Sophie to give her address. He could get a cab from the airport. He already felt a sense of loss at their approaching parting. He had made up his mind to get to know her as well as he could on the flight over. If she was as great as she seemed, he’d do his utmost to mix pleasure with business during his five-month stay in New York.
Sophie pulled out an address slip. ‘It’s the intersection of Park Avenue and 75th Street. Upper East Side.’
It was the same block as Matthew was going to. The sheet of paper on which the address was printed had a familiar look to it. Hudson House. A small hotel with one very large corporate client. When the stewardess was out of earshot again, Matthew leaned over to Sophie.
‘Are you with Madison by any chance?’
She looked at him sharply.
‘I’m beginning the training programme tomorrow. That’s why I was so keen to make the plane.’
‘Me too. On both counts.’
‘Pleased to meet you.’
They formally shook hands, carefully so none of the cabin staff could see. It was only forty minutes after the moment that her tears had been gluing his shirt to his chest, and about thirty-nine minutes after Matthew had decided to see more of her.
Now he was both relieved and tense. Relieved because he would see her every single day for the next five months. Tense because he remembered the famous speech he was due to hear tomorrow. The beautiful Sophie Clemenceau might become a friend and colleague. If Matthew had his way she would also become his lover. But for five months she was also to be a competitor.
7
George had found a solicitor in Ilkley to draw up the Sale Agreement which would legally transfer Gissings into his name. He had instructed the solicitor to make the document totally one-sided and sent two copies round to Gissing. He assumed he’d have to make some concessions to get the old man’s consent, but one copy of the contract came back by return signed in a shaky hand, ‘Thomas Gissing, Proprietor and Managing Director, 1963–98’. There were no amendments.
Eleven weeks since hearing his father’s will, George owned a company. Its annual turnover was £1.5 million. Excluding the bank loan, its assets were valued in the accounts at around £350,000. So far, George had spent one pound plus a few hundred in solicitor’s fees. He should be feeling good.
He wasn’t. It was now Monday. On Friday, The Gissings Modern Furniture Company was required to repay more than half a million pounds to the bank. Val Bartlett, old Tom Gissing’s secretary and now his, was able to find about fifteen quid in the company’s petty cash tin. There was a float of perhaps five pounds in a decaying vending machine. George’s car would fetch twenty grand second-hand. And that was it.
George made an appointment to see David Ballard, the company’s bank manager.
As luck would have it, Ballard had been Bernard Gradley’s bank manager when Gradley had first opened an account, and they’d done good business together. Both men’s empires expanded. Ballard took over responsibility for all lending to mid-sized companies in Yorkshire and the North West, while Gradley’s business spread across the nation. Despite their different paths, the two men had maintained a respectful friendship. If George needed a favour to get him started, Ballard should be the ideal man to grant it.
Ballard’s office overlooked the old market square in Richmond, a well-to-do market town in North Yorkshire. The room was furnished by Ballard himself, not his employer, and the result was welcoming and warm. Ballard had been offered promotions, but he refused anything which took him away from Yorkshire. His clients loved him and his bosses left him alone. He welcomed George with coffee and biscuits.
‘Well, well, George. It’s a while since I’ve seen you. Very sorry to hear about your father’s death. Very sorry indeed. You must be very cut up, I suppose. How’s poor Helen taking it?’
Ballard munched on the biscuits as he spoke. He was a fat man with greying hair and moustache. He had the no-nonsense mouth of the tough banker and the twinkly eyes of a kind and humorous man. Crumbs from his biscuits lodged inside his moustache.
George shrugged. According to Josie, their mother was in a very bad way indeed, having teetered on the brink of following their father into the night. As it was now … but Ballard didn’t need to know the real, gloomy story. A brightly-coloured fairy tale would do for him.
‘Mum’s taken it OK to be honest,’ said George. ‘As you know, there wasn’t much love lost between Mum and Dad by the end. She’s just pleased that the money’s coming into the family proper after being under lock and key for so long.’
The will was secret, but Ballard knew as well as anyone how much Bernard Gradley was worth. If George could con him into believing he was about to inherit millions, then getting him to show a bit of grace with Gissings shouldn’t be so tough.
‘Yes. A few million must dull the edge of pain I suppose. Especially if you couldn’t stand the old bastard – and I speak as a friend of the old bastard, as you know. Still you haven’t come here to talk about that, I guess. Proud proprietor of old Tom Gissing’s shop, eh? Wouldn’t quite guess it. Not from the look of you. Still, stranger things have happened. How can I help?’
‘Well I owe you half a million quid, give or take.’
‘That’s right. But it’s give not take. Five hundred and forty-eight thousand, seven hundred and eighty-two pounds. Due close of business on Friday.’
‘That’s fine, but I wonder if we could sort out an extension. Two or three months perhaps?’
‘An extension? With all that cash from your dad?’
There was a twinkle in Ballard’s eye, but his mouth was unforgiving, and it was the mouth talking.
‘Nothing has yet been released by the estate’s executors,’ said George truthfully. ‘There are death duties, valuation of the business, all the rest of it. Until I get my slice of the pie, I’m as poor as a church mouse. What I want is to defer the loan until I can recapitalise the business, write off the debt, give it a healthy balance sheet once again.’
‘You have a letter from the executors? I might be able to grant a deferral if you had a letter.’
George stuttered for a moment. He could get a letter. It just wouldn’t say what he needed it to say.
‘Er – I guess so. What I don’t know is whether I can get it in time. There’s a whole bunch of executors and the legal palaver seems to take for ever.’
Ballard checked some figures on his desk.
‘The interest payment due on Friday is around six grand. If you get that to us plus another thirty grand as an advance on the next series of interest payments, then I’ll give you a temporary extension. Let’s say three months, shall we?’
George nodded without being able to speak. In his mind’s eye, he’d expected Ballard to nod the whole thing through without a hint of difficulty. As it was, Ballard had hardly helped at all.
Emerging blinking into the market square, George chased a traffic warden from his illegally parked car, pulled out his mobile phone and started to dial. He had five
