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“Didn’t he tell you?” He leans back, tilting the kitchen chair so it balances on its back legs, not caring if he breaks it. “We’ve been in negotiations for the past year, and agreed a few weeks ago.”
“It’s the first I hear of it.”
“Well, Hedge can be a bit…” He taps his temple with a finger. “Forgetful and easily confused.”
I glare at him. How dare he say that? “Have you signed the contract yet?”
His expression becomes condescending. “I see you’re a stranger here. On La Canette a gentleman’s word is his bond. We shook on the deal.”
“I was born here, and this is my home,” I say carefully. “If my grandfather is, as you say, easily confused then I don’t think you can rely on a handshake, so unless you have paperwork to prove you’ve bought this house, then there is no agreement.”
He sits forward making the chair thump on the floor. “Look Elodie.”
His confident use of my name irritates me even more. “I will speak to my grandfather about this when he wakes up. But I can assure you there is no sale. Now, I would like you to leave my home.”
His lips press into a long thin line. “Did your grandfather tell you we’ve been lending him money?”
My face must show my surprise because his insolent smirk is back. “He hasn’t been able to pay his bills for months, we’ve agreed to pay them as an advance on the sale. And those loans are on paper, and he has signed.” He opens his briefcase and shuffles through some papers and hands me a couple.
They’re receipts from the Municipalité for water, electricity, heating oil and municipal services on Labri Catch house and the shop.
“If you are going to skip out of the deal then the debts need paying. We have been patient because we had a sales agreement.” Alastair takes out a lever arch file. Inside he peruses several pages as if picking and choosing before handing me another sheet.
It has MORRIS & SWEENY PROPERTY typed in bold across the top. Reading down the page, I see that Grandad has indeed borrowed a lot of money and has agreed to weekly repayments at a ridiculous rate of interest. The weekly repayments were due over three months ago. Why? That was long before his accident.
Alastair, or whoever works for him, has typedDEFAULTnext to each missed repayment. They’ve also added up all the missed repayments, with additional interest, and added that to the original debt.
Cold spreads all over me to my fingertips.
“So, you see,” Alastair says when I’ve been staring at the page for a while. “We were going to be patient because we had a deal. But now you’ve welshed on the deal; you will have to start paying the debt. Either my partner or I will come every Friday to collect that week’s instalment. And it’s Friday...” He makes a show of checking his phone. “Today. But as you didn’t know about this, I’m prepared to defer this week’s payment.”
“By adding the interest on to the debt.”
“I’m not in the charity business.” He gives me a self-satisfied look.
My eyes settle on the weekly repayments. I can just about pay it once, maybe twice. How could Grandad have got himself into this mess?
“You know there are laws against this kind of extortion.”
“Now, now, Elodie,” he speaks to me as if telling a child not to eat sweets for dinner. “You like paperwork and signatures. A contract is a contract.”
It’s all I can do not to slap his smug face. This man is worse than my ex-boss and my ex-boyfriend and his mistress all rolled together.
“I’ll be back next week.” He reaches into his inside breast pocket for a felt-tip pen and crosses the amount on the repayment schedule for next week. And writes DEFAULT. “The new amount will reflect another missed payment. That will be...” he uses his phone to calculate.
“No need, I’ll pay it now.”
I get my handbag, but it doesn’t have enough cash. “Do you use PayPal?”
“As long as you’re responsible for the transfer fees.”
It takes a long time after he’s gone before I can calm my heart and even taste the coffee, I made for myself.
I don’t need a calculator to work out that paying this kind of money every week is going to drain my savings in no time.
I cast around for a solution. Paul? I start to dial his number then stop. Lecture or no lecture, he might help as a one off, but not every week. Besides, my brother has a horror of interest rates. He repaid his own mortgage in less than ten years to avoid the interest. He will never agree to this.
I have nothing worth selling, and neither does Grandad. Except for Labri Catch which is what Alastair wants. I’m not a fool. Clearly, they have encouraged Grandad to let them pay his bills and didn’t collect repayments until he drowned in debt and has no option but to sell.
