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FIFTY-THREE

It is three days into the New Year and Al has completely disappeared.

The childminder has Nala, and the boys went back to school this morning.

The shop is open, everything is back to normal.

Apart from the fact that Martha’s husband is nowhere to be found.

For some reason this absence feels different from his previous absences.

For some reason, this one feels permanent.

Martha doesn’t know why she feels this way, but it sits in her gut uncomfortably, like a pebble.

She feels agitated and proactive, not anxious and passive as she usually does when he’s not here.

The passage from attentive, present husband in the early months and years of their relationship to the constantly absent, unreliable, and noncommunicative husband of the past two years had been slow, like water torture: she hadn’t noticed it until it was destroying her life.

And then there’s the issue of her business accounts.

Alistair has been helping her with the finances for Martha’s Garden since he gave up his job and started working at the shop full-time.

At the time, she’d swallowed down the strange sense of unease she’d felt when handing over the mechanics of her business to him.

It was counterintuitive to imagine that your husband, the father of your child, the love of your life, would have anything other than the best and most wholesome of intentions toward the money that paid for the life they enjoyed living.

But there, right in the middle of what had always been a fairly simple balance sheet, is a hole.

At first she thinks it is about a thousand pounds.

Her stomach roils unpleasantly at the thought that she has cocked up, that someone has ripped her off, that Milly has been milking the till, that something bad has happened, but she immediately calms herself and tells herself that none of these things can be true.

And that is when the truth hits her. That it is Alistair.

And as she looks deeper into her company finances, she finds more holes: ￡800 here, ￡30 there, stock discrepancies that could be put down to shoplifters, but there are genuinely no shoplifters in Enderford, it simply doesn’t happen.

By the end of that first day back at work, Martha discovers that her business is down nearly ￡3,000.

Three thousand pounds. It is all she can do not to run to the toilet and throw up.

Instead, she takes several deep breaths, takes screenshots of absolutely everything, then calls Grace.

Grace comes over that evening with wine.

She’s a business manager at the local primary school, so has a basic understanding of numbers and knows her way around a spreadsheet.

Martha can tell that Grace is yearning to uncover bad things about Alistair, to get some sort of momentum going toward Martha ending her marriage, moving on, cutting free, breaking out.

“You know,” says Grace, unscrewing the metal cap from the white wine, “I’m here for you. If you need somewhere to stay, need me to take Nala, the boys, if you need money, whatever it is—you know you only need to ask.”

Martha is slightly thrown by this pronouncement.

She’s not sure she would be able to say the same to anyone in her life.

She’s known Grace for ten years, since their children joined the local primary school on the same day.

She smiles at Grace and says, “Thank you. That’s amazing.

You’re amazing. But hopefully”—she musters a brave laugh—“it won’t come to that. ”

Grace gives her a look that says she doubts very much that Alistair is going to come out of the next hour or so in a good light.

“You need to go to an accountant. First thing,” says Grace, an hour and a half later. “And then you need to go to a lawyer. He’s been systematically embezzling for weeks, Martha. And he will continue to do so unless you tie a knot in things right now.”

Martha nods. She knows Grace is right. But she needs to talk to Alistair first. She needs to hear what he has to say for himself. She sends him a message after Grace has left.

I need to talk to you about the company. I’ll be seeing a lawyer tomorrow.

Ten minutes later, Al is on the phone.

“What! Martha! What on earth is going on?”

“What do you mean, what ?? Al, you have been away for seven days. I have not heard from you for four days. You left me alone on New Year’s Eve.

And today I discovered three thousand pounds missing from my company accounts.

And I know it was you, Al. I cannot believe you’d do something like that. To me. To the kids. To us .”

And then he is crying down the phone. “Oh God, Martha. I’m so sorry. I just… it’s this thing with my mother. And I couldn’t keep asking you for money. It’s all so expensive. I thought I could cover it myself, but I’ve already bled myself dry and—”

She cuts in over him. “Al. Your mother got ill just before Christmas. This has been going on for weeks. And it’s not just money—we’ve got missing stock, high-value things.

We’ve not paid bills, Al. You’ve signed off invoices to suppliers into cash payments that you’ve taken out of the business.

Three thousand pounds, Al. Who is it for? ”

She inhales and waits to hear what he has to say. She can hear his breath down the line, the softness of it. Her beautiful husband.

“Martha,” he says. “Listen, there are things, things about me, that you don’t know.

There are people in my life that I’ve never told you about.

Dangerous people. I made a lot of mistakes when I was younger, I trusted the wrong people.

I was on the run so many times. From crooks, from crazy exes, from my psycho fucking father.

My whole life I’ve been scared. I’ve been alone.

I’ve had to protect myself. Just me. Nobody else.

And then I met you and I felt safe for the first time in my life.

I felt like I wasn’t alone, I felt like I could breathe, Martha.

But when I left my job last month, I also felt…

adrift . Unsafe. Like I needed ballast. And the money—I wasn’t going to spend it, Martha, I was just going to hold on to it.

Just in case. In case you left me. In case something happened.

And then something did happen. My mother…

and now it’s all gone, and I am so, so sorry and I will find a way, I promise, to get it back.

Every last penny of it. I promise. But for now, I just really need to fix things up here.

I need to get my mother into a home. Sort out her finances.

And once that’s done, Martha, I can sell her house—it’s worth about four hundred K, maybe more.

I’m working on getting power of attorney before she has her official diagnosis.

I’m doing everything I can. And, Martha, please, please forgive me.

It was cowardly and terrible of me. It’s not who I am.

It really isn’t. Please, Martha, I want you to trust me.

I will never, ever let you down, never again. ”

And then, in the brief silence that follows Al’s last words, Martha hears something in the background of the call.

At first she thinks she’s imagined it, but then she knows exactly what it is.

Somewhere in the close vicinity of her husband who claims to be taking care of his mother in the West Midlands, there is a seagull cawing, and the fizz of waves hitting pebbles.