Chapter 6: The Money
I stared at the message for a long time.
*You should ask her about the money.*
No name.
No follow-up.
I typed back: *Who is this?* and watched the screen.
The ticks went blue — read — and then nothing.
I didn't sleep that night.
I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop and went through our joint account going back eighteen months.
I wasn't sure what I was looking for.
I told myself it was probably nothing.
Someone with the wrong number.
Someone trying to cause trouble.
By two in the morning I wasn't telling myself that anymore.
The withdrawals were small at first.
Forty pounds here.
Eighty there.
The kind of amounts that disappear into a month without leaving a mark.
But they were regular.
Every nine to twelve days, like clockwork, going back fourteen months.
Always cash.
Always from the same ATM on Renwick Street, which was three miles from our house and nowhere near anything Meliora regularly went to.
I added it up twice to make sure.
Eleven thousand, two hundred and forty pounds.
Gone in pieces small enough that I'd never noticed.
I closed the laptop.
I opened it again.
I checked the dates against my work calendar — the weeks I'd been traveling, the weeks I'd been in back-to-back meetings, the weeks I'd been distracted.
The withdrawals clustered around those periods.
Not perfectly.
But enough.
Enough to be a pattern.
I heard the bedroom door open at half past two.
Meliora came out in her dressing gown, stopped when she saw me still at the table, and said nothing for a moment.
"You're still up," she said.
"I am."
She went to the sink and filled a glass of water.
Her back was to me.
"Meliora.
What's on Renwick Street?"
Her shoulders didn't move.
She drank the water slowly.
"Nothing," she said.
"Why?"
"There's an ATM there.
Someone's been using our joint account at that ATM for fourteen months."
She turned around.
Her face was careful.
"I go that way sometimes.
When I take Kerensa to the park."
"The park is in the opposite direction."
"The other park.
The one near the library."
"You've taken Kerensa to that park twice in two years.
I know because I drove you both there."
The glass went back on the counter.
She crossed her arms.
"I don't know what you're implying."
"Eleven thousand pounds, Meliora.
In fourteen months.
In cash.
From an ATM you have no reason to be near."
"I do our shopping.
I pay for things.
I'm not going to account for every pound I spend—"
"This isn't grocery money and you know it."
She walked toward the bedroom.
I stood up.
"I got a message tonight," I said.
"Unknown number.
Told me to ask you about the money.
Who sent that?"
She stopped walking.
Her hand was on the doorframe.
"I don't know."
"You're not even going to ask me what number it came from?"
She turned around slowly.
"What number?"
"That's what I thought." I sat back down.
"I'm going to find out, Meliora.
Whatever this is — I'm going to find out."
"You're exhausted," she said.
"You're not thinking clearly.
Go to bed."
"Go to bed yourself."
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then she said, very quietly: "You don't want to dig into this, Owen.
I'm telling you that as someone who knows things you don't."
"What things?"
She shook her head once and went into the bedroom.
I sat with the laptop open and the account statements on the screen until the light outside the kitchen window started to change from black to grey.
At six fifteen, my phone rang.
Dara.
"Kerensa had a nightmare," she said.
"She woke up crying.
She kept saying one thing over and over."
"What did she say?"
May you like
Dara's voice was tight.
"She said, 'Don't tell Daddy or she'll go away.'"
