Then I heard my name being called. It was Rosie, who ran the accounts. ‘Sandy? You OK?’

  Yeah, I’m fine, apart from my skin taking a walk around the block. ‘Yes, thanks, great! Just – a friend – teasing me!’

  ‘You sounded really distressed.’

  I owe a man who is threatening to have me skinned alive £150,000 that I don’t have, I’m about to leave my husband and I’ve just found out I’m pregnant. Should I be sounding distressed?

  ‘I’m fine, Rosie, thanks! Never better!’

  16

  Early July 2007 – Looking back

  The post in our road used to get delivered around 9.30 a.m. on weekdays, long after Roy and I had gone to work. So now, as I was only working part-time – on our fertility consultant’s orders – I was the one who got to it first.

  It used to be after I got back from the casino and before Roy was home, but now, since I’d been cleaned out – having gone all-in, as they call it in gambling speak, a week previously – I was home by 1.30 p.m. most days. The first thing I would do after scooping up the post and checking it for any nasty surprises was to take a Valium. I would be feeling better in minutes. Better, but full of shame, now it dawned on me that this was an addiction that was probably getting out of hand and couldn’t be good for my baby. It did, however, enable me to face the shit.

  The shit called Roel Albazi.

  And the problem of finding £150,000 to pay him. Without telling Roy. And without the benefit of a fairy godmother. It was time for action.

  It wasn’t going to come from remortgaging our house, for sure. So where on God’s earth was I going to find that kind of money? Of course, I should never have lost it, but then, Albazi should never have fed me all the loans he did. Probably, if I hadn’t been in some kind of altered reality, thanks to my messed-up mind at the time, I would never have let this happen. I did not have a clue what to do, I was terrified of Roy finding out and I was more scared than I’d ever been in my life. Albazi – and his goon – were making my life a waking hell.

  Two days ago, Albazi sent me a text. I wish I’d never opened it, because it shocked me in a way that nothing ever in my life had, before. His message read: Hey Sandy, just thought you’d like to see this video of a person me and my boss loaned money to, who failed to repay it. I’d hate this to happen to you, because you are such a nice person.

  I clicked on the website link. What I saw made me sick, and I mean physically sick – throw-up-in-the-bathroom sick. A man in his thirties, Hispanic-looking, lying on a bench, like one you’d find in a physiotherapist’s or chiropractor’s clinic. Except his hands and feet were bound. And he was naked. Someone, off-camera, began to slash him with a carving knife. I turned away, but – I don’t know how or why – I kept turning back, although I muted the sound to stop the screaming.

  I was terrified that, even if they didn’t come after me, what if they came after Roy? I wanted to tell Roy, but I was stupidly scared both of how he would react, but also of what might happen to him if he went after Albazi. I still loved Roy. I cared for him. None of this crap was his fault. He was the same Roy Grace I had married. He’d stayed the same, consistent, decent human being who genuinely cared about making the world a better place. But I was no longer the same Sandy Balkwill he had married. I wanted more than being the wife of a parochial Sussex homicide detective.

  And thanks to that, I was in deep trouble.

  I’d even googled to see if gambling debts were legal and learned that, if incurred through legal gambling, they are enforceable. I’d found several gambling debt support groups all offering advice, but none of it helped. I went as far as asking Becky for the phone number of a friend of hers who was a paralegal in a big law firm to see if she could help me, but I chickened out of calling her – I don’t know why, but all I can think, looking back, was that I was more scared of Roy finding out than I was of any retribution by Albazi.

  Sure, Mr Albazi, go ahead, torture me, kill me and solve all my problems in one go. Because, Mr Albazi, the money I owe you isn’t my only problem. There’s another big problem that makes me want to run away even more.

  This baby I am carrying. The baby I have wanted for so long – and yet I don’t know who the father is.

