The Liberation of Alice Love(40)
Author: Abby McDonald

It was her money.

The miraculous donation, the anonymous gift—it was her money. It had to be. The amount and timing was too exact to be a coincidence; Ella had stolen her entire life savings—and donated it to charity.

Chapter Fourteen

Now that Alice knew her life savings weren’t lining the pockets of a criminal mastermind or being distributed around the luxury shops of the Caribbean, she felt a surprising relief. Ella may have stolen twice that amount again via the credit cards and bad loans she’d accumulated in Alice’s name, but that still seemed like paper money. The real funds—the money she’d earned and carefully saved, little by little for years—that money had gone somewhere good at least, and Ella had herself shown a glimmer of humanity in the process. Alice was even shocked to feel a sense of reassurance. All this time, she’d been shamed, even resentful, thinking she’d trusted someone without an ounce of truth or decency. This new discovery felt like a vindication. Ella’s moral compass may be decidedly skewed, but it existed. In fact, the more Alice thought about it, the more it seemed exactly like something Ella would do. She had always tried to find change for a Big Issue vendor and talked about volunteering, one day; a spontaneous gift to charity fit what Alice had managed to glean of her character perfectly—particularly if she wasn’t actually the one providing the funds.

But now that she knew what Nathan and the solicitor had yet to discover, Alice was faced with a new worry. Should she tell?

“Stefan, can I ask you something?” After mulling the issue for days, Alice made a tentative approach at breakfast. Stefan was back from his latest trip, drinking his coffee in the morning sun.

He lowered his newspaper. “Of course. What is it you want to know?”

Alice perched on the edge of a wrought-iron patio chair, her hands wrapped around a mug of herbal tea. “It’s about my money. What happens if Ella’s spent it all? Say she…bought something.” Alice paused. “Could the bank demand the money back—from whoever has it now, I mean?”

Stefan looked thoughtful. “If the vendor took the money in good faith—that is, they had no reason to suspect it was stolen—then no, I don’t think so. The account was insured, so the bank has to pay you regardless.”

Alice exhaled. Even if they traced that money back to Safe Haven, nobody would be demanding it back. She took a long sip of tea, relieved. Then Stefan continued, “They might take steps to recover it, however.”

Alice tried not to splutter. “What do you mean?”

“Well, there’s no specific legal basis for them to reclaim the money.” Stefan folded the business pages, inspired now by the hypothetical wranglings. “But they would certainly try—appealing to the vendor’s sense of duty, et cetera. And, I suppose, it could also fall to you, to decide whether you wanted to honor that transaction.”

“Oh,” Alice answered faintly. Safe Haven would insist on returning the money, she knew that for certain. Worthy, charitable organizations did not base their business on lies and fraud. So, the decision would be hers: take her savings back and ruin their plans to help the desperate victims of abuse or forfeit her hard-earned security and future. Alice gulped.

“What if you can’t track down the money?”

Stefan gave her a reassuring smile. “Like I said, the account is insured. The bank is doing everything they can to get around it, but don’t worry—they’ll replace the funds in the end.”

He went back to his newspaper, oblivious to her dilemma. Alice slowly sipped at her tea and took in this new irony. For weeks now, she’d been hoping fervently they would track down her missing money; now, she had to hope just as hard that they wouldn’t.

***

Lucky for her—and any impending moral dilemmas—Nathan was distracted by a multimillion-pound CEO embezzlement case and flew off to Switzerland the very next day. The bank, meanwhile, finally tired by the solicitor’s stern letters and photocopied, dated affidavits, conceded that Alice might just have been the innocent party in her theft. They were refunding the contents of her current account and would, at some nebulous point in the future, be restoring her savings to their former glory—provided that there were no “major developments” in the case.

Alice rejoiced. The specter of Safe Haven still loomed, uneasy on her conscience, but for the first time in weeks, she could treat Flora and Stefan to dinner, replace her worn summer raincoat, and even purchase a new dress in the sales. She had never been particularly extravagant, as Ella had commented on several occasions, but Alice’s spending habits since the fraud had been positively frugal; suddenly released from her careful budgeting, she had to admit, she went a little wild.

“Did you do something to your hair?” Julian met her at their usual Saturday morning rendezvous at a Primrose Hill deli. It had been a couple of weeks since they’d managed to catch up, Julian’s workload as heavy as Alice’s now that tax season was well under way. He paused by the cold display, assessing her. “You look…different?”

“Really? Hmm, it’s nothing new.” Alice reached past him for a bottle of juice, breezily dismissing his claim despite the fact that everything aside from her hair was, in fact, new. Her sundress was her favorite shade of navy, but it billowed to the floor from a beaded neckline in a goddesslike style, matched with a bright bracelet of thick-cut gemstones borrowed from Flora. Alice felt more elegant and feminine than ever before, thanks to the impulse purchases. She’d seen the item listed on Ella’s debit card, but it wasn’t until she was in French Connection, looking at the soft folds of fabric, that she’d been tempted to purchase it for herself. They shared a similar complexion, so of course, it suited her perfectly.

“Anyway, I was thinking we could do something else today.”

Julian looked surprised. “What do you mean? We always picnic if the weather’s good.”

“I know.” Alice followed him down the aisle of fresh-baked breads. “But there are lots of other things on today. I read about an art fair on Brick Lane, or there’s a festival at Southbank…”

“Maybe if we’d planned it.” Julian took a baguette and added it to his basket of cheese and olives. “But I told Yasmin where we’d be. She’s just checking some things at the office.”

“So text her; say to meet us somewhere else,” Alice protested, but Julian was already pondering the fresh salads, deep in thought. “Jules?” she prompted.