Before We Met: A Novel (9 page)

She flicked through the last few papers, Coutts and Mastercard statements from over a year ago, her eyes still skimming the transactions but no longer really expecting to find anything relevant. When she turned over what she thought was the last sheet, however, her hand stopped in mid-air.

In front of her on the desk, the very last piece of paper in the file, was a statement from Birmingham Midshires. Mark didn’t bank with Birmingham Midshires, though. She did.

She picked up the paper, noticing a slight tremor in her hand, and looked at the name and address in the top left-hand corner. Her name, not Mark’s. She looked at the date. It was the most recent statement, the one she’d been sent at the end of the tax year in April, showing her new balance with the year’s interest added: just under £47,000. She remembered opening it, feeling frustrated by how low the interest rates were then filing it away in her accordion file. So why was it here? Why was it in Mark’s box?

The tremor in her hand magnified and she slapped the statement down on the desk, the sound startling her. There was no other explanation: the only way the statement could be in his file was if he’d taken it out of hers and put it there.

She glanced at the clock above the door. How long had she been here? David would be back with his lunch any minute, surely. Well, that was a risk she’d just have to take, wasn’t it? If he came in and found her, she’d think of something. She couldn’t wait until she got home; she needed to know now.

Pulling the chair up to the desk, Hannah opened Mark’s laptop and turned it on. A few seconds passed and then a dialogue box appeared demanding a password.
Shit
. Well, of course it was going to be password-protected, wasn’t it? DataPro was one of the most sophisticated corporate software-design companies in Europe. Glancing at the clock again, she tried to think. Numbers, not just letters or a word: she’d got a telling-off about that when he discovered she used MalvernHills as the password for her Hotmail account. Leaning forward, she tapped in his birthday, 110772, and hit return.
The password you have entered is incorrect. Please re-enter your password
. She thought again then tapped in her own birthday. Wrong again.
Shit
,
shit
. How many chances did she have before the system shut itself down? Would it send out an alert? One more go, she decided: three strikes and you’re out. She closed her eyes and focused. Numbers
and
letters, she realised, not one or the other; personally significant but not legal data. She opened her eyes. It was a long shot but – yes, it felt right. She typed in the name and street of their old favourite hotdog restaurant in New York: Westville10. Heart thumping, she hit return.
Bingo
.

The computer was beyond fast and within four or five seconds she had the browser open and was typing in ‘Birmingham Midshires’. When the page came up, she reached for her bag, got out her diary and flicked to the back where her codes and passwords were written down. Yes, she knew you weren’t supposed to, but how else were you supposed to keep track of them all? She could spend her whole life trying to remember the answers to her ‘personalised security questions’. Well, she thought bitterly, maybe she was about to learn her lesson the hard way.

She hit the ‘Log in’ button and entered the passwords. She had codes for four airlines’ frequent-flyer programmes, Amazon, iTunes and numerous other sites for online shopping, but her banking arrangements, at least, were simple: this ISA, her HSBC current account, and then, also managed via HSBC, two thousand shares in a tech company that she’d bought three years ago on a hot tip. She’d paid two pounds each for them but the last time she’d looked, last week, they’d been worth £120 in total.

She hit ‘return’ and the page with her account details started to open. Suddenly she didn’t want to see. She pushed the chair back and stood up. Her heart was thumping behind her sternum. She rested her head against the cold window and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she saw a man jogging up the steps to the entrance seven storeys below. David.

Quickly, she came back to the computer, took a breath and looked at the screen.

She’d expected it – really, from the moment she’d found her statement she’d known – but that didn’t make it any less shocking: her ISA had been cleared out. The balance onscreen now read £29.02. She stared at it until the numbers blurred in front of her eyes.
£29.02.
She clicked on the link to her recent transactions and there it was, four days earlier: a transfer to M. J. Reilly of £46,800. It was gone – he’d taken it all.

Chapter Six

The glass panels shook as the front door slammed behind her. Still in her coat, Hannah sat down at the foot of the stairs and put her head in her hands. A sharp stabbing pain had started behind her left eye and was spreading across her forehead. It was so intense she thought she might throw up.

On the way back from Hammersmith, the shock had been joined by a feeling of intense loss. Her savings, everything she’d managed to put aside in the fifteen years she’d been working, were gone. Before she’d met Mark, her ISA had been her flat-deposit fund, the money she’d planned eventually to use for buying a place of her own. New York prices were mad, of course, and she’d loved her rented apartment and hadn’t wanted to move to a different, cheaper area, so she’d put it off and put it off and then she’d met Mark and that had been it. All that work, she thought now, all those months of little transfers, especially at the beginning, just after university, when she was living in London for the first time and had no real money to spare. Determined to be independent, though, and never ask her parents for anything again, she’d opened a savings account and set up a direct debit of £75 a month. She’d watched it slowly accumulate, feeling proud and in control; as soon as she’d got her first small pay-rise, she’d increased the direct debit to £100. Her first-ever bonus, too, £300 – she’d bought a pair of cheap winter boots, then resisted temptation and salted the rest away.

Now came a hot sweep of panic: she was broke – completely broke. She had about £250 in her current account, the near-worthless shares and £29.02: less than £400 in total. And without a job, she had no way of earning any more: there was no salary coming in at the end of the month. She was sweating, she realised, her armpits were wet, and a string of adjectives was running through her head: stuck, screwed, powerless. Fucked.

Needless to say, she hadn’t been able to get out of DataPro without being seen by David. She’d called the lift then stood in the lobby and watched the numbers on the overhead panel as it climbed towards the seventh floor, agonisingly slow. At last the doors pinged open and, without looking up, she’d stepped in and almost collided with him as he came out.
Shit
. She’d had a momentary impression of his body warmth and a sharp, lemon-soap scent before he moved away with a short laugh of embarrassment, his hand on her forearm holding her away from him as much as greeting her.

