No, she must have been out of her mind. Or else drugged on the insanity of having enough money and success to buy such things. She should have put the bloody money under the bed. But then Oliver would have just found it and spent it. Or spent it and borrowed more from Big Jimbo.
In her head, Big Jimbo had arms like hams and a posse of enforcers who took back whatever he could when his debtors couldn’t pay up.
‘Stop,’ said Lou again.
‘I can’t,’ Toni murmured.
‘Come on,’ said Lou to Trinity, ‘I’ll show you to your room. Is Oliver not here?’ she asked her sister.
‘Apparently not,’ said Toni, drifting into the kitchen as if in a dream. She’d half expected him to be there, and she hadn’t known if she was going to throw him out if he was, but it appeared Oliver had left to lick his wounds in private. The nine thousand plus euros he’d removed from her credit card account was in her mind. Perhaps he was staying in a city centre hotel in a gorgeous suite, going to the casino in a last-ditch attempt to win their money back. If he’d done that, she’d really kill him.
‘This house is really cool,’ said Trinity, following. She put her battered old rucksack on a wire-framed cream leather kitchen chair, unwound the batik silk scarf from her slender neck and then looked around. In the modern, expensive space, she looked like a teenage model brought in to advertise a soft drink. All they needed were a few more young people, some soft drinks and an art director hustling Toni and Lou, far too old, out of shot.
‘Is there a kettle?’ said Trinity. ‘I have some herbal tea bags.’ She waved a small box. ‘Ginger, if anyone wants some.’
‘No kettle,’ said Toni. ‘There’s a special hot tap.’
She went to the sink and demonstrated the thousands of pounds’ worth of plumbing magic that dispensed boiling water.
‘This is so amazing,’ said Trinity. ‘I’ve seen the adverts on TV but never saw one in real life.’
‘Don’t calculate it,’ Lou warned her sister.
‘One thou,’ said Toni bitterly.
‘I give up,’ said Lou. ‘Trinity, we can see your room, or do you want to help me make supper?’
‘Food! I’m ravenous. If—’ Trinity looked her age for a moment, ‘if you’re sure it’s OK for me to be here? I don’t want to impose. Getting the lift was fantastic but—’
‘It’s lovely to have you here,’ said Lou firmly. ‘Without you, myself and Toni might have gone mad.’
‘Thank you.’ Trinity beamed gratefully. ‘Supper? I can cook.’
‘Let’s look in the freezer,’ said Lou happily.
Toni left the two of them to it and went into the office.
Like everything in her life, the files were perfectly organised, and it didn’t take long to find the financial documents relating to pensions and investments. Toni knew that having bits of paper relating to money and having the money were different things, but she found a certain pleasure in finding that she still had documents relating to various investments. Until she found Oliver’s laptop still in its bag and papers stuffed in the side of it.
There were sheafs of paper with seals on them, filmy bits of paper and lovely banking quality card all stuffed in together. On many pieces of paper were places where her signature was scrawled. Not her signature but a forgery, the sort of thing a husband would be able to do when he’d lived with her for years and had seen her write her signature endlessly.
Antoinette Lucinda Cooper.
All hope of things being sorted out disintegrated. If Oliver had forged her signature, he was guilty of fraud. Even if he threw himself at her mercy and the mercy of the courts, she would never see the money again.
She was ruined.
In the kitchen, Lou and Trinity were busy.
Trinity had been right: she certainly knew her way round a kitchen and was already expertly dicing shallots she’d found in Toni’s utility room.
‘We’ve got frozen fresh pasta and look, porcini mushrooms,’ said Lou delightedly. ‘Trinity’s going to make garlic mushroom pasta.’
‘It’s really easy,’ said Trinity, moving on to crush some garlic cloves with the flat blade of a knife.
Toni gazed blankly at them. She was holding two things: a bottle of 1961 Dom Pérignon that someone had given Oliver when he’d won his BAFTA and his rarely used American Express card. The world was falling around her ears.
‘I had an idea,’ she said, and even to herself, her voice sounded slightly crazed. ‘Things are going to be a bit bonkers here for a while so I thought we could go to Sicily and find Angelo.’
