Chapter 32
VICTORIA
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 me out 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.
He says 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 even afford 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.