Ben Searson begins a new life.

Ben Searson, formerly Ben Pearse, bumped and coaxed his battered old Renault 4 along the winding country road towards Larkhaven. He showed little interest in the pretty, hilly countryside, barely noticing the seam gleaming in the mid-morning sun between the edge of the green fields and the low indigo horizon.
He had come to a crossroads in his life; a time and place when all the things he had once thought mattered no longer seemed important. He had travelled far from the arrogant and high-principled man of his youth and now bore himself with an air of dignified but weary disappointment.
Life had not been overly kind to Ben in recent years. He had stepped into the adult world with all the confidence and certainty of a young man born into privilege. He had grown to maturity cosseted in the warmth of a loving family, buttressed from the humdrum perils of the world by money, status and security. Now at thirty-three, he was without hope, without money, without friends. The world, once a broad and exciting sweep of possibilities had shrunk to a barren wasteland, his life a mere existence, his heart a dead thing. He no longer reflected on his bad fortune but endured it.
“Endure and Renounce,” his old Classics teacher was fond of saying. He’d never understood what it meant until now – now that life had spewed out some of its nastier bile onto him. But it had taught him to endure his pain and renounce as much of the world as a man reasonably could in the twenty-first century. At the prime of life, when other men were busy scrambling up the greasy treacherous pole of their own ambitions, Ben was walking away from it all, casting aside his old life and even his old name, Pearse without as much as a backward glance, his past carefully erased, his future hopefully a clean slate.
He was at another crossroads too – this one about two miles from Larkhaven. The estate agent’s directions had been confusing; the map not nearly detailed enough. He applied the brakes on the old car and pulled up onto the dense green verge. Then he unfolded the map that lay on the empty seat next to him, hoping to make sense of the directions.

Yvonne Kelly confides in her doctor.

“Doctor do you think there might be some pill somewhere which would be guaranteed to stop me from murdering my husband?” Yvonne asked.
The doctor, a kindly northerner with a beard nodded sympathetically. “Would it surprise you to know that lots of women fantasise about killing their husbands – or at least losing them permanently? Particularly at this stage in life. Indeed, my own wife confesses to a great fury at me sometimes.”
“Yes but why has my husband become so unbearable at this point?”
Yvonne wondered if there were so many women who felt like that, why there wasn’t a support group – MWA – Murderous Wives Anonymous. Truthfully, she’d felt guilt in recent years for not loving her husband more, for being so mean-minded. It had never occurred to her that other women would feel the same thing.
“Why now?” replied Doctor O’Flaherty. “It’s no excuse of course – but men – some men, find this stage in life difficult.”
Yvonne was not impressed. Her eyebrows said so.
“Don’t give me any of that mid-life crisis crap Doctor – Liam Kelly’s been in crisis for four years. I don’t know how much more I can take. Maybe I would be doing him a favour by bumping him off and putting him out of his misery – you know, like a poor mad old dog!”
“Some of us are all mangled up inside – in our hearts – in our souls – and it’s hard for us to find the words to explain. That’s how it is for Liam. If he lives to old age, he may get over it with remarkable grace and tranquillity.”
Yvonne’s eyebrows were now somewhere near the top of her forehead. The idea that Liam Kelly would be all mangled up inside was just too preposterous. The suggestion that he had a heart or a soul, or any potential for grace and tranquillity, was verging on the ridiculous. The thought that he might live to old age just plain scared the hell out of her.
“Like I said, Doctor,” she replied finally. “If you ever do hear of a pill . . .”

Berry resorts to womanly wiles to coax some money from her bank manager.

