I just need the money to get us there and get us settled.
That’s the part that’s taken the longest: coming up with the money. I don’t earn a lot, but Max goes away on business regularly and always leaves me cash – usually between one and two thousand pounds. I squirrel some of it away and hide it somewhere he won’t find it.
It started when I was the nanny. It made total sense then. ‘That should take care of your expenses,’ he’d say before walking out to a waiting taxi to the airport.
Back then, I would write down meticulously how much I spent on any given day and what I spent it on. I would carefully file receipts so I could take him through the expenses when he got back. But he never wanted to know.
‘I don’t need the details, Kate. Just let me know if you need more money next time.’
Hardly. He would leave me a thousand pounds for the week, and God knows Holly didn’t eat that much. But that’s one thing – the only thing – I’ll say about Max, he doesn’t care about money, probably because he has lots of it. Or maybe because he likes to show it off. At any rate, a thousand pounds here and there is a drop in the ocean to him.
I’d assumed that once we were married, he would stop giving me cash. We have a joint account for everyday expenses, and my meagre salary goes straight into it. So I was surprised when, the first time he went away on a work trip, only a month after our wedding, he pulled out a bundle of notes from his wallet.
‘Will that be enough?’ he’d asked, handing me a thousand pounds.
‘Oh! Well, yes, certainly,’ I’d said, reaching for it.
I don’t know if it was the way I’d said it, but he frowned, then opened his wallet again and pulled out a few fifty-pound notes. ‘Here’s a bit more, just in case.’
I took it. I always take it.
As of today, I’ve saved a total of £9455. One week from now, Max is flying to Zurich. Once I have the money he is sure to give me, I will have reached my goal.
And while he’s away, I am taking Holly to Kingston upon Hull.
That’s the plan.
What could possibly go wrong?
‘Good morning, how was the party?’ I ask Holly when she walks into the kitchen. I’m standing at the stove making eggs for Max, who has gone upstairs to shower.
‘Great!’ She pours muesli into a bowl while launching into a story that I am too blurry-brained to follow, but it concerns loud music and dancing and girls named Olivia and Harper and Amy and boys named Josh and Alex and Marcus, and a birthday cake with sugar swans on top (really?). Oh, and Scarlett loved the voucher.
‘Dad said you went to bed early?’ she says after finally taking a breath.
There’s no point telling Holly that I was in the spare bedroom, doing my stupid lines. I heard her and Max come home around ten, and judging by the tone of their voices when they said goodnight, I knew everything was all right.
‘Yes, I was tired,’ I say. ‘I’m glad you had fun.’
‘I did. And Scarlett got a car for her birthday.’
I look up. ‘Did you just say that Scarlett got a car for her birthday?’
She nods. ‘They bought her a car.’
‘Really? A real one?’
‘Uh-huh. Scarlett’s mum says she deserves it, because she’s been a good girl.’
I sift through my brain for Scarlett’s mum’s name. Jessica. ‘She said that, huh?’
‘Yes.’
I could say more. The secondary school is next to the primary school, and I have had conversations with Holly’s teacher on occasion, and I’m pretty sure he said that Scarlett was annoyingly disruptive in class.
‘She got her licence,’ Holly says, scrolling through her phone.
‘Surely not. She’s only seventeen years old.’
