Chapter 6: Nineteen Thousand Pounds
I found a solicitor through a colleague — a woman named Ruth Calloway, who had a small office above a pharmacy two towns over.
Carol came with me.
We sat across from Ruth at a desk covered in neat stacks of paper, and I told her everything in the order it had happened: the hospital, the chart, the code on the phone, the message, the bank.
Ruth listened without interrupting.
She made notes on a yellow legal pad.
When I finished, she set her pen down.
"The money is the most significant piece," she said.
"The rest — the medical situation, the phone — those tell us about character.
The money tells us about intent."
"What kind of intent?"
"That depends on where it went." She folded her hands.
"You said the transfers out of the third account weren't visible on the statement you saw?"
"The clerk said she couldn't trace them from her screen."
"We can get a fuller picture with a formal request.
I can begin that process." She paused.
"Is there any reason your husband might have a debt you don't know about?
Gambling, a loan, a private arrangement with someone?"
I thought about it honestly.
"He's always been careful with money.
Careful in a way I found reassuring.
He handled the savings because he was good at it." I stopped.
"Or because he said he was."
Ruth nodded slowly.
"And the person he was texting.
You said no name was saved."
"Just a number."
"Did you remember it?"
I had.
I'd stood at the sink repeating it silently until it was fixed.
I wrote it on the notepad she slid toward me.
"I'll have someone look at that," she said.
"I can't promise what we'll find, but it's worth knowing."
Carol leaned forward.
"What does she do in the meantime?
She still has to go home to him tonight."
"She goes home," Ruth said simply.
"She behaves normally.
She does not confront him with what she knows.
Not yet." She looked at me.
"The appointment with the specialist — when is that?"
"Thursday."
"Does he plan to come?"
"He said he wants to be involved."
"Let him come.
Watch what he does.
Watch what he asks." She picked up her pen again.
"People who are managing a situation make mistakes when they feel observed.
They overperform.
They say the right things too precisely." She looked at me steadily.
"You'll notice."
I drove home with Carol in the passenger seat.
We didn't talk much.
She held my hand at one red light, then let go when it turned green.
Daniel was in the kitchen when I got in.
He'd made a proper dinner — chicken, roasted vegetables, the kind of meal he made when he wanted to signal that things were fine.
Lily was already at the table.
She looked brighter than she had in days.
"Dad made your favourite," she said.
"I can see that."
Daniel turned from the hob.
"Good timing.
Five minutes."
I set my bag down.
I watched him move around the kitchen — confident, unhurried, at home in the role of the man who had made dinner and was holding things together.
*She knows something.
I need more time.*
I sat down at the table across from my daughter.
"How was school?"
"Okay.
We had a substitute in maths.
She didn't know what she was doing."
"Did you help her?"
Lily smiled.
"A little."
Daniel set the dishes on the table and sat down.
He poured water for all three of us.
He asked Lily about her day.
He asked me about work.
He was warm and present and completely normal.
He was very good at this.
After dinner, after Lily went upstairs, he stayed at the table while I cleared the plates.
"I've been thinking about Thursday," he said.
"I'd like to take the morning off.
Come to the appointment with you both."
"That would be good."
"I know things have been tense.
I want to do better."
I set a plate in the rack.
"Okay."
"I mean it."
I turned around.
He was looking at me with an expression I recognized — open, earnest, the face of the man I had married.
The face that had always made me feel like I was the one being difficult.
"I know you mean it," I said.
He nodded.
Satisfied.
He picked up his phone from the table and went to the sitting room.
I finished the washing up alone.
Ruth called the next morning while I was in the car park at work.
"The number you gave me," she said.
"It's registered to a woman named Sasha Greer.
She's a letting agent.
She operates out of Coventry."
I sat very still.
"A letting agent."
"She handles rental properties.
Short-term and long-term." Ruth paused.
"I think your husband may have been renting somewhere, or arranging to.
I don't know yet what for.
But that's who he's been talking to."
A letting agent.
Not another woman.
Not a gambling debt.
A property.
My husband had been quietly moving nineteen thousand pounds out of our family savings, and the person he was texting — the person he needed more time with — arranged places for people to live.
I looked through the windscreen at the grey morning.
"Ruth," I said.
"Is he planning to leave?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"I think," she said carefully, "that he has been planning something for quite some time.
And I think Thursday's appointment frightened him.
Because whatever he has been planning — it becomes much harder if Lily is seriously ill."
The words landed like a door closing in a quiet house.
"He was going to leave us," I said.
Ruth didn't answer that directly.
"Let's find out exactly what he's done before we name it," she said.
May you like
"But yes.
I think that's the shape of it."
