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“A machete?”
“You never know with our family.”
“Fine, I’ll redo the drawers under the bed,” said Reeva, getting up and closing the folder. She’d look at it properly when everyone was in bed.
“Oh right, you want to recheck the bit I was responsible for,” said Jaya, crossing her arms. “Rude.”
“It’s practical, not rude,” said Sita. “There’s no point us searching the bits we already did. It’s about fresh eyes. I’ll do the wardrobes.”
“Whatever, it’s obvious none of you trust me,” said Jaya.
“Uh, I wonder why.”
Reeva tuned out her sisters’ bickering and sat down by the bed, carefully removing the linens from the drawers. She couldn’t stop thinking about the folder. She didn’t understand if her dad had done it all alone or if her mum had helped. None of it made sense. The only thing she knew for sure was that her dad hadthought about them. And he knew things her mum had never cared about. Like her GCSE results. Her fingers found something hard in the drawer. She reached down. A shoebox. As she pulled the lid off, her jaw fell slack. “Uh, guys, you’re... going to want to come over.”
“Oh my god, what have you found?” squealed Jaya. “Is it a gun?”
“Obviously you found something in the bit Jaya was meant to search,” muttered Sita as she crouched down next to Reeva. “So, what is it?”
Reeva showed them the contents of the shoebox. “Around ten thousand pounds. In cash.”
Her sisters gasped out loud. “Oh my god!”
“I know,” said Reeva. “I need to count it properly. But it looks about right. I mean, it’s all in fifties.”
“Guys, surely now you see my point?” said Jaya. “About Dad’s line of work.”
“For the last time, he was not a spy!” snapped Sita. “He’s just... Indian. He doesn’t trust banks. It’s what foreigners do. Nitin’s parents have solid bars of gold under their bed!”
“Jealous,” said Reeva. “I wish I had piles of hidden gold.”
Sita turned to look at her. “They do it because when Idi Amin made them leave Uganda, they had to come to the UK as refugees with just the belongings they had on their back. It’s a reaction to trauma.”
“Oh,” said Reeva. “Well, yeah. That’s awful.”
“So, neither of you think this is suspicious?” asked Jaya.
Reeva shook her head. “A lot of my clients hide money in their homes. I just never expected Dad to have somuch.” She picked up wads of the money and then frowned. “Wait, there’s something else. Bank statements.”
The three sisters crowded around to read the statements. Reeva ran her finger down the paper, looking for the bit they all wanted to see, and then paused. It couldn’t be. She turned the paper over and then turned it back. The figure was right.
“Oh my god,” she breathed out. “Dad was loaded.”
CHAPTER 7
Day 4
The sisters satin silence around the dining table. The box of money was right in the middle of them, along with Reeva’s laptop. Up on the page was an e-mail from Hemant’s lawyers confirming the hefty sum of money he had in his bank account. Money that was going straight to his three daughters.
“I still don’t get it,” said Reeva. “He was an optometrist. How do you make that kind of money?”
“I wish I knew,” said Sita. “Then I could do the same.”
“Maybe Mum gave it to him?” asked Jaya.
“That would have shown up on the bank statements,” said Reeva. “It looks like he just... saved. A lot.”
“No one can save that much,” said Sita. “I know Leicester is cheaper than London, but the man would have had to live like a monk.”