  17

  July 2007 – Looking back

  So, even though the money from my latest pay cheque was now in my bank account, and despite my growing anxiety over what I was going to do about my debt and the baby, I avoided the temptation to nip into the Casino d’Azur and try to improve on it. Instead, listening to the sensible voice in my head for once, I headed straight home from the surgery, stopping only to buy a tuna mayo wrap for my lunch at my favourite deli. Not that in those dark days I had any appetite at all. Food had become nothing more than fuel. I ate mechanically, to live.

  Arriving home around 1.30 p.m., I scooped up the mail from the floor, and sifted through it, standing up at the kitchen table. It was mostly bills and the usual rubbish – but among all the takeaway fliers, along with a renewal notice for our fridge warranty, was a plain envelope, classy paper, with my name typed. It caught my attention as it included a reference to my maiden name on the envelope.

  I opened it, quite carefully, but the first thing I saw as I opened the double-folded letter, on equally classy paper inside, was the name and address of a Brighton law firm. Hobart-Widders, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths.

  I instantly had a sinking feeling. Was I being sued? For the money I owed?

  Then I read on:

  Dear Mrs Grace (née Balkwill),

  I am writing to you on behalf of a law firm in Reutlingen, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, who have asked us to help trace you.

  They wish to inform you that you are a beneficiary in the estate of Frau Antje Frieburg, late of Gegesten 2, Mehen Strasse, Reutlingen.

  I would need you to please provide identification documentation to ensure we are corresponding with the right person before we can release further information or a copy of the will. I am sure you will understand this information is of a sensitive nature.

  We would require photo ID, such as a passport or photocard driving licence, and proof of your residential address, such as a recent utility bill or bank statement, ideally dated within the past three months. If it is inconvenient for you to attend our office in person in order for us to copy your ID and verify your identity, please let the undersigned know and we can make alternative arrangements.

  Yours faithfully

  Carolyn Smith, BA, LLB.

  I sat down and read the letter again. Then a third time. Several thoughts and questions were flying through my mind. The first was who the hell was Frau Antje Frieburg? Had the solicitors made an error and located the wrong beneficiary? And how much money might I have been left?

  I googled the name, but nothing came up that remotely matched. But as my mother’s parents were German, I figured if we did have a relative of this name, she would know. After some hesitation I called her.

  It wasn’t something I did that regularly, because, to be honest, calling my mother was never a great experience. I would always have to endure a litany of moans about something. Last time, a few weeks ago, it had been a list of all her ailments, followed by moans about her long wait for appointments with all the specialists she was certain she needed. It was followed by complaints about the Seaford bus service, about the rise in costs of just about everything, the weather, the paint flaking off their house a year after it had been repainted – by my father, to save money – and their car, falling to bits and my father too mean to replace it.

  It took a long time for her to answer and I expected it to go to the answer machine. Although it turned out it had long since ceased to work ever since my father, a serial bodger, had tried to fix something on the volume control. She was a little breathless and as joyless as usual at hearing me. She greeted me with, ‘I was in the garden, weeding. You cannot believe how the weeds come up this time of year.’

  ‘I have the same problem here,’ I said.

  ‘No, we have really bad weeds. We have particularly tough weeds in Seaford – they have to be resilient to cope with the corrosive sea air.’

  We actually lived closer to the sea than my mother and just a few miles along the coast, but I wasn’t interested in arguing about weeds. I was too excited by the letter, although I was trying not to get over-excited. ‘Does the name Antje Frieburg mean anything to you, Mum? If I’m pronouncing it correctly?’

  There was a long silence. I thought for a moment we’d been cut off or, as she was prone to do when annoyed about something, she’d just hung up. ‘What did you say?’ she asked, finally, her voice sounding a little shocked.

  ‘I asked if you knew the name Antje Frieburg – like, who she is?’

  ‘Antje Frieburg, did you say?’ She repeated the name slowly and disdainfully.

  ‘Yes.’

  There was another long silence. I finally broke it by asking, ‘Do you – did you – know her, Mum?’

