Page 105 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

‘What the hell??’

Stupid bloody open-plan house. There is nowhere to go to have a proper argument without Verity being able to lip-read or even tell from their backs that they are having a massive argument. Janey orders him into the laundry, where the dogs go mental.

‘She might go to prison!’

‘I think there’s plausible deniability,’ Lowell says as gently as he can. ‘Janey, she was going to go anyway. I couldn’t have dissuaded her.’

‘You should have locked her in this laundry until I could get here! She’s out of her mind.’

‘I don’t . . . she won’t get into big trouble!’

‘You don’t know that!’

‘It happens all the time. Look at all those American presidents who take papers home. They won’t waste police time on her.’

‘YOU DON’T KNOW THAT.’

‘Janey, she’s an adult. She was going to do it anyway. I just told her what she was looking for.’

Janey bites her lip and folds her arms, breathing heavily. Her face is pink. Lowell suddenly, unexpectedly, finds he isincredibly turned on. He squashes the feeling down. This won’t do at all.

‘Whatisshe looking for?’

And he tells her, and she takes out her phone.

*

There are piles and piles of paperwork, printouts spread everywhere. Essie scans a couple. They look like profit and loss accounts, with adjustments, presumably. He must have been paying some people out of fake accounts and . . .

She’s pretty sure this must be what Connor was doing: being the sweet, innocent front man, showing off the pretty P&L accounts, keeping the money flowing. That absolute bumhole.

Nearest his desk she finds a pile of post, unopened, waiting for him. Her heart races. She goes through, glancing at the postmarks . . . and then, finally, she sees it.

The Land Registry. Lowell showed her what it looked like.

Her phone rings. The noise in the room is shocking, horrifying. She fumbles with her phone; how could she have been so stupid? She’s clearly not cut out for a life of crime. She pulls it out – OMG, her bloody mother, again. She presses no and tries to turn the phone off, but now her hands are shaking far too much to manage it.

Downstairs, she hears a noise. It’s the crackle of a radio. She freezes. There’s a muttering, but behind the windows she can’t tell what the police officer is saying. She glances around. Everything else is just sheets of paper, investment brochures, marketing leaflets. Nothing that makes any sense. The radio crackles again. Her blood is throbbing in her veins. She grabs the envelope, jumps over the tape as quietly as she is able, dives down the stairs, tiptoes down to the back door and out into the mews as quietly as she can, shutting the door millimetre by millimetre.

She wants to run but doesn’t dare. She is terrified of hearing, ‘Stop! What the hell are you doing?’ And at the far end of the mews is where the CCTV will start, if they do suspect someone of being in the building.

She has one chance. She texts Lowell.

And then, once again very quietly, she turns, heart pounding in her chest, to the old black wooden door, which doesn’t look as if it has anything to do with the glossy office, which is indeed a relic of a different time . . . and gently slips inside.

*

Janey puts the phone down.

‘She’s still not answering. She’s probably in police custody.’

‘I didn’t know she hadn’t told you.’

Janey is teary with rage. ‘Well, she hadn’t. You didn’t think I’d be worried out of my wits?’

‘She seemed . . . resolute. Organised. Janey, she’s a grown-up.’

‘She’smygrown-up.’

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