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He threw his hands in the air. ‘Explain what? Just what did you think you were doing? I bet you were sitting in his chair.’
‘I was.’
‘I can’t believe the cheek, and she’s openly admitting it.’
Abigail gave him a cold, hard stare. ‘Your accounts are all wrong.’
‘I beg your pardon. And who do you think you are?’
Lord Somerville held up his hand to silence him. ‘Oliver, let’s hear her out.’
‘You are joking – right? She’s a cleaner. What does she know about accounting?’
Now Abigail recognised him. She recalled the handkerchief with the initialsOS. She stared at Oliver Somerville and realised why he didn’t recognise her; he just saw a cleaner. If she took her apron off and the band out of her hair, he’d remember who she was. Abigail was about to tell him where she’d seen him before when Carys said, ‘She’s just standing in for her sister for a few days.’ She turned to Abigail. ‘You’re not a cleaner, though, are you?’
Abigail shook her head.
Oliver interjected.
‘Well, she’s not an accountant either!’
Carys turned to her brother, throwing him a black look. ‘And how would you know? Is it because she’s a woman?’
Abigail listened to this exchange with interest. She recalled the outdated primogeniture rule, which seemed to be based on an assumption that a woman was not capable of running an estate.
‘No, I’m not an accountant.’
Oliver raised his finger, pointing it directly at her. ‘There, what did I tell you.’
‘I can’t call myself that until I’ve passed my final exam. At the moment, I am a partly qualified accountant. When I pass my final exam, I will have ACCA letters after my name.’
Oliver stared at her, his brow creasing in a frown. ‘So, why haven’t you passed it? Did you fail it?’
Abigail’s eyes roved to Carys. She’d been due to sit her final exam when it had happened. ‘I didn’t fail. I missed my final exam, so I have to wait to resit it.’
‘Oh, you missed it. Had a girls’ night out – or something?’
‘No, my husband died.’
And that shut him up. Abigail stared at him. She felt childish. It was like a staring contest – until he looked away.
Carys came around the desk. ‘Will you tell us what is wrong with these figures?’
Lord Somerville stood up and offered her his seat at the desk. Carys shifted, taking the seat next to Abigail.
Abigail stood up and walked around the desk, sitting in the chair she’d sat in with her feather duster that morning when she’d discovered the laptop was only powered down and there was no password. She glanced over her shoulder at Lord Somerville and his son standing behind her chair. ‘The first thing I suggest is you sort out a password. When I flicked the duster over the keyboard this morning, I couldn’t fail to notice there wasn’t one.’ She didn’t want them to think she’d been snooping. ‘I’ll do it for you now.’ She set it up. Oliver leaned forward, within inches of her, and typed in a password twice, as instructed.
Abigail glanced at Carys and saw a wisp of a smile on her face as she looked at her brother. She wondered what Carys was thinking.
‘I made some adjustments. You see here …’ Abigail pointed to a column of figures in the accounts. ‘This is in the wrong column, so I swapped these around. This profit and loss here now makes sense.’
Carys sat there, nodding her head. ‘I told you, Oliver, you can’t do the accounts yourself.’
He glared at his sister. ‘Oh, shut up.’
‘I will not.’
Lord Somerville intervened.