  ‘Why in God’s name are you asking me about that bloody bitch?’

  18

  July 2007 – Looking back

  Two hours later, I entered the rather sterile first-floor reception area of the West Street offices of solicitors Hobart-Widders. The solicitor had a brief gap in her afternoon appointments, due to a cancellation. In my handbag I had my birth certificate, marriage certificate, passport, driving licence, a week-old electricity bill and our quarterly council tax demand, for belt and braces.

  Carolyn Smith was on the phone, I was told by the receptionist. Her assistant would be along in a minute – meanwhile I was directed to take a seat. I perched on a small, semi-circular sofa, with a coffee table with several magazines laid out, as well as today’s Argus. But my head was buzzing too much to look at any of them, too much to focus on anything at this moment but the name, Antje Frieburg.

  Who had named me as a beneficiary in her will.

  And who made my mother spit blood.

  Turns out Antje Frieburg was her paternal aunt – one of her father’s three sisters. It took me a while to get it all out of my mother, because there was clearly a lot of anger and bad blood. She was the one member of her family who had done well – not just well, she was massively wealthy. She had married a German industrialist, a cousin of the Krupps family, and his family had amassed a vast fortune during the Second World War supplying steel to Hitler’s war effort.

  It wasn’t this my mother was angry about. It was that after she and my father had married, she had asked her aunt if she could lend them some money to buy a house in England, and her aunt had loftily replied that if she’d wanted to live in style, she should not have married a working-class aircraft fitter.

  But I barely heard the reason for my mother’s hatred of her aunt. What I had heard was the word industrialist.

  Industrialist!

  It was spinning in my mind! Like the wheels on a one-armed bandit.

  Kerchingggg!

  I did some more googling after ending my call with my mother. I linked the words Frieburg and industrialist, and now I got a hit!

  Claus Kauffman-Frieburg, married to Antje. He had died fifteen years ago. His company had factories in Kassell, Frankfurt am Main, Dusseldorf and Cologne, and their head office in Tübingen – close to Reutlingen.

  For the first time in a long while I was suddenly feeling optimistic and happy again. As I looked up Claus Kauffman-Frieburg on Wikipedia, he showed as, at the time of his death, the 231st richest man in Germany. I had been joking about a fairy godmother, but now it seemed maybe it wasn’t such a joke after all . . .

  Just how much had this aunt I had never heard of and never met left me? Enough to pay off odious Albazi and to set myself up in a new life somewhere abroad? Hastily, I start to think through all the options in my head. One of which is being able to pay off Albazi and stay with Roy, but I know it has gone too far for that. God, I have been so stupid. If only I’d realized I’d be getting some inheritance, I’d never have needed to get sucked into gambling. But then again, even if I’d not gambled and got into such a financial mess, there was still the mess I’d got into with Cassian. And this pregnancy. I know in my heart that, whatever money this inheritance is, I can’t go back to ‘normal’ with Roy. My life is now somewhere else far away. The prospect of this half terrifies me and half excites me. I try to focus.

  How much money did the 231st richest man in Germany leave his wife, Antje? Hundreds of millions? Why had she chosen to leave some of her wealth to me, having rejected my mother’s request for help all those years back? Perhaps she had no children and had simply decided to leave it all to more distant relatives.

  How much was coming to me? That was the burning question. Would there need to be protracted correspondence with her lawyers in Germany? Roel Albazi had given me two weeks to repay £150,000 before the interest kicked in again and the debt went up. Could I get Antje Frieburg’s inheritance within that time frame?

  And how fast could I find out just how much it was? I didn’t dare to try to guess, although I did wonder, with a tingle of excitement like a caffeine high, if it might be in the millions. I was going to find out soon enough.

  I looked up, suddenly, to see a young, smartly if conservatively dressed woman in her mid-twenties, standing in front of me. ‘Mrs Grace?’ she asked. ‘I’m Carolyn Smith’s assistant, Sonia Golding. Carolyn Smith can see you now.’

