The Guilty Couple(78)
When Olivia returned from Paris a couple of days later Dominic answered her questions: why did they have a new freezer? (The old one had broken.) Where was the rug? (He’d spilled red wine on it and sent it to be dry cleaned.) It was almost too easy, and the plan’s loop closed when he got Dani on board.
‘Grace!’ Dominic shouts up the stairs now. ‘Come down with your suitcase, please. Don’t make me come up there!’
He reaches for Nancy’s suitcase so he can put it with his and grimaces as he lifts it. ‘What the hell have you got in here?’
Nancy smiles. ‘Half a million pounds.’
Startled, he puts the case back down. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘No.’ She shakes her head lightly. ‘It’s my insurance policy, in case they put a stop on the loans.’
‘And you expect to get this onto a plane? When they X-ray all the cases?’
‘The money’s vacuum-packed and hidden inside some clothes and coffee – to mask the smell from sniffer dogs.’
‘And you expect that to work?’
She shrugs. ‘I don’t see why not. I read about a woman who did something similar. The only reason she was stopped was because she took five cases and the customs official became suspicious. Who takes five cases on holiday? Stupid woman tried to smuggle nearly two million pounds.’
Dominic lays the suitcase flat on the ground and unzips it. ‘And you think you’ll get away with it?’
‘I don’t see why not. We’ll look like a lovely blended family going on holiday to Dubai.’
‘Without a return ticket!’ He flips back the lid of the suitcase and lifts the carefully folded clothes. His jaw drops. Other than thirty or so perforated coffee pods scattered around, the rest of the case is filled with bundles of fifty-pound notes. He’s never seen so much money in his life. He looks up at Nancy. ‘How did you manage to withdraw so much?’
She waves a hand through the air. ‘Does it really matter? Anyway, imagine the wedding dress I’ll be able to buy with that little lot!’
Dominic suppresses a shudder. If she thinks he’s marrying her she’s delusional. He knew, from the very first time he met Nancy – when Ian introduced her to him and Olivia eighteen months after Helena died – that she was attracted to him. She’d be telling a funny story to Olivia but her eyes would rest on him. When he went to the bar she followed, her hand resting on his bare arm longer than was socially acceptable as she told him she hadn’t expected Ian to have such an attractive friend. She was certainly beautiful, vivacious too, but he was still in love with Olivia, and loyal to Ian.
It had been a long time since Dominic had seen him so happy and there was no way he’d jeopardise a friendship that had endured for so long. Ian knew who he really was, and what he’d done, and he’d kept his mouth shut. That counted for a lot.
Later, when Dominic mentioned Nancy’s flirtatiousness, Ian laughed it off. ‘Harmless fun,’ he said. Dominic wasn’t sure he agreed.
A year after that first meeting, at Ian and Nancy’s wedding, a drunken Nancy begged a cigarette from Dominic and, hidden away from the other guests behind the marquee, told him she’d ‘married the wrong man’.
He didn’t tell Ian. It had always been just the two of them at uni, two ‘bros’ joined at the hip, drinking, laughing, a regular fixture in the student union bar. Then they’d met Jack. He was funny, charming, a risk-taker, like no one Dominic had ever met. He felt alive just being around the guy. Ian liked him too, for a while. He pulled away as Dominic and Jack grew closer. At the time Dom thought Ian was being antisocial, later he realised he was hurt. It took him eighteen months after his release from prison, and a lot of grovelling, to regain Ian’s trust and respect.
Sleeping with Nancy was a mistake. She’d made a move on him when he felt like a failure. He was working out at the gym but he was also drinking and eating too much, which had given him a paunch. He and Liv were bickering and they hadn’t slept together for months. Nancy made him feel alive, just like Jack had all those years earlier and, for the second time in Dominic’s life, he blocked Ian from his mind.
‘I think I should take half the money,’ he says now.
‘What?’ Nancy looks horrified. ‘No.’
‘It’ll be safer. If we split it the cash will be less noticeable in the X-ray machines.’ He reaches into the case for a wad of fifties then yanks out his hand as the lid is slapped down on his wrist.
Nancy pushes her face close to his. ‘That’s … not … happening.’ Anger flares in her eyes. ‘I don’t understand why still you don’t trust me, Dominic. I have done nothing but support you. I haven’t let you down or betrayed you once. Who was there for you when you lost everything on the stock market and you were too scared to tell Olivia that you’d emptied your savings accounts? And what about when Jack blackmailed you? Who talked you down when he threatened to tell your CEO that Dominic Sutherland – upstanding chartered surveyor, desperate to become a partner – was actually Matt Platt, convicted fraudster and a congenital liar?’ Her voice grows louder and shriller and her breath is hot on his face.
‘Keep your voice down!’ he hisses. ‘Grace will hear you.’
He can’t stand her screechy tone, the yellow crust of sleep in the inner corner of her eye or her taut lips pulled back from her teeth. He wants her to shut up, to vanish, to disappear in a puff of smoke, but Nancy keeps on talking, talking, talking.