I Funded Their Empire for Years, So They Sent Me the Bill novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Statement
At what she thinks is her own rehearsal dinner, Nessa is handed an itemised bill for six years of funding the Fitzsimonses, sees her stepsister in the bride's chair, and walks out with the signed original, where a stranger knocks on her car window.
The bride's chair at my rehearsal dinner already had someone in it.
I saw her from the dining room doorway, with my coat still on and rain in my hair.
My stepsister Petra sat at the head of the Fitzsimonses' long table, beside my fiance.
She was wearing white.
Forty people turned to look at me, and then, very politely, looked away.
Cecily Fitzsimons rose at the far end, pearls and grey cashmere, one hand held out.
"Nessa. You're late. Do sit, we kept you a place."
My place was at the foot of the table, between two of Fintan's father's golf friends.
There was a card with my name on it in Cecily's neat hand.
On my plate, where the starter should have been, lay a navy folder tied with a silver ribbon.
I didn't sit.
"Fintan," I said.
He didn't stand. He turned his wine glass by the stem and gave me the smile he kept for waiters.
"Ness. Don't make this a thing. Sit down and Mum will explain."
Petra laughed, the laugh that always found the back of a room.
"She does love an entrance."
The family solicitor got up from the middle of the table.
I had sat beside him at six Christmas dinners.
He came down the room, picked up the folder and held it out to me.
"Ms Bourke. The family thought it kinder to put everything properly on paper."
The cover said Contribution Statement: Ms Nessa Bourke.
I opened it because forty people were waiting for me to.
Page one listed every transfer I had ever made to Fitzsimons & Sons.
Seventy-one lines. Dates and amounts, down to the cent.
The first one was six years old.
That was the Christmas Fintan sat on our kitchen floor and cried because the silversmiths' wages wouldn't clear.
The last one was from the first of this month.
Underneath, every sum was "acknowledged as a loan to Fitzsimons & Sons, repayable on demand, with interest at four per cent."
The total was €431,820.
For one stupid second I thought they were paying me back.
Then I turned the page.
Back rent on the flat above the shop, seventy-two months. €108,000.
Engagement ring. €18,500.
Association with the Fitzsimons name and introductions. €240,000.
Sunday lunches, three hundred and twelve at €85 a head. €26,520.
Holidays at the Kerry house. €36,000.
Wedding costs borne by the family. €64,040.
At the very bottom, in bold, it said Balance due from Ms Bourke: €61,240, payable on demand.
Fintan's father tapped his glass with a knife and stood up, beaming.
"To Nessa," he said. "Whose generosity is finally on paper, where it belongs. No hard feelings, love. Business is business."
A few people laughed, because he had.
A few people lifted their glasses.
One man near the middle, big and rumpled in a dinner jacket that didn't quite fit him, didn't move at all.
Cecily folded her hands on the tablecloth.
"We didn't want any confusion after tomorrow, Nessa. Petra and Fintan marry at noon. It's all quite simple."
Tomorrow at noon.
My wedding, at the hotel in Wicklow I had chosen and paid the deposits on.
"There's a pen beside your glass," Cecily said. "Sign where it says received, and we can all have our dinner."
"Please don't make the evening awkward for everyone."
I looked at Fintan.
He was looking at Petra.
I looked at Petra.
She lifted her left hand off the tablecloth so the candlelight found her ring.
It was bigger than mine.
I turned to the solicitor, who was still standing beside me with his hands clasped.
"Is this the signed original?"
He glanced up the table at Cecily before he answered.
"It is. We kept a copy. That one's yours."
"Who signed it?"
"Mrs Fitzsimons, as chair. And Mr Fitzsimons, as a director."
"Thank you," I said.
I closed the folder.
I didn't pick up the pen.
I twisted my engagement ring off my finger, which took a moment, because my hands were cold.
Then I walked up the length of the table, past forty faces, and set it on Petra's bread plate.
"That's eighteen and a half off my balance," I said.
Petra looked down at it and smiled up at me.
"It was always a bit small, Ness."
Fintan said my name.
I walked out with the folder under my arm.
Nobody followed me.
I sat in my car under the dripping beeches with the rain loud on the roof, and switched on the light.
I read page one again.
For six years that money had been a gift to the man I loved.
You can't take a gift back.
Tonight his family had written down that it was a loan, repayable on demand, and signed it, and handed me the original.
In front of forty witnesses.
I was laughing when someone knocked on my window.
It was the big man from the middle of the table, rain running off his flattened nose.
I let the window down two inches.
"Sorry," he said, in a Cork accent. "Cian Daly. I was at the table."
"I noticed you didn't drink to me."
"I'm meant to put four million into Fitzsimons & Sons on Monday morning."
He bent closer to the gap.
"At four o'clock today Cecily told me that company owed nobody a cent."
I held up the navy folder.
"It owes me four hundred and thirty-one thousand euro," I said. "They just put it in writing."
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