Chapter 11: Paid

I wrote back to the solicitor at one minute past midnight.

From which account?

He didn't answer.

I sent Cian a screenshot instead, because he was the only person awake I wanted to show.

He answered inside a minute.

With what money? Cecily couldn't find four hundred thousand last week. I asked her, for the deal.

Then a second text.

Don't spend it yet.

I put the phone face down on the pillow and lay awake with his question.

At ten o'clock on the second of November I sat at Ottoline's kitchen table with my phone face down in front of me.

Ottoline had made a pot of coffee and put Cian's wine in the fridge "for emergencies of either kind".

The whippet had his chin on my foot.

"Turn it over," Ottoline said.

"In a minute."

"You've been saying that since nine."

I turned it over and opened my banking app.

I had to refresh it twice because my thumb kept missing.

The balance came up.

Four hundred and thirty-one thousand, eight hundred and twenty euro more than I'd had last night.

I sat and looked at the number. It didn't look like money. It looked like six years.

Ottoline came round the table and put her hand on my shoulder and squeezed once, hard.

Then she went to the fridge and took out the wine.

"It's half ten in the morning," I said.

"It's an emergency of the good kind." She poured two glasses. "To you, Nessa Bourke, who sat on a crate."

We clinked. The whippet thumped his tail.

I laughed and wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand.

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