Finders Keepers Edie Baylis (phonics readers .TXT) 📖

overnight and the spark in his eyes had gone. Even after all this time she could still picture the raw pain on his face as he’d announced to his concerned staff that Carole and the baby had died from an undetected ectopic pregnancy.

Gwen turned her mug around on the table sadly. Scans weren’t commonplace in those days, but the surgeons tried; they really had. They couldn’t save the baby – no one could, but neither could they stop the haemorrhaging inside Carole and her heart failed on the operating table.

Within the space of a few hours, Jacky had lost his unborn daughter and his wife.

The guilt that followed plagued both of them. After this, their relationship - affair, ended. It wasn’t finished by either of them – it was just never instigated. Ever.

Gwen had continued closely working with Jacky – that didn’t change - just the other side of their relationship was deleted – like it never happened in the first place.

Throwing herself back into her work and helping out with the boys was the only saving grace she had to assuage her torment.

Gwen found herself making her way back to the window, realising that for the first time in over thirty years she didn’t want to return to work. Someone had been aware of the well-kept secret all along and had sat on it all of this time. And because they knew, Lena knew. And now Lena knew...

Two

‘YOU’VE GOT TO BE SHITTING ME?’ Mike barked, his steadily greying hair falling in strands over his forehead. Scraping his fingers through it, he glanced up at Heath busy uploading a new advert on to their account on the AutoTrader website.

Pushing his leather chair away from his desk, he stalked over to his son in the office at the back of the large, newly refurbished showroom and threw the opened letter on the top of Heath’s keyboard. ‘Look, like I said. We’re fucked!’

Glancing up warily, Heath unfolded the letter and scanned the contents. His face fell. ‘Twenty-eight days? Jesus Christ! How can they expect you to find this sort of amount in that time?’ He looked at the letter once again. ‘This has to be illegal. They’ve got to give you several warnings before it goes this far!’

Mike flopped back into his chair and sighed. ‘They did...’

‘What do you mean? This is the first time I’ve ever seen one.’

‘That’s because I haven’t mentioned it.’ Mike pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk to retrieve a half-empty bottle of Scotch. ‘I wasn’t entirely honest with you before...’

Heath swivelled around in his chair and folded his arms, getting the distinct feeling he wasn’t going to like what he was about to hear.

‘I should have told you everything from the start, but I thought perhaps we stood a chance with this stuff... this stuff that should have been ours...’

Heath’s irritation mounted. ‘You told me you owed 40k for June’s bills and an invoice!’ He remembered the conversation well, because he’d been gobsmacked to think that anyone would have bills amounting to forty grand a bloody month. ‘What else is there?’

Mike shook his head. ‘Nothing. There’s nothing else – that’s the extent of it and that much is true, but what I didn’t tell you was I was on my last warning before repossession and bankruptcy.’ His fingers knotted together. ‘I didn’t tell you that I’ve been unable to make the payments for a while either and, well, it’s all snowballed. My last chance was last month and I... I thought what with this Helen Shepherd stuff that we could pull it off.’

Heath jumped up and paced around. ‘This is my business too – or rather, it should be! You should have said!’

Mike put his head in his hands. ‘I know, I know. I didn’t want you to have to worry about it as much as I was, but there’s no choice now because our chance of getting our hands on that stuff has gone.’

Heath spun around and glared at his father. ‘Of course there’s still a chance. We don’t know anything for sure yet.’

‘I’m having to hide the letters that I’m getting delivered to the house from your mother. The bank is starting to put the repossession order for the house into place. Unless the full outstanding amounts are paid it will go ahead and I don’t know what I’m going to tell her.’

Heath scowled. All these years he’d looked up to his father, but these last few weeks had uncovered what a defeatist he really was.

Well, he wasn’t defeatist. ‘I’ll sort it,’ he muttered.

Mike threw his hands in the air. ‘How? You can’t. Not now. It’s too late. I knew that the moment you told me about those men you saw at Dulcie Adams’ house. They were members of the Powell Firm. Who else would it have been? They’ve got their stash back and that Helen Shepherd woman’s dead now too – you saw the news yourself. We’re just bloody lucky they didn’t see you.’

Heath stared at his father pointedly. ‘Christ, Dad. I doubt they even know we exist!’ ‘And you’re right – Helen Shepherd is dead - they killed her. It also looks like they’ve got the goods, but that doesn’t mean it’s over.’

‘Don’t be so ridiculous!’ Mike barked. ‘What are you going to do? Take on people like that? Just accept it, Heath. It’s over and I... we are finished here.’

Heath slammed his fist on his father’s desk, watching a framed certificate of excellence fall from the wall with the reverberation. ‘That’s your answer to everything, is it? Throw the fucking towel in? Well, I’m not like you!’

He grabbed his suit jacket from the back of his chair and shrugged it on. ‘I’m not accepting this - at least not until I’ve done everything in my power to change it.’

Stalking from the office, Heath strode across the showroom, ignoring a customer beckoning for assistance. His father could deal with that for once.

He