“Sorry,” I called. “Do you live here?”
The man stopped beside the annexe door. “Yes. Theo.”
“I’m Lena. Their daughter. Are you renting?”
“Eleven hundred a month.” His eyes moved from me to Dad before he asked, “Is something wrong?”
Dad stepped outside. “This isn’t Theo’s concern.”
“It’s apparently mine when the mortgage needs paying.”
Theo tightened his grip on the shopping bags. I heard how sharp I sounded and lowered my voice.
“Would you mind showing me when your tenancy started? You don’t have to. I’m being told different things.”
He looked at Dad once more, then said he had a printed copy indoors.
I waited on the paving while he fetched it. Dad stayed beside me, close enough that I could hear him breathing through his nose.
The lease Theo handed me had fourteen-month-old commencement dates. I checked the year twice. He had already been renting the annexe before I started covering the mortgage.
“Keep that copy,” Theo said. “I’ve got the original.”
“Thank you.”
Dad reached towards the paper, but I folded it against my chest.
“You said it earned nothing.”
“A lease doesn’t tell you what a place costs us,” he said. “There have been expensive vacancies. You’ve got no idea what goes out.”
I looked down at the dates again. I still didn’t know what they had actually received, or what expenses they could show. But Dad was asking me to believe a different explanation before he had accounted for the first one.
“Then show me the accounts,” I said.
Mum appeared in the doorway behind us. “Fine. Ruth can explain the expenses. Perhaps you’ll listen to her.”
She rang the letting agent on speaker. When Ruth asked whether she had permission to discuss the rental account with me, Mum said yes and gave my full name. She sounded almost pleased with herself.
At Ruth’s office the next morning, Mum kept her handbag on her lap. Ruth handed me the statement and turned another copy towards her.
I ran my finger down fourteen monthly entries. Eleven hundred pounds each time. No missing payment. No gap between tenants, because there hadn’t been another tenant.
“Where are the vacancies?” I asked.
Ruth glanced at Mum. “There haven’t been any during this tenancy.”
“After your fees? And the repairs?”
She showed me the deductions and the agreed expense reserves. Even after those, the amount available to my parents each month exceeded their £850 mortgage payment.
I checked the columns again. I wanted to find something Ruth had missed. A debt, a charge, anything that would let me believe Dad had been frightened rather than calculating.
Mum pulled her bag closer.
“We still have other outgoings.”
“Then you should have asked me to pay those. You asked me to save your house.”
She didn’t answer until we were outside. Then she asked me not to upset my father.
After arranging to meet all three of them at the house that evening, I put Ruth’s statement beside Theo’s lease on the kitchen table.
Dad didn’t sit down.
“The mortgage isn’t our only expense, Lena.”
“Where did the rent go?”
He rubbed a mark on the back of a chair with his thumb. “Poppy needed help getting started.”
Mum began listing preparations: equipment, supplies, the things a new business needed before it earned anything. I stopped her.
“So the rent went into the salon, and my standing order paid the mortgage.”
“Yes,” Dad said.
Mum nodded. Neither looked at me.
