character loss - Sheila

I had real problems with this, it virtually turned into a short story.  I have cut it down, but not really happy with it.

Homework character

All her life Joanna had wanted to be financially secure.  Business studies and hard work achieved this.  She projected the image of a successful business woman and actually ran a small, but very successful exclusive shop.  Her main products were fashion accessories, jewellery, and lather goods.  All were hand-made locally.  She had started her business while she worked for a large department store. 

Working days and evenings, and even a few nights, Joanna had built up her selection of suppliers.  She bought only the best, the prettiest, the most flamboyant, and she aimed high.  She had started selling on line, and then gone on to open a small shop in a well known part of London.  Her parents had helped her financially to set up the business, but she had done so well she had paid them back, and was making a profit.

Joanna met Tom one evening at a friend’s dinner party.  She had never been in love before and at 26 she fell hard.  He said he loved her.  He told her he was working as a reporter in London for an American paper.  He seemed to know everyone.  After meeting her parents, he introduced her to a pretty young woman, his sister, who was visiting.  Apparently their parents had died in a car accident some years earlier.

Three months later they were married, her parents, his sister and all their friends were present at the ceremony.  Their honeymoon was in Barbados.

They returned home in style, took a taxi to her flat, into which he had moved.  Joanna unlocked the door, opened it, and saw there was no furniture.  It was all gone, her beautiful furniture was gone.  She stood there stunned, then turned to look at Tom.  He comforted her, took her to a neighbour, then left to call the police.

Half an hour later, he had not returned, she was panicking, what was wrong.  Her neighbour went with her to her flat, the door was still open, Tom was gone.  Jo collapsed in confusion and her neighbour called the police instead. 

Two officers arrived, sat her in her neighbours living room, and talked.  While she was away, her shop had been vandalised, all the stock removed or smashed if too heavy.  A woman named Lucy, who was supposed to be Tom’s sister had told all the staff to go home, the business was closed.   Joanna, now really frightened, called her father and asked him to check her bank account and business account,  He rang back in a few minutes and told her the worst news she could have received.  Both her accounts had been hacked into, everything was gone, or spent.  Tom must have been using her cards all the time they were away, or his sister had used the ones she didn’t take.

Jo was very angry, frightened and confused.   Why did Tom do this? What was the point.   She had lost everything, her home contents, her business, her money, all gone.

What could she do?  She was nothing without her business. The police would try to find them, they said.

Her parents took her home with them, there was nothing left, but a pile of her personal belongings in the bedroom of her flat.  Her parents put everything into two suitcases left in the bedroom and took her, unresisting down to their car.

At her parents home, Joanna shut herself up in her old room, with it’s old single bed, to mourn her lost husband, lost love, and lost everything.  Her mother knocked tentatively on the door after a couple of hours, and found her curled up on the bed, holding a picture of Tom, which she was slowly shredding into tiny pieces.  Her mother told her the police were coming in about an hour to take a full statement from her.  She nodded, and looked up.

‘What am I going to do? He’s taken everything I had. He has removed all my money from the bank and maxed some of my credit cards.  He sacked my staff, and closed the shop.  The stock is ruined and has to be paid for, I think I am broke. Mum.  It took me 6 years to get to this stage.  I can’t do it again.  Why, Mum why?’

‘Tomorrow, we will go to the shop and see what we can salvage, your Dad has already spoken to the landlord, and informed him what has happened, and that you did not authorise trading to stop.  The rent is paid for another six months.’

‘Thank you mum, I am so frightened.  I have always been afraid of having nothing to live on, and now it has happened.  The flat is rented, I can’t pay for more furniture.’   She broke down in tears, her fears and her panic obvious to her mother.

Jo was inconsolable.  She was so angry that she had allowed herself to be taken in by Tom and his sister, or was she his sister?  She was hurt, she thought he loved her, but he had taken everything she possessed, and left her almost penniless.

Finally she fell asleep, and dreamed, of Tom, driving off with a big lorry carrying all her possessions, leaving her standing on the pavement, homeless and terrified.  He was shouting at her, ‘It’s your own fault, you deserved it, and it’s mine now.’  Joanna woke screaming at him, sweating and tearing at the sheets that had wrapped themselves around her.   She sat in the dark, sobbing, feeling sorry for herself. ‘I want my life back.’ She whispered.