Chapter 6: What Carol Knew
I called her back within the minute.
She answered immediately, like she'd been holding the phone.
"Thank you," she said.
"I wasn't sure you would."
"What did Richard do, Carol?"
A breath.
"Can we meet?
Not at the house.
Somewhere public."
"The café on Merchant Street.
One hour."
She was already there when I arrived, seated at the back corner table with both hands wrapped around a tea she hadn't touched.
She looked like she hadn't slept either.
She looked, I realized, like a woman who had been not sleeping for considerably longer than one night.
I sat down across from her.
"Tell me," I said.
She looked at the table.
"I've known about the deed for almost a year.
Richard told me it was a loan arrangement.
That Daniel had agreed.
That you both had." She paused.
"I believed him.
Or I told myself I did."
"But?"
"But last month I found a folder in his office.
He doesn't know I found it." She opened her bag and took out a folded envelope.
She set it on the table between us.
"There are two documents inside.
The first is the deed transfer.
You'll see the signature on the line with your name."
I opened the envelope.
The signature was not mine.
It was close — someone had studied my handwriting — but the loop on the E was wrong and the last letter trailed in a way I never wrote.
"The second document," Carol said.
I turned to it.
It was a letter.
Typed, not handwritten.
Dated eight months ago.
Addressed to a property development company I didn't recognize.
It outlined a proposed sale of the house — my mother's house — for four hundred and twenty thousand pounds.
The seller listed was Richard Calloway.
Not Daniel.
Richard.
"He was going to sell it," I said.
"He has a buyer.
The sale was supposed to complete in February." Carol's voice was very quiet.
"Daniel doesn't know.
Richard told him the deed was still just collateral.
He never told Daniel about the sale."
I set the documents down.
"So Daniel forged my signature to give Richard the deed," I said slowly, "and Richard used it to sell my mother's house without telling either of us."
"Yes."
"And you've had this for a month."
Carol's eyes filled.
"I know.
I know what you're thinking."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I was afraid of him." She said it plainly, without drama.
"I have been afraid of him for eleven years.
You saw him last night with Lily.
That is not the worst I have seen." She pressed her lips together.
"But last night — watching him do that to a child, and then watching you flip that table, and watching his face when you mentioned the deed — I thought, if she can do that, I can do this."
I looked at her across the table.
Eleven years.
I had known Carol for nine of them and I had never seen past the rigid posture and the folded hands.
I had assumed she was cold.
I had assumed she was like him.
"Are you safe?" I asked.
"For now.
He thinks I'm at my sister's." She pushed the envelope toward me.
"Take these.
Patricia will need them.
The original folder is still in his office — I photographed everything before I took these two."
"Carol.
You need to tell Patricia what you've told me.
And you need to tell her about the eleven years."
She nodded, very small.
"Will you come with me?" she asked.
"Yes."
I paid for the untouched tea and we walked out together into the cold.
My phone rang as we reached the pavement.
It was Daniel.
I let it ring.
Then it stopped.
Then a text arrived.
*Richard just called me.
He knows you spoke to Patricia.
He says if you don't drop this by tonight he will make sure you lose more than the house.
Emma, please.
Call me back.*
I showed Carol the screen.
She read it.
Her face didn't change.
"He always says that," she said.
May you like
"He has been saying that to people for twenty years." She looked up at me.
"No one has ever called his bluff."
