Page 103 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

‘Give me the code.’

‘They’ll have changed it now probably.’

She waits.

He sighs. ‘It’s Tris’s date of birth.’

‘Oh, my God, that isso lame. I could have got that from his Facebook. How could you ever think he was a financial genius? I bet the password on his files is password 123.’

Connor looks up at her, blinking. ‘Are you . . . ’

‘Don’t worry, I’m going, I’m going,’ says Essie. She looks at him, his expensive haircut, his expensive watch. Everything she ever wanted, standing in tears like a little boy who has been caught with his fingers in the honey jar.

‘I didn’t know,’ says Connor. ‘You have to believe me.’

She doesn’t know if it makes it more pathetic if he did know or if he didn’t.

The downstairs doorbell rings suddenly. Essie has a sudden premonition that it is the police.

‘I’m going.’

Her voice echoes off the beautiful tiled hallway, the great echoing ceilings with their moulded roses, the expensive bookshelves, the beautiful paintings; the expensive glorious building, all of it, built on the wreckage of people’s dreams; on other people’s money, earned on the windswept platforms of the North Sea; earned with sweat and graft.

Connor stiffens suddenly, as if annoyed she dares leave.

‘You go now,’ he says, ‘and we’re done.’

She just stares at him, jaw dropping that this is even an issue.

‘Well, duh,’ she says.

39

Essie is absolutely terrified to see them but does her best to look insouciant as she passes the two police officers at the front door on her way out.

She heads away from the flat, slower now, out of puff, the adrenaline still pumping, slowly crossing past the beautiful round park, where nannies rock babies still in beautiful, expensive, high Silver Cross prams; up round Ainslie Place, with a quieter, smaller park, where the less well-behaved dogs are taken to be exercised, the green metal circles on their collars proclaiming that they have the right to enter the private parks in the way most humans do not; and up and across the busy Queensferry Road.

The investment firm is low-key, barely noted outside, except now, because it has a couple of photographers and journalists outside it, and a police officer on the door. Essie’s heart beats faster. This is happening. It’s terrifying. This is a big, notorious criminal Ponzi scheme imploding and the world is interested.

What would they do if they caught her? she wonders. She could pretend she was looking for a toilet, got lost, say nothing. She’s white, middle-class, they would probably just tell her to piss off.

Worth it.

*

She sneaks round the back of the street, to the tiny hidden mews behind. Goes to the little door she knows from back in their wild early days. The door to the next-door house, which also leads to his office, in the maze of old Edinburgh terraces, the little corridors, that hot night . . . she sighs, remembering.

She can’t think about that now. She has one shot at this, the very worst thing she has ever done. But the alternative is worse still.

40

Janey goes driving about, desperately searching for her daughter in the town, more worried with every second that passes.

She can see people looking at her, in her familiar red Kia. She is used to being the ear lady, to being liked, stalwart member of the choir and the book group once she’d started picking herself up from the divorce. Part of the town; at the Christmas Fayres, the Easter egg hunts. Now it is unsettling when people look, and wave, or don’t. What are they thinking? Are they thinking, there’s that Janey with the daughter who thought she’s too good . . . you know what she did?

Would Essie be with Dwight? Janey screws up her face. She can’t bear it. She will have to see him at some point. There was nobody at the buildings next door to the house, nobody working. She doesn’t know where Dwight lives, but she could try the End of the World . . . but what would she say? And would she even get to say it before Shelby punches her in the face?

She goes everywhere else, everywhere she can think of. The harbour, the walks, the forest. Looking for Essie, staring at her phone, calling, calling, calling.

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