If you read this story, if you like or hate it, please leave some sort of feedback.
"I'm giving you 2 months."
That's my father telling me that after two months he will no longer support me in any way. So I have to pay for my own food and clothing. He said that I can stay in the family home for free till I am sixteen and then I have to leave. I am 14 years old.
I must admit I am completely speechless, I just went to my room and sat on my bed. What would any child do when confronted by this? It seems completely unfair and came out of the blue. Also I know that he was not joking about it and certainly would not change his mind. I have two elder brothers, 16 and 17, but they are not bound by this rule.
For several days I went to school and did not utter a word the whole day. Came home and went to my room. I just couldn't understand it. How can I be expected to handle such a situation at my age? I was beginning to think that my only hope was to be taken into care. Then a plan came to me.
"Mr Duffy I am glad you have agreed to see me."
Mike Duffy was a local builder of about 60. I have seen him around the area many times and often stopped and said hello. He frequently said that because of my huge size I was always welcome to a job with him.
"Tom you are always welcome here."
"I need a job. I can work 3 hours after school and all day Saturday and Sunday."
"Well Tom you tower over my six feet, but have you spoken to your parents about this?"
"Firstly it's because of them that I have to work. Secondly I do not want anything for nothing. I will work free for you for two weeks. If you are happy with me then we can carry on, if not then no hard feelings."
"Okay. Start this weekend."
So Saturday I turned up on the building site not far from my home. I have to say at this point that I am about 6ft 5 and 14 st 5 and I thought quite strong. But on building sites there is a whole new breed of human beings. They seem to be able to work hard all day and not get tired. On this day I was made to do the worst possible jobs, carrying the heaviest loads backwards and forwards. I think my job title would have been a general labouring. Somehow I got through the first day, but when I got home I could not feel any part of my body. But somehow I had to drag my shattered body back to the building site at the crack of dawn to repeat the whole process.
"Well Tom I have given you the shittiest jobs for a fortnight and you've got through it. I thought you may have cracked under the pressure after the first week, but you stuck at it. The job is yours and I'll pay you £7.50/hour to begin with. What I want more than anything is reliability and honesty."
That was it I was now a working person. I would take my work clothes with me in a rucksack to school and go to work straight after.
What I found out was on building sites there are a lot of casual workers, staying around for only a few months before moving on, probably back to their eastern European home. So after a year of working I was the longest serving person there. By my sixteenth birthday, not only was I a good bricklayer and plasterer, I was also managing the sites that I was working on. Mike Duffy had complete trust in me.
But now that I had just turned sixteen, I knew that it would not be long before I had to move out. In fact my father had already hinted at the fact. I had saved quite a bit of money in the time I had been working, but not enough to buy a property. I was once again beginning to wonder how I was to get out of this hole.
"What do you think of those six houses across the street Tom?
"Well they are derelict houses Mike."
"Yes they are. But if they were in mint condition they would be worth around £110,000 each. I have been offered all six for £200,000. I think we can fix them all up for around £100,000."
"That's great Mike. Go for it then and you'll make a fortune out of this."
"But I have already plenty of money and would rather you bought them instead."
"I couldn't raise that kind of money." I replied.
"I could give you the money to start, but I am going to do even better for you. You will go to the bank and borrow the £300,000. Buy the houses, renovate them and then sell them. This will give you experience of dealing with banks and finance."
I looked at him for a few seconds then just started laughing. It seemed absolutely ridiculous that a bank would lend me that kind of money.
"I will give you a letter stating that I will guarantee the loan if anything goes wrong."
The next day I had £300,000 in my bank account. A week later I owned 6 derelict houses. I then put four men to work on the first house. I worked out all my cost's for doing up the houses and I knew I could do it all inside the budget. I said to the four men that if they finish each house within 3 weeks then I would pay them a bonus for each house.
Six weeks later two houses were completely finished. Luckily this was around the Christmas school holidays so I could do a lot of the work as well. An estate agent valued the houses at £130,000 each, but said if I put them on the market for £120,000 each they would sell immediately. Three days later they were sold. In fact the next two were also sold on time. All houses were now completely renovated and four were sold. My loan was now paid off and I had two houses paid for and £100,000 in the bank. So I moved into one of the two bedroomed houses and rented out the other one. This was Mike's suggestion. On the day I was moving out of my family home I was expecting at least one or two words of good luck or something. But no one batted an eye lid. I stood there with a small case and waited for a response from them, nothing.
Mike turned out to be a very hard task master. He made me do home work each evening and at weekends also. I do not know how I managed it but I passed all eight of my gcse exams, no fantastic grades just B's and C's. Although my school was not the best good school it did help that I had total silence in all the classes I attended. At 6ft 5 and 17 stone by the time I was sixteen, I was easily the toughest boy in my school. Even the 18 year old kids left me alone. But the down side to all of this was that I think I had matured much fasted than any of the other kids in the school. I just could not associate with them, so I could number the friends I had with one hand. Well actually I could count them with no hands.
Mike and I had a series of massive arguments after my GCSE exams. He wanted me to go back and take my A levels and I just wanted to leave and work and earn money. His argument was that if anything went wrong with the business I would have something to fall back on. In fact he said the business would do better with more education. I knew that I could not devote enough time to my home work to get any sort of decent grade at A level. So I hired two private teachers who would help me. They would do all my home work, write notes on all the subjects being taught at the time and do a lot of examples with explanations. All this was quite straight forward since I was doing two A levels in maths and one physics. The total cost to me is £200 a month.
The next year was great for Mike and me. I was earning more money from him and the houses that I now had. I would also be the one who would go and deal with difficult clients who had problems paying. I never attacked anyone or threatened them. I think when they saw the physical size of me, with a very short haircut, that was threat enough for them.
"Tom can you go and collect some money from this couple. They owe us £45000 and it's two months overdue. Tell them we'll give them two months more and then we'll take legal proceedings against them."
Also now that I was 18 and had passed my driving test, I had a car.
As Mrs Bolton opened the door I just couldn't help but stare. She is absolutely gorgeous. She had this very thin sleeveless dress on, which finished way above the knee. As she led me into her home I couldn't help but notice the outline of her bottom through her dress. I wanted to reach out and stroke it. She sat opposite me and crossed her legs. Her dress rode up her legs barely covering the bear essentials. I wanted to reach out and put my hand down the front of her dress into her bra and feel her luscious breasts.
"Where is your husband? I did give him plenty of notice that I was coming at this time."
"He was called away on import business at the last minute."
