Part V

MISAPPROPRIATION OF CORPORATE ASSETS

54.

Joe

Joe goes into the room he uses as a study. It’s right next to Paul’s bedroom. Sometimes, at night, Joe used to be able to hear him crying, but the evening is silent tonight.

The room contains a pale wood-effect corner desk he and Lydia got from IKEA. ‘Let’s rescue this one!’ she’d said to him with a wide smile. ‘Look – it’s called “Klimpen” – is there a better name for a desk?’

God, he has hurt her, kicking tables, throwing insults. What a fucking dick he is.

He sits in the quiet of the study, the computer firing up, little green rectangles flashing, and thinks. He needs to sort it right now. Amend the partnership deed. Just do it. Just do it now. Cathy would caution against haste, but Cathy isn’t here. Besides, Cathy’s been messing up prescriptions. Been strangely absent in mind if not in body.

What else is he supposed to do? He understands why Lydia feels what she feels, but if they don’t pay off Evan, they will go to prison.

His mother will need to sign this transfer. It’s a problem. It’s another problem. He leans back in his chair, thinking, then goes downstairs and makes a pot of coffee. Halfway up the stairs, he turns around and gets two Snickers. He must stop eating but not tonight.

He logs on to the company bank account. There’s the overdraft. There’s the float. He sits back in the chair, the bright white screen hurting his eyes, and thinking. The heating clicks on, the radiator by his feet warming slowly as he tries to work it through.

Is there any way not to do this? He rests his fingers on the keyboard and thinks for just a second more. And then he hears it. A shifting, and then a small moan, a toddler sound. A watery cry, Paul, just through the layer of bricks that divides them.

Joe prints off their partnership deed with an amendment sheet. They should probably use a lawyer, but it looks easy enough. He adds in Evan’s name and ‘twenty per cent’ after it. Consideration: £1. And that’s it. Who knows if somebody will see it one day, will work it out. If HMRC will accuse them of insider trading, a sale at an undervalue, is that right? But what can they do? At every single stage of this, their options have been poor. They’ve made the best of the hand that Frannie dealt them.

He leans his head on the desk for a second. Fucking Frannie. His ear hurts as he lies against it on the hard desk. He reaches to rub it and turns his mind away from the question of whether he would have helped her if he had known the full circumstances, the truth. He doesn’t have the capacity to worry about it. He’s full up.

He looks sideways at the partnership deed lying on the desk right next to his eyes. Frannie, Cathy, Joe, his mother. The Partners agree to transfer twenty per cent of the Business to Evan Sawyer, to be held in equal parts of twenty per cent each.