I Funded Their Empire for Years, So They Sent Me the Bill novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Balance Due

Locked out of her home, Nessa takes her name off the wedding contract in front of the guests, and Petra pays the balance with money from the house that belonged to Nessa's dead mother.

Cian Daly looked at the folder through the two-inch gap in my window.

"Can I read it?"

"No."

He nodded.

"Then I'd better not sign anything on Monday." He slid a wet business card through the gap. "If you call it in, call me first."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because I'll be the only man in Dublin who wants to hear it."

I put the card in the cup holder and drove away with the wipers going.

At eight the next morning my key code didn't work.

I typed it three times into the keypad at the back door of the Dawson Street building.

The light blinked red each time.

My life was by the bins in the lane, in black refuse bags.

Winter coats. My books. My good boots, sticking out of a split bag.

On top of the pile, zipped in its long white bag, lay my wedding dress.

A window scraped open four floors up.

Fintan leaned out onto the fire escape in his dressing gown, a coffee in his hand.

"Mum thought it was cleaner this way," he called down. "The flat's family property."

"I lived there for six years."

"Rent-free," he said. "It's on page two."

I knelt and opened the bags one by one.

The rain had stopped, but the cobbles were soaked and my tights went dark at the knees.

"What are you looking for?"

"My mother's sewing box."

"That old tin thing?" He sipped his coffee. "Binned it. It was rusting on the hall table."

Behind me the shop's back door opened.

Ottoline Fray came out into the lane in a long cardigan, carrying a dented green biscuit tin in both hands.

She had been Fitzsimons's chief curator for twenty-two years.

We had drunk tea together in the archive every Friday for six of them.

"I took it out of the skip at seven," she said, in her clipped Bath voice. "This family has no feel for provenance."

I held my mother's sewing box against my chest.

It still smelled of her lavender bags and machine oil.

"Ottoline, you'll lose your job."

"Then I'll have more time for the dog." She looked at the black bags, then up at Fintan. "You're not going to Wicklow, I hope."

"I am," I said. "My name is on the contract."

The hotel in Wicklow had a long gravel drive and a hall with a fire lit in October.

I had chosen the white ranunculus on the stairs.

Guests were arriving in hats, shaking umbrellas, kissing cheeks.

Half of them had been on my own guest list a week ago.

They looked at my jeans and my wet knees and found something interesting on the ceiling.

The events manager knew me. We'd spent four Saturdays choosing linen.

She came out from behind the desk with her tablet, already frightened.

"Nessa. I wasn't sure if you'd..."

"I'm the client," I said. "I'm taking my name off this wedding, and I'm not paying the balance."

She looked down at the screen.

"The balance is thirty-one thousand. It's due before the ceremony. If it isn't paid, I can't open the room."

"Then someone else will have to pay it."

Cecily came across the hall in dove grey silk, with a hat.

She didn't raise her voice. She never did.

"Nessa, this is spite, and it doesn't suit you."

"I've already paid twenty-nine thousand in deposits," I said. "You billed me for it last night."

Cecily took a card from her clutch and handed it to the events manager.

The machine thought about it in front of the whole hall.

It beeped twice.

"I'm sorry, Mrs Fitzsimons. It's been declined."

The hall went very quiet.

Somebody's aunt stopped with her coat half off.

Fintan came in from the terrace in his morning suit, his grandfather's signet ring flashing as he fixed his tie.

He put a hand on my shoulder.

"Ness. Come on. For old times. You'll get it back, I swear to God."

"On demand?"

His hand came off my shoulder.

He leaned in so only I could hear.

"You were always cheap underneath. Six years, and you never once let anyone forget who paid."

"I never told a soul," I said. "Your mother wrote it down."

Light footsteps on the stairs.

Petra came down between my ranunculus in a silk robe and a cathedral veil, her hair pinned, her face done.

She moved like the dancer she'd been until nineteen.

"Is there a problem with my wedding?"

The events manager held up the card machine.

Petra took a card from the pocket of her robe and tapped it without looking.

The machine beeped once.

Approved.

The guests breathed out. Someone actually clapped.

Petra came close and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear, the way she did when we were girls.

"Mum gave me the Dalkey house last week," she said softly. "A wedding present."

I couldn't feel my hands on the sewing box.

"Your mother's house is paying for my wedding, Ness."

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