The Beach Hut Next Door Read Online Free PDF Page A

almost everyone else in her family – and she’d be in with even less chance of a new start.

    Jenna thought she was probably the first person in her family to go and see the bank manager. They dealt strictly in cash. They didn’t have a mortgage or a credit card between them. They had a morbid fear of anyone official, so the bank was somewhere to be avoided like the plague. But she’d already committed the ultimate cardinal sin by going out with a copper, so she thought she’d give it a go.
    She made an appointment with the high street branch. She put on a black polka dot skirt, a polo-neck and a pair of high boots, finishing off the ensemble with a pair of black glasses from the supermarket, hoping she looked both respectable and entrepreneurial. She put her business plan in a clear folder, and tried to remember everything she had ever gleaned from watching Dragons’ Den and The Apprentice .
    She was left waiting for twenty minutes before being ushered into a glass cube with a round table and plastic chairs by a man in a cheap grey suit. Her details were called up onto the computer. Her stomach churned while the manager surveyed the figures.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said finally. ‘But you’re too high a risk for us. Your credit rating is very poor. You don’t have a regular wage, or any collateral.’
    ‘So that’s a no?’ said Jenna. She felt slightly sick.
    ‘Yes.’
    She stood up. She felt humiliated but, more than that, she felt angry.
    ‘So here I am, trying to better myself, and you’re not prepared to invest in me?’
    ‘I’m afraid that’s how it works.’
    ‘So I just go back to where I was? Scumming about with the rest of them?’
    ‘I’m very sorry. But we can’t take the risk.’
    Jenna picked up her paperwork. She felt sick with frustration. She’d been foolish to think that playing it straight was the way forward. Her family would laugh at her if they knew.
    And she couldn’t tell Craig, because Craig would immediately offer to lend her the money, or, worse, give it to her, and the whole point of this was to prove, both to him and herself, that she was worth more, that she was capable, that she wasn’t just a thieving nobody.
    As she left, she turned to the manager.
    ‘So, when I sort the money for myself, and go on to make a killing, you won’t be wanting me to bank the profits here, right?’
    The manager held his hands up in a helpless shrug. ‘Listen, if it was up to me …’
    ‘I know, I know. The computer says no,’ said Jenna. ‘Thanks for your time. Not.’
    She walked back up the high street and towards home. She passed a bin and shoved her business plan inside it, watching a half-eaten burger spill its entrails onto the carefully calculated figures. What was the point? Her dream was shattered. It was so frustrating, when she could picture it all so clearly. It was made for her, that van, but the chances of her getting her hands on it were so remote.
    There were loan sharks, of course. They wouldn’t be mealy mouthed about her credit rating. Their exorbitant rates of interest soaked that up. It would take her two minutes to contact one of them; they roamed the estate where she lived with her family, enabling instant gratification and impulse purchases.
    She looked at the high street – the run-down shops, the bookies and the pubs where the underbelly of Tawcombe ran amok. This was her world, and she couldn’t see a way out, not without hanging onto Craig’s coat-tails. Maybe that didn’t matter? She knew he wouldn’t mind. But she had wanted to feel proud of herself. At the moment she felt worthless. She didn’t feel as if she deserved his attention. All sorts of horrible possibilities were wandering through her head, including compromising herself with Weasel. She sighed. She must be desperate to even give that head room.
    She walked towards the harbour, pulling her jacket around her to shield herself from the wind. The tide was out, and the boats that had been