She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, but eventually Mr. Weatherton returned. Alice looked at him dully as he took a seat and nervously set about reshuffling his papers.
“Well?” she asked, her earlier outrage fading to a chilled resignation. “Do you know what happened, Mr.—”
“Call me Rodney.” He pulled at his tie, a sheen of sweat now coating his forehead.
“Rodney,” she repeated quietly. Apparently they were now bonded by disaster. There was another pause.
“It, uh, appears that the money was transferred by telephone.” Rodney’s disapproving demeanor was now limp, the expression in his eyes, defeated. It was hardly reassuring, Alice noted, as if from outside herself. “You—I mean, the caller identified themselves as you. They cleared all the usual security checks,” he added quickly, as if that somehow made it less of a monumental failing.
“But…” Alice tried to reengage her brain. “Where did the money go? You must have some record of that, at least. Can’t you just…cancel the transaction?”
Rodney exhaled. “They asked for priority handling, for convenience. The transfer cleared this morning.”
Alice stared. It took them forever to process a simple check deposit, but that kind of money could disappear overnight?
“So, what…? I mean, what happens now?”
Rodney exhaled a shaky breath. “Well, uh, we’ll be contacting the recipient branch, to follow up. But it was a numbered account, in the Caribbean…”
“The Caribbean!” Alice yelped. “And that didn’t flag any warnings?”
Rodney quivered. “I suppose the assistant thought it was payment for a flat. So many developers are based overseas these days…”
Alice opened her mouth, but Rodney pressed on. “I understand, you must be feeling stress, but please, Ms. Love, do try to stay calm.” He pulled out a pocket pack of tissues and began to mop his face. Alice couldn’t believe this.
“But…What…?” she grappled to find sense again. “Is that it? I mean, you can get it back, can’t you?”
“I…We’ll have to investigate. But it’s not just your savings, your credit score has plummeted,” he explained. “For it to fall so quickly, you would have had to have defaulted payments on other cards or loans in the past few months.”
She shook her head. This wasn’t happening. “I have one credit card.” Alice fumbled with her purse, laying the small square of plastic out on the desk to prove it. “And I’m never late with payment. Never!” She looked at Rodney pleadingly. “You believe me, don’t you? This isn’t me!”
He looked back, helpless. “I can’t…I mean, there will be an investigation, and I’m sure…But I can’t say anything right now. It’s out of my hands.”
“Then whom do I talk to?” Alice demanded, horrified to hear her voice break. She sucked in a breath and tried to stay composed. “Just give me their names, and numbers, and I’ll call. I need to sort this out!”
“Someone from the head office will be contacting you.” Rodney swallowed. “We’ll see what we can do.”
***
His words taunted her for the rest of the day. Her savings were gone, just vanished into nothing, but she still couldn’t quite process the truth. Alice half expected an apologetic call, explaining that it had just been a clerical error, some terrible mix-up, but none came. By the time she arrived on Julian’s doorstep that evening, her scattered panic had given way to a sharp kind of terror.
“What am I going to do?”
He barely had time to usher her into the narrow hallway before Alice found herself retelling the entire sorry mess, words tumbling out of her mouth as if saying them out loud would somehow make it all less absurd. But it didn’t. “They say the account is protected against this kind of thing. I don’t understand—how could it happen?”
She forced herself to take a breath, staring blankly at Julian under the bright spotlights. Usually, she found his sparse, minimalist flat a refuge, but now it just seemed to mock her with a neatness and order that were far, far from her reach. “The bank won’t get a handle on this for days, and he was saying all these things about credit scores and defaults, and—” She broke down, finally surrendering to the tears that had been building ever since she heard the awful news.
“Shhh, hey, Aly, it’ll be OK.” Julian enveloped her in a hug. His gray sweater was soft against her face as he gently stroked her hair.
“I’m sorry.” She pulled away, embarrassed. She never broke down like this. “It’s just…it’s been going round in my head all afternoon. I don’t know what to do.”
Julian held out a handkerchief. “To start with, blow.”
Alice took it. She always teased him about his handkerchiefs—using the monogrammed cloths instead of hygienic tissue packs—but now there was something comforting about the cool fabric against her face. She sniffled loudly.
“It’ll be OK, I promise.” Julian steered her toward the kitchen, already warm and steaming with some delicious buttery smell. Alice sank down at the table while he put the kettle on and began assembling cups and milk. “The bank has to have some kind of insurance policy. You’ll get the money back.”
“And the rest of it?” Alice felt utterly useless.
Julian gave her a reassuring hug. “I’ll get a copy of your report. We’ll find out exactly what’s been going on. Now, how about some tea? And I’m trying a new carrot cake, with nutmeg and cardamom. You can be my guinea pig.”
Alice nodded limply, watching him move around her in a comforting bustle of activity. He was right. There was nothing else she could do right now but drown her sorrows in hot, sweet tea. But even that went against Alice’s every instinct, and as her body gave in to the wave of exhaustion sweeping through her, her mind was already searching for some kind of solution.
She needed a plan.
***
Julian set about using his accountant contacts to fast-track a copy of her credit report while Alice began poring over every fraud guide she could find. Work the next day was a blur, nothing but a vague memory of phone calls and conversations she forgot the minute she put the phone down, but the moment Vivienne waltzed off to dinner, she dashed home; meeting Julian at her flat to assemble every piece of paperwork she would need for her claims.