  19

  July 2007 – Looking back

  Carolyn Smith’s office was small, and made even smaller by several piles of documents tied with pink ribbons on the floor, a row of filing cabinets against one wall, and bookshelves laden with legal tomes on the other. The window looked out and down onto the constant flow of traffic up and down West Street, and I caught the smallest glimpse of the sea, a quarter of a mile to the south.

  The solicitor was a good-looking and friendly lady, with long brown hair. She was smartly dressed in a pale blue linen two-piece over a white blouse, and sat behind a glass-topped desk stacked with more documents, a computer and an elaborate phone-intercom. Facing the desk were two Perspex ghost chairs.

  A Law Society practising certificate hung on one otherwise bare wall, and arranged along a bookshelf I could see a photograph of a fit-looking man in his forties, with short, dark hair and dressed in tennis kit, brandishing a racquet, and another showing two blond, curly-haired teenage boys. A third was of a spaniel, face almost squished against the camera lens, that looked like it was laughing. Strange what one remembers.

  I read somewhere that years after you meet someone you might not remember their name, or even what they looked like, but you will always remember how they made you feel.

  ‘Gorgeous dog!’ I said.

  ‘That’s Jim,’ she replied. ‘The love of my life – well, next to my husband and my boys.’ She smiled warmly and held out her hand, shaking mine. ‘Very nice to meet you, Mrs Grace. So,’ she continued, seating herself behind her desk and moving into formal lawyer mode, ‘you’ve brought me some proof of ID?’

  Sitting opposite her, I opened my blue handbag – which looked a little like the expensive Mulberry bag I secretly craved – that Roy had bought me last Christmas, and produced the envelope containing the documents I’d brought along and passed them across the desk.

  She put on a pair of glasses and studied each one of them in turn, taking her time – taking so much time I began to wonder if I hadn’t brought what was needed. Then she called in her assistant and asked her to photocopy them, before looking back at me with a smile. ‘Good,’ she said, ‘that’s all perfect. I’ll return the originals to you in a minute. So now I can release this letter to you.’

  Opening a pink file folder on her desk, she took out a sealed envelope with a row of German stamps on the plain white envelope, and handed it to me.

  Typed on it was: Sandra Christina Grace, née Balkwill, Brighton, England.

  I looked at her. ‘Do you know what it says?’

  ‘I don’t,’ she replied. ‘My job was to ensure it went to the correct addressee – we had to carry out a number of checks to establish there is no other person with the same name and background as yourself. You don’t need to open it now – it’s your private letter, take it home with you and open it later if you’d prefer.’

  I was in turmoil. I desperately wanted to open it and yet, at the same time, I was scared. What if . . .?

  It was a question I hardly dared ask myself.

  What if it was a massive disappointment?

  Equally, what if it was a vast sum of money? I would need to hide that from Roy and I was sitting in front of someone who might be able to help me to do that – legally.

  The paper felt a little flimsy, like the airmail envelopes my mother used to correspond with her relatives in Germany, back in my childhood. But it also felt like there was more than just a single sheet inside. ‘I’d like to open it now,’ I said. ‘Just in case I need your assistance.’

  ‘Of course!’

  I began to tear at one corner of the envelope. But, as I did so, Carolyn Smith reached across her desk towards me, holding a slim, elegant silver paperknife.

  I took it from her and slit the envelope open with a shaking hand.

  20

  July 2007 – Looking back

  I was right, there wasn’t just one letter inside, there were two, stapled together.

  The first, written entirely in German, was on old-fashioned, embossed corporate letterhead, the law firm’s moniker, Fischer Volks, at the top, and two columns of names, all with letters after them, in much smaller print beneath. Evidently a substantial company, if these were all partners.

  I was about to hand it to Carolyn Smith when I realized the stapled attachment was a translation. Somewhat in pidgin English, I saw, as I began to read.