Free The Boy in the Olive Grove by Fleur Beale

your dad going to pull through?’
    Small towns again. I wondered what tendril of the grapevine she’d tapped into. ‘He’s going to recover, but he’ll have to take it easy for the next three months. The thing is, with the factory …’
    ‘Are you keeping an eye on things for your dad? You’re at the factory now? Good. I can be with you shortly.’
    I put the phone down, unsure if her coming to see me meant good news or bad.
    Next, being the dutiful daughter I wasn’t, I rang Mum.
    No handy answerphone this time. ‘Clarissa Grey speaking.’
    ‘Hi, Mum. I’ll be a bit late home. Another hour at a guess.’
    ‘That’s inconvenient and thoughtless. Don’t expect me to wait dinner for you.’
    Ah well, her moments of approval of me were few and far between. I’d had my quota for the week, it seemed.
     
    BEVERLY WAS A SURPRISE. ‘The bank let you have a moko?’ I asked by way of a greeting.
    ‘Bess,’ she said, ‘it would be a brave institution to pick a fight with me over my moko.’
    She was no soft fluffy bunny, then. There’d be no sentiment about her decisions. Well, I wasn’t the softest of bunnies either, so watch it, Ms Maketawa.
    When we went into Dad’s office I half expected her to take his chair. She didn’t, but she did take charge of the conversation.
    ‘Now, Bess, you’ll be concerned about the finances of your dad’s business. With good reason, unfortunately.’
    ‘He told me things were bad.’ I pushed the folder of bills towards her. ‘I’ve added these up. Dad said there was enough money for the men’s holiday pay, but all these add up to a heap of money as well.’
    She waved the bills away. ‘Your dad came into the bank a week ago. On Thursday …’
    ‘The day I came back from school?’ Several geological ages ago.
    ‘… and we reached an agreement. In a nutshell, the bank guaranteed the money for the holiday pay and for him to run the enterprise until the Christmas break.’
    ‘Why would you do that? The business is failing. Banks aren’t generally so chummy.’
    She stood up to go. ‘Sorry, Bess, but I can’t discuss your dad’s confidential affairs. Not even with you. Of course, he was dead set on Hadleigh becoming his partner.’ She tipped her head in a question. ‘I assume the gossip is correct that your brother left the country rather than enter into that arrangement?’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Dad made me his partner instead.’
    She sat down again, clearly aghast. ‘Did you sign that to stop him worrying, by any chance? Never mind, it’s done now.’ She was frowning and plainly not wanting to tell me the next part. ‘The thing is, Bess — Charlie put his house as guarantee for the loan.’
    I let that sink in. No wonder he’d had a heart attack. ‘Does that mean that if the business goes down the tubes, he’ll have to sell their house?’
    ‘Yes, I’m afraid it does. I tried to talk him out of it, but you know what he’s like. He said he’d go to a loan shark if he had to, but he was going to pay the men out and clear his debts.’
    ‘Well, I’ll bet he didn’t talk that over with Iris first. She’ll be … Oh god, does that mean I’m now liable for half the loan?’ That could make life entertaining, especially if I told Mum.
    ‘Technically, yes,’ she said. ‘But I don’t imagine your dad would let you shoulder his debt.’
    ‘Um … how much is it?’ I screwed up my eyes, ready for the blow.
    ‘Sixty thousand. Not a huge amount in the scheme of things.’
    No, I could see that, but they would have to sell the house to cover it. Iris would have to make a new witch garden for her herbs. If they had to get a small place she wouldn’t have a treatment room. ‘How long have we got? Before the loan needs paying back?’
    ‘The first repayment is due the second week of January. Realistically, we’ll need to see some positive activity before Christmas. The business has only just been holding on. Sinking a little deeper over the past