The Second Mortgage

Nigel had always known that sooner or later Katherine would find a piece of paper and bring it to him. It had been that way since they were children. And she would look at him with that look — not angry. Worse. Disappointed in advance.

This time she brought a folder.

He was fixing the wobbly leg of Mum's armchair — just to keep his hands busy — when his sister laid a grey cardboard folder bearing the Hartwell Building Society logo on the floor in front of him.

"Found it in Mum's bureau," Katherine said. "Under the bank statements. A second mortgage on the house. A hundred and twenty thousand pounds. Taken out in March 2019."

Nigel put down the screwdriver.

"A second… what?"

"Monthly repayment — nine hundred and forty pounds," Katherine said evenly, as if reading out a report. "Her pension was thirteen hundred. For six years she gave the bank two-thirds of everything she had."

Florence came in with a cup of tea and stopped in the doorway.

"A hundred and twenty thousand," Nigel repeated. "On what?"

"That's what I wanted to ask you."

The silence in the room grew so complete that they could hear the clock ticking on the mantelpiece — the only one in the house still going.

"Me?" Nigel stood up. "Why me?"

"Because in the spring of 2019 you opened your workshop. Premises, machines, a van. Where did the money come from, Nige?"

"A small business loan from the bank. And Mum's two thousand — she offered, I didn't—"

"Two thousand." Katherine took a sheet covered in Mum's handwriting out of the folder. "'N. — 2000, for the van. Don't expect it back.' I found it in the same drawer. Mum wrote everything down, Nigel. Every pound. So explain to me why, right next to the note about your two thousand, there are papers for a hundred and twenty."

"I don't know!"

He shouted it so loudly that Florence flinched and spilled her tea.

Nigel knew how it looked. In the pocket of his jacket in the hall was a letter from Crossfield Credit with a red stripe across it: FINAL NOTICE. If Katherine saw it, no words in the world would explain anything.

"Kat," Florence said quietly. "You can't just—"

"I can. It's my job to see where money goes. Mum lived on four hundred pounds a month for six years, Flo. Wore the same coat for ten years. A hundred and twenty thousand went somewhere. Not on her."

"And so straight away it's me," Nigel said. "Of course. Who else? Nigel, who got thrown out of college. Nigel, who borrowed money for petrol. Nigel, who's forever 'finding himself.'"

"I never said that."

"You don't have to say it!" He felt his hands shaking and clenched them into fists so his sisters wouldn't see. "It's the way you look at me, Kat. Ever since I was twelve. You'd decided I'd robbed Mum before you even opened that folder."

Katherine didn't answer. And that was worse than any answer.

Florence stood between them, her hand wet with tea.

"Nige," she said carefully, and the carefulness made it worse, "just tell us. Did you know anything about this? Anything at all?"

Even her. Even little Flo, for whom he'd once built a three-storey doll's house with real windows that opened.

"No," Nigel said. "I didn't. But you don't seem to care."

He walked past them, took his jacket off the hook and went outside, leaving the door open behind him.

The van smelled of sawdust and cold coffee. He could just drive off. Forty minutes and he'd be in his flat above the workshop, where nobody looked at him like that.

He reread the letter from Crossfield Credit. Eleven thousand four hundred pounds. Thirty days. After that — court.

He wasn't a thief. He was just a coward who'd spent two years telling his mother everything was fine. And now that he'd been accused of something he hadn't done, the most painful part was that he really was guilty — just of something else.

Nigel put the letter away and was about to start the engine when something snagged in his memory. Like a splinter under a fingernail — small, but impossible to ignore.

March 2019.

He walked slowly back to the house. The kitchen light was still on; through the window he could see the stacks of envelopes on the table, sorted by Florence into years. A hundred letters to Thomas Banks.

Nigel went through the hall without taking off his boots and picked up the grey folder Katherine had left on the bureau. First page. The loan agreement. At the bottom, Mum's signature and the date.

"14 March 2019."

He stood in the middle of the sitting room staring at that date, and heard his sisters' footsteps slowly coming from the kitchen.

"Nige?" Katherine stopped in the doorway. "I… I wanted to—"

He held out the agreement without a word and pointed at the date.

Katherine looked. Went pale. Florence peered over her shoulder and gave a small gasp.

The fourteenth of March. The day Mum wrote to Thomas Banks every year.

"Whatever this is," Nigel said hoarsely, "the money didn't go on me. The money went on him."