Page 11 of Tribute Act

I said, “There was just . . . something about him.”

“Hold me.”

I swallowed against a sudden lump in my throat, then before Gav could ask me any more questions, I changed the subject, saying thickly, “Hey, keep an eye out for a coffee place will you? I need to get some caffeine before I head back to Porthkennack.”

Thankfully, it was enough to distract him. “Fuck, yeah, coffee,” he groaned. “I need a triple Americano right now.”

And after that, Mack was forgotten.

By Gav, at least.

Chorus

I’ll be hanging up my Christmas stocking

So, when Santa comes a-knocking

There will be a place for him

To put my Christmas presents in

But I don’t need no fancy parcels

I don’t want no bows or sparkles

All I want this Christmas Day

Is you telling me that you are gonna stay.

— “Christmas Stocking” by The Sandy Coves, 1989

I had a lot of paperwork to deal with that afternoon, so the first thing I did when I got in the flat was make more coffee. Then I fired up the laptop, opened up Office, and forced myself to start right away without even taking five minutes to check Facebook.

Dealing with the finances for Dilly’s had been my first introduction to the family business, almost two years before. Mum was great in the café with the customers, but she had absolutely no head for numbers. As for Derek, he was happiest in the kitchen. He made the ice cream and did some baking too, though most of our pastries and cakes were bought in.

Neither of them had been particularly vigilant with the finances. They’d let the books slide for years, and it had come to a head over a big tax bill.

I’d been home the weekend Mum had her meltdown over it, or she mightn’t even have told me. As it was, I’d asked to look at the books to see how bad things really were. Since my degree was in marketing and business studies, I had a decent grasp of basic accounting.

I’d been shocked by what she’d handed over. The records were shoddy: none of the invoices or receipts were properly filed and the tax files were a total disaster—they hadn’t kept half the stuff they needed in case of an inspection—and when I checked the name of the company they’d set up in the company registers, I discovered it was about to be struck off for failing to put in returns.

I’d told Mum I would try to sort out the tax situation for them. My job at that time had been demanding but I’d figured I could spend a couple of months of my weekends sorting out the immediate mess and setting up new systems for them to follow, then once they were in place, I would hand everything back to Mum and Derek and just check the books every once in a while.

Only the situation was worse than I’d imagined.

Much worse.

It turned out they’d borrowed against the house—Mum’s house, the one my dad had signed over to her when they’d divorced—and sunk all the cash into the business. They’d given personal guarantees to the new lender too and were behind on their monthly payments. I hadn’t realised things were so tight, but no one would have. Derek hadn’t been living like a guy who needed to tighten the purse strings, had still been splashing the cash as much as he ever had. Only a few months before that, he’d taken Mum and Rosie to Florida and bought a new car.

It wasn’t that he was a bad guy, but he was thoughtless. Feckless. When I was growing up, he’d been a great stepdad: fun and cool and easygoing. Never tried to replace my own dad in my life who I hero-worshipped, but yeah, involved in my life. Took his turn at driving me to swimming training at the crack of dawn and came to my football games. In fact, he’d been the first person in the family I’d told I was gay, and he’d been great about it. Took it in his stride and paved the way for me tell Mum.

But he couldn’t run a business to save his life.

Luckily for him and Mum, just as everything had been going to shit for them, I’d inherited a chunk of money from my paternal grandmother. It was enough to bail them out, so that’s what I offered to do. I paid off half the tax bill, negotiated a time-to-pay arrangement for the rest of it, cleared the loan against the house, and got the personal guarantees discharged. In return, they gave me fifty per cent of the shares in the company. Of course, since the company had been worth basically nothing at that point in time, I hadn’t really been getting anything beyond a piece of paper, but I’d been okay with that. They’d needed the money more than I had right then.

I’d been ready to kiss my “investment” goodbye forever after that, figuring that Derek and Mum would probably run Dilly’s into the ground over the next ten years, but would get their living expenses out of it at least. But then, to my surprise, Mum asked me to join them in the business.

At first, I wasn’t going to do it. My job in London was going well, and okay, I hadn’t wanted to do that job forever, or to live the City lifestyle for much longer, but I hadn’t been looking to make a change either. And then, one night on the phone, Mum had confided that she was worried sick about my kid sister. Rosie had been depressed and anxious for weeks, and though Mum had had her at the doctor a few times, she wasn’t getting any better. She was convinced something was terribly wrong.