Although Berry hadn’t ever actually bothered much with eyelash fluttering and leg crossing in the past, this was an increasingly desperate situation and desperate situations required desperate remedies. You’ve got the legs – she reminded herself – just use them!
What could possibly go wrong?
“The manager will see you now,” the assistant told her. He led her into a spacious office where, across a wide expanse of desk that she didn’t remember from before, sat someone who definitely wasn’t Aidan McCarthy.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I think there’s some mistake. I had an appointment with the manager.”
“It is I!” said the baby-faced young fella who sat in the large swivel-chair, looking as if his mammy might just pop out from behind at any moment, pop a plastic bib across his tiny chest and start feeding him baby rice from a nice blue plastic spoon.
Berry’s face fell. She knew she wasn’t exactly fresh out of the cradle or anything – but thirty-seven wasn’t all that old. But this bloke looked like he could easily be her son. One thing was for sure. It was definitely time to rethink the whole knee-crossing, ankle-twirling, eyelash-fluttering strategy very quickly – or she might be arrested for some kind of attempted sexual perversion with a minor. A quick tabloid headline flashed in her head. Middle-aged Shop-owner in Attempt to Bonk Boy Bank Manager Shock!!!
On quick reflection, it was a relief not to have to resort to feminine wiles to sort out such an important personal and business matter. And, she thought charitably as she lowered herself into the chair, this young fella was probably a complete financial whiz kid. Surely he wouldn’t be a bank manager otherwise.
“I am Toby Looby, the new manager,” he said.
She tried hard to ignore the light boyish crack in his voice.
He held out a hand across the table and smiled blankly at her like he’d just had his entire face frozen with a dodgy Botox needle.
Berry sucked in her breath and, deciding it was best to get straight to the point, she plunged in. “I’m having a short-term cashflow slowdown experience. I need to optimise my credit situation by taking advantage of bank resources – on a temporary-scenario basis of course . . .”
Berry figured that if she used enough jargon, it would make her financial problems seem less appalling. In any case, she was hardly going to blurt out that she was completely broke and that even if she did sell the family home, she’d still owe more money than she’d ever be able to repay in a lifetime. Could she tell him that lately she lay awake most nights imagining herself sleeping in a doorway and working eighteen-hour days just to pay back the interest on loans she’d been foolish enough to take out? Should she confide that in the past week she’d only had fifteen customers and that in total they’d spent a staggering forty euro?
“Hmmmm!” he said, frowning, without any furrows appearing in his brow. He made a steeple of his hands and leaned forward in his swivel-chair.
She was desperately afraid he might fall off. She tried to peek under the desk to see if his feet were actually resting on the ground but then realised that she was being silly. Just because he looked only six months old, didn’t mean he wasn’t highly successful in his chosen field. He probably had an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He might be just the man to sort out the whole sorry business of Berry Joyce’s business.
She took the papers from her document case and placed them on the table in front of him.
“Ah!” he said, fingering them delicately and shoving them about on the desk. “Mmmm!” he added as he perused them more closely and sucked in a loud breath through surprisingly wide nasal passages. “March?” Oh dear! Bills outstanding? September? Nnnngggrrrhhh!”
Berry didn’t want to be unkind or anything – but it sounded like he was trying to relieve himself of the body’s natural waste.
“Is everything all right?” she asked.
“All right?” he stared across at her, wide-eyed. “It’s terrible. These figures are terrible. The whole thing’s a complete mess.”
Berry’s heart sank.
“I mean – nothing adds up. Nothing balances. You’re spending more on rent and heating and lighting in a week than you earn in a month.”
“Yes, I know,” she said, trying not to sound too desperate. “But even the most successful companies in the world have had tough start-up periods. I mean Megasoft nearly went to the wall three times before becoming the biggest multinational corporation in the world. Mickey O’Byrne went bankrupt twice before finally getting it right with all that property development and now he owns half of Budapest. So Toby – I mean, Mister Looby – I’m trying to keep my eye on the bigger picture here and not get too bogged down in short-term cashflow challenges.”
He closed his eyes, frowned some more, let out a big sigh and took to staring out the window. Then he turned back to her quite suddenly. “Let me tell you a little story about my mam.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You see – you and my mam have lots in common.”
“We do?”
“Yes!” he said sounding half-strangled now. Like he was straining in earnest to get a knot out of his lower intestine. “Both older women – you see, that’s the key economic factor here. Mam – I’ll call her Rosaleen – because she likes it when I call her Rosaleen – anyway, ma – Rosaleen – started up a little florist’s business for herself there a while back – and of course, having the Masters Degree in Economics, I was able to be a great help to her. You can see now where I’m going with this, can’t you? The big rental overheads, problems with the suppliers, a delivery van, orders, a shop assistant – sure she hadn’t thought it out properly at all. Now don’t get me wrong – Rosaleen’s the mam and I love her to bits – but in economic terms she’s not a good risk – not a good investment if you see what I mean. Like – yourself and Rosaleen – well, let’s face it – you’re not getting any younger are you? And there comes a time in a woman’s life when . . .” He stopped suddenly for a brief moment. “Sorry about that. I hope you don’t think I’m being ageist or anything – only Rosaleen herself admitted as much in the end. ‘At this stage of my life, I’m just not up to it, Toby son, and you were right all along.’ Those were her exact words . . .”