"If you scuff those skirting boards again, I'll scuff your face!"

Lynne winced as she heard her bedside table knock once more against the wooden skirting of her new apartment. She knew she'd have the repaint them, but with a crowd already invited over for the house-warming that same night, she would have to make do with what she had.

Of whatever she had left by the time the movers had done their handiwork, anyway.

Hearing the muffled tone of her phone in her purse she dug through for it and swiped for the call. Whoever it was, she needed the distraction from the pummeling her best armchair was getting.

"Keller Marketing Services, this is Lynne." She answered, forcing warmth into her tone. For all that was happening today, she was still and always working.

"Ouch," a bored voice droned into her ear, "Is that a vase I hear breaking?"

Her heart sank. She'd be getting no sympathy from this caller.

"I thought you said these were professionals, Toni. In removals, not in demolition." She snipped, pinching the flesh between her eyes in a plea for the budding migraine to recede.

"I'm sure it's all the same where they came from." The voice sighed on the other end, and Lynne knew her junior PA was otherwise distracted from the conversation.

"Was there a point to this call, Antonia?" She asked, saccharine sweetness lacing her voice in an effort to disguise her waning patience. Antonia Faroe was technically an intelligent women but with the unfortunate cross to bear in the form of her family wealth, the same family that owned her business in all but name. There was nothing like financial complacency to dull a bright spark.

"Your banker called. The fat one."

Well, that wasn't news. With a £2.5m mortgage in place for someone whose credit history really only spanned the last five years, she'd been giving poor Geoff the golden chalice of brokering jobs to get her contact locked down. With scribbles on all the right places, this place was hers. Her urban castle.

"Is he coming to the house-warming? I told him I wouldn't take no for an answer." She walked over to where her kettle had been haphazardly plugged into her kitchenette, checked the water level and flicked the switch on. She hadn't touched a tea in hours.

"Yes." Lynne could practically hear the eyes rolling on the other end, "It's about the end of year statement. He said something about one of the audit trails not matching."

Toni may as well have told her that the office milk had gone out of date, or the upstairs loo wasn't flushing again for the level of urgency in her voice. But when the words hit home, Lynne felt something like ice water running through her veins, head to toe.

No.

That couldn't be right. She'd passed the audit, she'd been as good as promised in iron-clad ink and paper.

She saw them in her mind still, all smiles and handshakes and compliments. Those auditors left her building with the ticks in all of their boxes. So HOW?!

She didn't bother saying her farewells to Toni, and dialled Geoff so fast she wasn't sure the phone caught up with her.

When a slight clearing of the throat came through the other end of the line, she didn't give the man a chance to say his usual, calm greeting.

"Geoff...what..." she couldn't think of the words, the question, so she just said what she felt. "What the fuck?!"

She could feel her face heating up, her stomach turning in knots, and she leaned against the counter as though the life had begun to drain from her.

"Calm down, Lynne, it's not over yet."

Geoff. As comforting as he must have thought his words were, she felt all the breath leave her body. Her worst fear confirmed.

Someone had the books and someone knew exactly where to look.

"Geoff. Don't do this." She pleaded in vain, voice quiet. He was no more in place to help her than her own cat.

"I'm sorry, Lynne. The Faroes, the Birkheads and the bank caught wind of it a few hours ago. They've redirected their resources..."

"They've abandoned the company." She concluded, with nothing in her voice more than the sudden emptiness in her chest.

The kettle clicked off.

"I'm sorry, Lynne. By close of play, KMS will have gone under."

There weren't many bankers that could deliver such news as Geoff had, with a sincere tone of empathy for all they would profit from the ordeal. The man was sun on a cloudy day, to be sure, in his strangely fatherly way.

But it did nothing to stop her chest tightening, her stomach rolling and it wasn't long before she felt the first trails of warm wetness roll down her cheeks.

She gripped the counter top for purchase, and saw her tears fall onto the smooth, black granite. She loved that kitchen. If the idea of the place made her like it, the kitchen made her fall in love.

As men walked in an out of the front door, bringing the accumulation of her possessions through to the home that was so fleetingly hers, a sob wracked her chest, and the strength in her knees lost to the weight of her heart.