‘Hi.’ He’d pressed the button to stop the doors closing and let go of her arm. She’d stepped back out into the lobby and he’d followed her. He was smiling, his expression friendly but curious. ‘Hannah – lovely to see you.’

‘You, too,’ she said. ‘How are you? Tony said you were in.’

‘Yes, just popped out to get a bite to eat.’ He’d lifted the evidence, a brown-paper bag spotted with grease. He was in weekend wear: jeans and a brushed-cotton plaid shirt with a faded T-shirt underneath, a pair of Adidas shell-toes. She couldn’t remember ever having seen him out of a suit before. He was thirty-eight, she knew, but today he’d looked about twenty-five.

‘Saturday afternoon in the office?’ she said.

‘I’m doing projections, whipping some figures into shape before we meet Systema. Mark’s told you about their approach, obviously?’

‘Yes, of course. Interesting times.’

‘Could be. I’ll be here most of the weekend anyway. How about you, though? I thought you two were going away?’

‘To Rome?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, that’s still a couple of weeks off yet, unfortunately.’

He’d looked confused for a moment but then his face cleared. ‘Oh, I see. Well, if you’re here, you can’t be there, can you?’ He smiled. ‘Is Mark with you?’

‘Mark? Er – he’s at home.’

‘Oh. Right.’

Hannah had seen the question in his eyes. ‘He’s shattered, I think,’ she’d said. ‘He’ll probably be zonked out in front of the TV when I get back.’ She patted her bag hammily. ‘He left our electricity bill here by mistake last week – got it mixed up with some other papers. I’ve just been to Westfield for a bit of shopping and said I’d pop in and pick it up on my way back so we can pay it before we get cut off. Usual domestic chaos.’ Her laughter had come out sounding a lot more convincing than it had felt.

‘Right,’ David had said again, but the unasked question had lingered in the air between them: if Mark was in London, why was he at home on the sofa while David was spending all day at the office?

In the kitchen Hannah stood at the sink and downed three Aspirin with a large glass of water. Mixed with the shock and hurt was another feeling now: fear. Yes, she admitted to herself, she was afraid. What the hell was going on? If Mark needed her money so badly, why hadn’t he just asked for it? They were married, they loved each other, didn’t they? They were supposed to be a team, to support each other. If he’d asked her for it, she would have given it to him straight away. Why just take it like this unless he didn’t want to tell her the reason – or couldn’t?

What if he was in trouble? Not just money trouble,
real
trouble. What if he’d crossed someone dangerous? For a moment the idea seemed ludicrous –
someone dangerous? Come on, Hannah, back to the real world
– but then she remembered a story that Paul, a friend of Dan’s, had told over dinner the other day. He was in commercial property and the company he worked for, a specialised arm of one of the large estate agencies, had started doing business in Russia, going over and giving presentations to super-wealthy Muscovites to convince them to buy investment property in London. The presentations had been a success and they’d been hired to find properties for several new clients, but afterwards, Paul said, one of the clients had refused to pay their commission. It was a substantial amount, nearly half a million, and Paul’s company had chased and chased and eventually instructed their lawyer. Soon after starting work, however, the lawyer had come back and advised them quietly to write the money off. If they didn’t, the implication was, the repercussions would be violent.

Could Mark have got himself into something like that? DataPro did a lot of business overseas, and they’d handled a couple of projects for new Eastern European clients earlier in the year. What if one of them had refused to pay, he’d pursued it and they’d come after him? But why not tell her something like that? There would be no reason to hide it. And anyway, in that scenario, they would owe him, not the other way round.

Gambling made more sense. What if Mark was in debt to violent people and they were threatening to mess him up? She exhaled sharply through her nose. It was ridiculous – she was being ridiculous. What next, the Mob?

She stalked the room, successive waves of anger and panic breaking over her. She fended them off by focusing on what she could do. She could call the office and talk to David. If it were something to do with DataPro, he would know. But actually, would he? He’d thought they were both in Rome: Mark had lied to him, too. And what if it were nothing to do with the company? She liked David as far as she knew him, but that was hardly at all – she couldn’t stand the idea of him knowing their personal business and thinking there were problems in their marriage. And what if there was a simple explanation for all this – there still could be, couldn’t there? – and Mark returned to discover she’d involved his business partner?

She thought about his financial paperwork. She should have brought it back with her and gone through it here, line by line. She’d looked as carefully as she could in the office but she’d been too flustered, too shocked. Unlike her, as far as she knew, Mark wasn’t stupid enough to keep a written record of all his banking passwords so she couldn’t access his accounts online. She’d have to wait until tonight, somehow make sure David had left the office and then go back there. Unless . . .

On the hall table was the pile of Mark’s post. Hadn’t there been a letter for him from Coutts this morning? She ran into the hall, picked up the pile and flicked through it. Yes, here it was. She dropped the rest of the letters and clutched it to her chest. It was just a normal window envelope, plain white paper, not one of the glossy pamphlet things advertising a promotion. It would be a letter about his account or a statement. She hesitated. They never opened one another’s post – why would they? And if she opened this now, she’d have to get rid of it afterwards: she wouldn’t be able to explain having opened it.

She looked at it a second longer then stuck her finger under the flap and ripped the envelope apart. Inside were three sheets of paper, his monthly statement. Her eyes ran down the transactions but nothing jumped out: no big transfers, no bookmakers, no La Perla or hotels. But if Mark were staying at hotels with another woman, she realised, he’d pay on his DataPro card so there’d be no risk of her seeing. She felt a rising sense of hopelessness. The statements for his business accounts went straight to the office; it would be nearly impossible for her to access them.