Chapter 6: The Morning After Christmas
Harold's solicitor was a woman named Grace Alderton.
She called at eight-fifteen the next morning, Christmas Day still technically on the calendar, and she spoke the way people speak when they have already read everything and formed a view.
"Mrs.
Calloway," she said, "I've reviewed the transfer deed, the audit, and the bank records Mr.
Calloway senior provided.
I'd like to meet with you today if you're willing."
"Today?"
"I understand it's a holiday.
But I think sooner is better than later, given that your husband made eleven calls last night — three to a private solicitor, two to his mother, and six to a number registered to a Carla Voss."
I was sitting at Harold's kitchen table.
He had insisted I stay the night in the guest room.
I had slept four hours and woken to find him already up, coffee made, the envelope on the table between us like a quiet fact.
"He knows you have the documents?" I said.
"He suspects," Grace said.
"He hasn't confirmed it.
But he filed an emergency injunction application this morning to freeze the property transfer."
Harold looked up from his coffee.
"Can he do that?" I said.
"He can apply.
The application is unlikely to succeed given the fraud evidence, but it will slow things down by a few days while the court reviews it." A pause.
"Mrs.
Calloway, I want to be direct with you.
Your husband's legal team will argue that the transfer deed was signed under duress — that Mr.
Calloway senior acted improperly.
They will try to make this about the family dynamic rather than the forgery."
"They'll try to make it about me."
"Yes."
I looked at the letter in my coat pocket, still folded, still there.
"I have something else," I said.
"A letter.
Handwritten.
Fourteen months old."
A brief silence.
"I'll need to see it," Grace said.
"Can you be at my office by eleven?"
Harold drove me.
We didn't talk much.
The roads were empty the way they only are on Christmas morning — the whole country indoors, present-wrapping done, the day suspended.
Grace's office was on the fourth floor of a building near the city center.
She met us at the door herself, no receptionist on a holiday, and shook my hand with a firm, brief grip.
She read the letter in under two minutes.
She set it down.
"This establishes motive for the financial transfers," she said.
"And it establishes a pattern of deception that predates the forgery." She looked at me.
"How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine."
She looked at me in a way that said she had heard that answer before and knew what it usually meant.
"This is going to become adversarial quickly," she said.
"Daniel's solicitor is already pushing the duress angle.
And his mother called my office this morning."
I blinked.
"Miriam called you?"
"She left a message.
She said she had information that would — and I'm quoting — 'clarify the full picture of Emily's conduct during the marriage.'" Grace folded her hands on the desk.
"Do you have any idea what she might be referring to?"
"No."
"Is there anything from the marriage — anything at all — that could be presented in a damaging light?
Arguments, financial decisions, anything you signed?"
I thought about seven years.
The debts I had covered quietly.
The stories I had told his friends when he didn't come home.
The Thanksgiving before last, when Miriam had grabbed my arm in the kitchen and told me that if I ever embarrassed Daniel in front of his colleagues again, she would make sure I left that marriage with nothing.
I had never told anyone about that.
"There's nothing," I said.
"Nothing real."
"Then we proceed." Grace picked up the letter again.
"I'm going to have this authenticated.
In the meantime, I'm filing a counter-response to the injunction this afternoon." She looked at Harold.
"Mr.
Calloway, I'll need a formal statement from you regarding the circumstances of the transfer."
"You'll have it by end of day," Harold said.
Grace nodded.
Then she looked at me again — not with pity, not with professional distance, but with something more direct.
"Mrs.
Calloway," she said.
"I've handled a lot of these cases.
I want you to know — the evidence here is strong.
What happened to you was deliberate and sustained.
And the people responsible are already making mistakes." She paused.
"That tends to accelerate things."
I nodded.
"One more thing," Grace said.
She slid a single page across the desk.
"Daniel's solicitor sent this over an hour ago."
I looked at it.
It was a settlement offer.
The number at the bottom made Harold set down his coffee cup.
"He wants this over quickly," Grace said.
"That tells us something."
May you like
"What does it tell us?" I said.
"That there's something in those records he doesn't want a court to see."
