With a scream of pure rage, I crumple to the floor, my phone clutched to my chest. I rock back and forth, swearing bitterly, not caring that there’s no one to witness my outburst. So what if I’m being melodramatic? My money has gone. And I know exactly who’s taken it.
I drag the back of my hand across my face, clear my throat and punch my husband’s number into my iPhone, letting out another satisfying howl of anger when it goes straight to voicemail.
‘Barney, what the fuck have you done with my money? I hope for your sake it’s safe because if it isn’t, so help me God, I will kill you. Phone me.Now!’
While I wait for his call I scroll through the list of transactions for the account. Up until a month ago the only entries were deposits. All interest payments, all around £10,000. It’s true what they say. Money goes to money. But then, over the course of two days, three weeks ago, the entire balance was wired out of the account.
Now I think about it, my phone went missing for a couple of days at the end of last month. Lost without it, I was about to order a new one from the Apple Store when Barney talked meout of it, promising it would turn up. He even said a prayer to St Anthony, the patron saint of lost things, which I thought rather sweet, especially as the phone did indeed turn up. One of the twins found it under the coffee table in the living room, which was strange, because I could’ve sworn I’d already looked there.
Of course the phone wasn’t lost. Barney took it so he had access to the banking app and the one-time authorisation codes the bank would’ve sent before they made the payments. A new level of cunning, even for him, and his duplicity is a knife gouging my heart.
I click on a couple of the transactions. They’re both made to F P Investments, Felix’s multimillion-pound property investment company. A memory surfaces. Barney trying to persuade me to sell Number Twelve Claremont Crescent.Felix is looking for backers to fund the conversion of a Victorian warehouse in Wapping…I categorically told him I would never let Felix anywhere near my inheritance, but he did it anyway.Bastard.
I leave another vitriolic message on Barney’s phone, then march downstairs to the kitchen, where I pour myself a triple gin and down it in a couple of gulps.
Felix is in the pool, swimming laps. I could storm out there now and demand he return my money immediately. There must be a cooling-off period, surely? But the thought of it sticks in my craw. I can just imagine his smug, knowing face. I pour another slug of gin into my glass instead. Confronting Felix would be a mistake. Besides, I’ve just remembered something else Barney said.Hesays we’d double our money in eighteen months.
What if it is a sure-fire investment? As nice as two and a half million is, five million would be even better. With five million in the bank, we’d be earning twenty grand in interest a month. Five million would buy a sprawling country pile. Staff. What I wouldn’t give to have my own Maria to cook and clean up after me, Barney and the children. Hell, we could probably evenafford a villa in Greece. And if the Owen Evans story leaks, I could hire the best PR company money can buy.
No. I’ll bide my time for now. Maybe even sound Simone out about the Wapping conversion to see if it really is the sure-fire investment Felix claims it to be. Because if it is, I could probably find it in myself to forgive Barney for taking my money. In fact, when I’m sipping a glass of champagne on the terrace of my own Greek villa, I might even thank him for it.
33
AMBER
My hands are shaking as I tear through the bedclothes a second time. I’ve turned the room upside down looking for my necklace, upending drawers, pulling clothes from hangers and rummaging through our empty cases. The place looks like it’s been ransacked by burglars.
I’m feeling inside one of the pillowcases when my hand closes round a chain. I tip the pillowcase up so the necklace slithers into my hand, coiling like a snake in my palm. I close my eyes and offer up a prayer of thanks to Gran, my guardian angel.
But the relief is short-lived. The necklace feels all wrong. My eyes snap open. It isn’t a silver chain with an amber pendant. It’s a gold locket on a chunky chain.
My stomach curdles and I collapse onto the bed. I’ve seen it before…around Simone’s neck.
I prise the locket open. Who cares if I’m invading her privacy?Please let it be a wedding photo, I beg silently, even though Simone doesn’t strike me as the sentimental type.
It is a couple, but not Simone and Felix. The colour drains from my face as I study the tiny image.
Simone and a handsome, dark-haired man with crinkly eyes and a wide smile.
Dominic.
Myboyfriend.
I stare at the photo, bile rising in the back of my throat as I look for clues. It’s not recent. They are on a beach, a curve of white powder sand and turquoise sea stretched like a grin behind them. Simone’s dark hair is long and braided, her cheeks fuller than they are now. She’s wearing a bikini, leather bracelets on her wrists and a beaded thong necklace round her neck. Dominic is bare-chested, his eyes hidden by a pair of aviator sunglasses. Simone is pressed against him, his arm clamps her waist. Their skin is a matching butterscotch brown.
The sight of them together makes me feel physically sick.
I snap the locket shut, my heart pounding like I’ve run up three flights of stairs, remembering how, when I first met Dominic, I thought he was too good to be true. He was nothing like the wasters I usually dated. He didn’t sleep on a mattress on a bedsit floor or live with his mum. He was solvent, reliable and kind. He bought me flowers and took me on surprise weekends away. He was perfect – almost too perfect. For a while, I even worried he was love-bombing me, that he would turn into a controlling, gaslighting bully the minute he won my trust. So I kept a bit of myself back and waited for the catch. But it never came.
Until now.
Dominic told me he went travelling after his first year at university. Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bali. All the usual stomping grounds for middle-class kids who didn’t have to spend their holidays waiting tables or pulling pints. Places that might as well have been on a different planet for the young people who grew up on estates like South Langley. People like me.
Simone must have gone with him on that trip. Funny how he didn’t think to mentionthat. I ball the locket in my fist, squeezing until the clasp digs into my palm, sharp as a tack.
I’m missing the point. Like it or not, Dominic and Simone used to be a couple. What does it matter that they once went travelling together when they were still at university? It might rankle but it’s ancient history. The point is: what the hell is Simone’s necklace doing in our bed?
The thought that Dominic has betrayed me is a punch to the gut. He’s the first man I’ve ever truly trusted, and the prospect that he’s as faithless as every other man I’ve ever met is almost too much to bear.
