Page 51 of About Last Night
Lula stared into space, thinking about what she’d just heard. Could that be right?
She had no idea. She appeared to have lost all sense of reality.
Tristan was in his office trying to take his mind off Lula’s wall of silence when Flora, the receptionist, poked her head round the door.
‘Tristan, there’s a phone call for you on line one. He said he’s your father.’
He stared at her for a moment before coming to his senses. His father? He must have cut his isolated honeymoon short and picked up the message he’d left about firing Jez.
Picking up the handset, he cleared his throat then pressed the button to connect him to line one. ‘Dad?’
‘Tristan. I’m surprised to find you still there. I thought you’d be back in Edinburgh by now.’
‘No, no, still here, firefighting for your business.’ He couldn’t keep the scathing tone out of his voice.
His father let out a long, disgruntled sigh. ‘Why the hell did you fire Jez? I wanted the female DJ to be moved on, not him.’
Tristan’s skin prickled with annoyance. ‘Well, I’ve saved you a lot of money and pain by getting rid of him. I’m sorry to land it on you like this, but Jez has been embezzling from the radio station for quite some time.’
There was a tense silence in which Tristan tapped a pen against the desk, waiting for his father to explode with indignation.
‘Yeah, I know about that.’
Tristan stared at the pen in his hand, stunned, thinking he must have misheard. ‘You knew?’
‘Yes.’ His father let out another long sigh. ‘I set him up there as a favour to his father. When your mother died I did rather a bad job of keeping the business going and Jack, his father, bailed me out. I owe him. He asked me to offer Jez this job to get the lazy sod out of his world of philandering and debauchery and give him a purpose – he wouldn’t have taken any help from his own father. I’ve known for some time that he’s been stealing from the company, but it was my way of paying Jack back so I let it slide.’
‘Right.’ Tristan had no idea how to respond to this. ‘So, what happens to the station now?’
‘I don’t suppose Jez will want to return after being so roundly outed by you so I’ll shut it down.’ From the sound of his voice he was clearly fed up with the whole mess.
Tristan’s heart thumped hard against his chest as he realised what this meant for the staff that he’d taken under his wing for the last month.
And for Lula and her dream show.
‘Can’t you sell it?’ He knew, even as he asked this, that it wasn’tan option. There was no value in the station; it was saddled with too much debt.
His father seemed to be thinking along the same lines. ‘No point. I’m still stuck in Bangkok but I’ll be back in two days and I’ll close it down then. Give everyone a redundancy payoff. You’ll be able to get back to Scotland by the weekend.’
‘Will you sell it to me?’ Tristan asked before his father could ring off.
His father snorted in surprise. ‘You really want to take it on?’
‘Yes.’
There was a silence. ‘Okay. Sure. If you want.’
‘I do.’
‘Okay then. Consider it yours. We’ll work out the details when I’m back.’
‘Thank you.’
His father laughed quietly. ‘I don’t know what you’re thanking me for, but okay.’
‘How was your honeymoon?’ Tristan said, realising in his anxiety about the station that he hadn’t even asked about it.
‘Oh fine. A bit boring being out in the middle of nowhere, but we made our own fun.’
