. Why add to his concerns? I thanked him and moved in towards the end of January. After this, 2000 could only get better. I hoped.

  I had to share my new accommodation with piles of boxes. The air whiffed of petrol and engine oil, though it was ages since Hari had kept any kind of motor vehicle in there. Transport was symbolised by a rusty old bike with flat tyres and no saddle. When the garage doors were shut you had to keep the light on because there weren’t any windows. But at least there was electricity. There was also a small door in the rear of the place leading into the back yard of the shop, so I could come and go that way. The main doors were kept locked for security. I’d got a folding bed and a sleeping bag and a Calor Gas heater. I used the shop toilet and wash basin, and if I wanted a bath, I could go up to the flat over the shop where Hari and Ganesh lived and take one there. Some evenings I ate with them. So, to be fair, everything was by no means as bad as it sounds.

  Hari was happy enough with the arrangement because he thought it was temporary. I was happy because it was free. Ganesh was grumpy and miserable because he felt it was infra dig.

  ‘Sleeping in a doorway is worse,’ I’d pointed out at the beginning of our conversation.

  ‘No one’s asking you to sleep in a damn doorway. You can sleep on Hari’s sofa,’ Ganesh had retorted.

  ‘That wasn’t what Hari offered.’

  ‘Because he thought you were only going to be here a few days. You’ve been here over a month.’

  ‘I told him I’ll contribute to the electricity bill.’

  ‘Sod the electricity bill.’ Ganesh was getting worked up. ‘I know, if you’ll let me, I can talk Hari round to taking you on as a lodger in the flat.’

  ‘No way! Are you crazy? Your family would hit the roof. They’d all be there before you could say knife, every uncle, aunt and cousin. You know what they think about me.’

  ‘They like you.’

  ‘Only if I keep at arm’s length. They think I’m a bad influence on you.’

  At this Ganesh lost it seriously, something which rarely happens, but when it does, you have to watch out. His long hair fell over his face, he waved his arms around, and words bubbled out of him in a seething stream like lava from a volcano. Even Bonnie was impressed and retreated to her little bed by the wall.

  I’d realised I had to close off the argument pretty quick or Ganesh would short-circuit. So when I could get a word in, I’d said the bit about my independence and Ganesh stomped off angrily back to the shop. I went down the road to the Chinese takeaway and bought special fried rice and took it back and ate it in solitary splendour. I didn’t want to go up to the flat and start arguing all over again. I particularly wanted to keep Hari out of it. Like I said, Hari worries. He worries on a heroic scale. He’s a nice, kindly, hard-working man and the most stressed person I know. Most businessmen worry about profits and overheads and things. Hari worries about everything, like his health (and mine or yours if he knows you), the state of the nation and the millennium bug, which then, early in the year, he was still sure was lurking somewhere ready to gum up the works. Hari mistrusts computers. He particularly mistrusts the Internet because he is convinced it will ruin newsagents like himself.

  ‘They don’t buy magazines. They don’t watch videos. They sit in front of that damn box playing with mice.’

  He reads all the newspapers in the shops and worries about each and every item. ‘See here? Some poor child has turned orange because of something she drank. I sell cold drinks. Suppose someone drinks something he bought here and he turns orange or pink or whatever it is and sues me?’

  ‘It’s not going to happen, Hari,’ we tell him. ‘It’s about as likely as space debris falling through the roof.’

  ‘Hah! You think this can’t happen? One piece fell on a cow in America and killed it stone dead. You think it can’t fall on me or you?’

  I think he actually likes worrying. It’s a sort of hobby.

  Anyway, the whole row with Ganesh had taken place the evening before events really began happening. Perhaps it was an omen heralding some sort of bug like the millennium one but only targeted at me and designed to mess up my life (again). Perhaps my stars were out of true, and if an astrologer had drawn me a personal map the planets would’ve been zig-zagging around like dodgem cars.

  When Bonnie and I had finished the fried rice, I settled down in my sleeping bag and slept very badly. I don’t like being at odds with Ganesh, who is the best friend I’ve ever had or am ever likely to have. He’s always there, and although we have the occasional bust-up (as then), when things quieten down we pick up where we left off. When I first knew him he was helping his parents out in their greengrocer’s shop in Rotherhithe and I was squatting in a condemned house. In the end, developers knocked down both the squat and the little parade of shops which included the greengrocery. Mr and Mrs Patel moved out to High Wycombe because a cousin was already in business there, and anyway, people in the commuter belt have more money and buy expensive upmarket items like avocados and lemon grass. In Rotherhithe they sold an awful lot of spuds, onions and the smallest, cheapest bananas and oranges. ‘Lousy profit margins,’ explained Ganesh to me gloomily.

  There wasn’t room for him in High Wycombe so he’d gone up to Camden to help his uncle in the newsagent’s. I did ask whether he’d ever contemplated working for someone not a family member but he got tetchy and said I didn’t understand. Saying I didn’t understand was Gan’s way of closing off any argument he was losing.

  In our Rotherhithe days his family had always been nice to me and I’d helped out sometimes at weekends in the shop, rather as I’d been doing for Hari up here in Camden. (This family business is creeping, like ivy.) The trouble is, I don’t have one, a family, I mean. I think that’s what worries the older Patels most. It’s something they just can’t understand. I’m young, single, female and batting round on my own. It both shocks and worries them. Someone, they feel, should be looking after me. Only they don’t want it to be Ganesh. They doubtless have their own plans for him, although so far they’ve been keeping them up their sleeves. This does tend to make him jittery and he’s happy to be out of their way.

  The next morning, when I woke up, still tired and fed up, I realised I was going to have to do something to patch up the quarrel, straight away. If it meant going up to the shop waving a white flag, so be it. I decided to go about a quarter to eleven. Hari and Gan usually take a coffee break then, after the early-morning paper rush. But being Saturday, the rush would be on all morning and they’d be grateful to have someone make the coffee and stand in for them in turns while the released one drank his reviver.

  I went in the back way, from my garage home, through the cluttered yard and in the bac
k door which leads to the storeroom. The storeroom is a treasure house which looks as if a whirlwind has hit it. Boxed sweets of all kinds are wedged higgledy-piggledy on the dusty shelves. Cans of soft drink are stacked in wobbly towers. In between all these are boxes of oddments like ballpoint pens and sellotape rolls, last year’s diaries (don’t ask me why; perhaps Hari hopes that somehow the date will come round again . . .) and unsold Christmas wrapping paper which Hari is definitely planning on selling next season. It looks chaotic, but believe me, Hari knows the number and location of every bar of peppermint cream or disposable cigarette lighter. I wove my way between it all and emerged into the shop.

  I’d caught a brief lull between customers. Hari and Ganesh were huddled in the corner by the till, apparently arguing about something, and I was nearly upon them before either of them became aware of it. Hari saw me first. He made an urgent flapping movement of his hand to shut Ganesh up and hailed me.