‘They wouldn’t let me in at first,’ said Nina. ‘Not until your mum told them it was OK. She was nice, your mum. Don’t worry, she’s coming back tomorrow.’
Mark placed some documents on the table beside Mutt’s sandwich pack. ‘I wanted to return your paperwork to you, Murray.’
‘What’s that?’ Nina asked.
‘It’s Polly’s,’ Mutt confirmed, grimly. ‘And mine.’
‘Oh.’ Nina dropped into the chair by his side.
Mark took over. ‘Murray here showed these to me the night before you set off for New York, on a round trip, apparently.’ Ruth and Mark grinned at her but Nina was staring at the papers, uncomprehending. ‘He wanted my opinion on them,’ Mark added.
‘What with him working in financial planning and property and pensions; he knows about these things, you see?’ Ruth added.
Nina told them she didn’t see.
‘It’s a cohabitation agreement. A bit like a pre-nup,’ Mutt said, and the words stole Nina’s breath. She tried to cover it.
Mutt exhaled in a huffing sigh before he carried on. ‘Polly and her mum moved to Pennan a year or so ago. They were in some kind of financial straits, something to do with her mum getting divorced and the pair of them being left with nothing. We,uh, we ended up going out and,’ Mutt shrugged, ‘I’ll admit it was serious, or I thought it was. She moved in with me and for a while things were… good.’
Nina nodded, casting her eyes down at her hands.
‘She was the one that wanted me to get Bear – kept saying we weren’t a family without a dog. I didn’t want him at all. How could I look after a dog when I was out all day, and Polly was studying? She was doing a law degree and was often away at the uni in Glasgow through the week, or, at least, that’s what she told me. Anyway, she had this shop job, apparently, bringing in a bit of money every now and then and she wanted to contribute to my mortgage. I told her I didn’t mind paying but she insisted, so we set up a joint account, and things just ticked over and one day she showed me the picture of Bear in the rescue centre and I couldn’t very well say no, she was determined to bring him into the family.’
Nina swallowed hard and Mutt talked on.
‘I got to know her mum a bit, did some painting for them at her mum’s place. She seemed nice enough, and one day Polly tells me her mum had been seeing some new bloke who’d moved in with her and ripped her off – taken her money, her jewellery, everything. A real sob story it was, and she said to me she wanted to get some kind of protection for herself and didn’t I understand it was sensible to make a legal agreement to protect her share of the money she was bringing in. Polly told me about some papers she’d learned about at uni, something we could do ourselves that wouldn’t cost any money but it would protect her if I ever left. It was a surprise. I had no intention of leaving her.’
Mutt’s eyes flashed to Nina’s for a moment, but he steeled himself to carry on, even though she was growing paler by the second.
‘So she talked me into signing a cohabitation agreement. It seemed only fair and sensible, the way she explained it, saying women had to protect themselves since they were so financially vulnerable to dickheads like her father and this fellow her mum had been conned by. So, what was the harm in signing it?’ Mutt shrugged, his voice wry and bitter. ‘I’m no legal expert, I’m just a decorator, as she liked to remind me, and I just signed it there and then. To me it was all just to make her feel better about earning less and give her a sense of security, and she said it would come to an end when we got married.’
Nina wrapped her arms around herself. ‘It’s cold in here, isn’t it?’ she said suddenly. ‘There must be a window open.’ She flustered about, looking for the imaginary draught, giving herself time to think as Mark Firth started to talk.
‘She was right there, of course. Cohabitation agreements are very common between anyone living together as friends or as,ahem,’ he cleared his throat, receiving a warning glance from Ruth, ‘or something more. If the two parties marry, the agreement becomes void.’
‘You were going to get married?’ Nina said, trying to sound casual, remembering how she and Mutt were friends, and hopefully future business partners. They’d had no time to discuss it and he needed to recover first. She wasn’t planning on rushing him into anything he didn’t want to do.
‘I hadn’t asked her, but she talked about it a lot as though it was inevitable, and we had Bear, our baby, as she called him.’ Mutt was looking at the cuts and grazes on his hands. ‘She was supposed to graduate with this law degree in September and we were all looking forward to the graduation. She was working in London by then – some fancy job to help prepare her for the bar. I didn’t really understand it all, only that she was well on her way to being a top-flight lawyer, and I was so proud of her and… in awe, really.
‘She’d tell me how she’d earn the money and I’d be able to do whatever I wanted. I couldn’t be a decorator forever, she’d always say. Always with the little jibes. I was never smart enough, or quick enough for her. And it turns out she was absolutely right about that. I got home from a painting job one night and she wasn’t there. A few days passed, she didn’t ring, I couldn’t reach her, and then the letters started to arrive from the bank. There was a massive overdraft on the joint account and all my money had been cleared out. I went straight round to her mum’s place and it was empty. She’d shipped out too.’
Mark butted in. ‘It’s possible they were pros, preying on men, making them think they had a future, getting them to sign documents and then scarpering with the cash. Maybe they’re travelling around the country ripping off blokes for a living.’
‘But she was a lawyer?’ Nina said, and Mutt gave her a level look. ‘Oh, she wasn’t.’
‘Probably not,’ Mark Firth said.
‘I know what you’re thinking.’ Mutt cast his eyes down. ‘I was a gullible fool. I fell for her and believed everything she told me. I still find myself stumbling over things she told me, realising they couldn’t have been true, all these months later.’
Ruth piped up at this. ‘It’s not uncommon. My friend Wendy married a man she’d met online. Told her he was from the UAE, something big in oil. Well, he turned up, spent the honeymoon with her, cleared her bank accounts and was gone, in her car, no less, within three weeks. Read the women’s magazines. You’d be surprised how often it happens.’
Mutt snapped his head up. ‘But I’m a…’
‘A man?’ Ruth retorted. ‘And that makes you immune to scammers, does it? If you must feel ashamed, feel ashamed for not listening to your family and friends warning you, trying to protect you, but don’t feel ashamed for falling for something you think only happens to women.’
Mutt definitely looked ashamed. ‘Polly was right. I’m not smart, not like her. And it’s all legal too.’ He pointed at the papers. ‘Look, it’s executed as a deed, and was signed in the presence of witnesses. That’s what she turned up to tell me the other night. She told me I have to get the house on the market and give her what’s rightfully hers.’
‘I’m glad you had the idea of showing me the papers,’ interjected Mark. ‘Even if it did cause a bit of a misunderstanding between me and my missus. Ruth saw me reading them on te night Polly arrived and thought I was back to my old overworking ways.’
