Escape for the Summer

Escape for the Summer

Ruth Saberton

Copyright

All characters, organisations and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 Ruth Saberton

Cover illustration copyright © Carrie May

Editor: Jane Griffiths

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Also by Ruth Saberton

Weight Till Christmas

Katy Carter Wants a Hero

Ellie Andrews Has Second Thoughts

Amber Scott is Starting Over

The Wedding Countdown

Writing as Jessica Fox

The One That Got Away

Eastern Promise

Hard to Get

Unlucky in Love

Always the Bride

Writing as Holly Cavendish

Looking for Fireworks

Writing as Georgie Carter

The Perfect Christmas

Chapter 1

You have insufficient funds to complete this transaction

Please contact your branch

The neon letters dancing across the cashpoint screen couldn’t have looked more complacent if they’d been flicking V-signs and pulling moonies. Although it was a sweltering June day, the kind when Londoners go mad picnicking in Hyde Park, Andi Evans was glacier cold. As the man queuing behind her cleared his throat irritably and the hot sunshine beat down, she stared at the screen in disbelief, her blood freezing from her insides out and spreading a chill of dread to the tips of her fingers and toes.

Insufficient funds?
How on earth could there be
insufficient funds
in her personal account? Andi was always in credit and, unlike her sister Angel (who was probably single-handedly to blame for the economic downturn), she was never overdrawn. Not even as a student and certainly not now as a fully paid-up member of the adult world with rent and bills to pay, as well as supporting an actor boyfriend who rested so frequently he could double for Sleeping Beauty. No, Andi Evans always kept on top of her finances. She
had
to.

So what on earth was going on?

Fearfully she glanced back at the screen just in case she had been mistaken. Maybe the pressure of work and an evil boss was getting to her more than she’d realised? That must be it. The strain of working so hard and this morning’s big row with her boyfriend, Tom, had all been too much. She was seeing things.

Whipping off her sunglasses, Andi gave her eyes a quick rub – but when she returned her attention to the screen the message was still there, a baleful lime rebuke that made her feel sick.

You have insufficient funds to complete this transaction

Andi shook her head. There was no way she could possibly be overdrawn. Today was payday and her salary, together with the five-hundred-pound buffer she always kept in the account, meant that she had more than enough cash. Add to this a thousand-pound over-draft facility and it was impossible that she didn’t have any money. What was going on?

With a growing sensation of dread she pressed the
balance only
key and, seconds later, had to clutch the ATM for support.

Over two grand in the red?

WTF?

Andi’s every cell was paralysed with disbelief. Had somebody cloned her card? Or hacked into her account? Maybe the cashpoint had made a mistake? Even machines were allowed off days, weren’t they?

“Excuse me, love, but some of us would actually like to use that machine before we die of old age.”

The impatient words snatched her back to the present. Mistake or not, she couldn’t spend the next hour staring at the ATM. Apart from the fact that this wouldn’t explain the mystery of her missing money, Andi only had thirty minutes before she was due back at her desk and slaving over the latest bunch of recalcitrant figures. She didn’t dare be so much as a nanosecond late back either, because then Zoe, her boss from hell, would have even more of an excuse to make her day a misery. There was no way Andi wanted to give her any extra ammunition. She wasn’t sure what she’d done to make her new boss hate her so much, but from the first day Zoe had tottered into the office on her skyscraper heels and with her Cheddar Gorge cleavage on display, she’d gone out of her way to make Andi’s life a misery. Fortunately Andi enjoyed her job, which made it bearable; accounting might sound dull to most people, but there was a simplicity and beauty to balancing figures that she found hugely satisfying. The other thing keeping her sane was the fun email friendship that she’d struck up with one of her latest clients. She’d been dealing with the finances for the flotation of the Internet security company he worked for, so they’d been in touch regularly. She didn’t know his real name only his title at the firm, which was Project Manager B.  Similarly he only knew her as AE, but it didn’t matter though; Andi enjoyed chatting with him online and PMB’s funny emails just about compensated for the endless sarcastic comments from her boss. It was rather sad that talking online to a total stranger was the highlight of her day, but Andi preferred not to dwell on that thought too much.

“Quit,” was always Angel’s answer whenever the topic of Andi’s unhappiness with her boss was raised. “Tell the silly old cow to stick it up her bum, and do something else. Take a chance.”

But Andi didn’t dare take a chance. Or more accurately she couldn’t afford to take a chance. She needed her job. Tom hadn’t worked since an episode of
Holby City
six months previously (he’d played a demanding patient, with alarming ease) and somebody had to pay the rent on the flat in Balham. And if that someone was her at the moment then she knew it wouldn’t be forever. Like Tom always said, his big break was probably only just around the corner. Just what and where this corner might be was something of a mystery, though. Andi had a nasty feeling that it could well be a corner very far away. Maybe Australia? Or perhaps on the moon? She was beginning to worry…

“I said, are you going to stand there all day, or what?” The man behind was really impatient now. “Some of us do have other things to do, you know!”

Muttering a hasty apology, Andi cancelled her transaction and retrieved the card. Maybe she’d accidentally used the wrong one? Perhaps Tom had placed his in her purse for safekeeping or something and because she was so stressed she’d used it by mistake? That would make sense. It wouldn’t be unlike Tom to have an overdraft that made the National Debt look small.

And neither would it be the first time he’d kept this from her…

Andi stepped aside and let the man behind take her place. Then, slowly and hopefully, she turned the card over. Please, please let it be Tom’s. They shared a PIN – to make things easier, Tom had argued. She lived with him, after all, and she loved him, didn’t she? Then what was there to worry about? Didn’t she trust him?

The sun was hot on her pale skin and heat rose from the pavement, but Andi remained icicle cold. Of course she trusted Tom. They’d had a row this morning, just a silly row because yet again he’d forgotten to pay their rent, but it hadn’t meant anything. He said he’d left the cash in a taxi and that people made silly mistakes all the time, which was fair enough. Look at her right now getting their cards confused. It was an easy mistake to make. She’d laugh about it in a minute.

Or at least she hoped she would.

The card lay flat in her palm.
Miss Miranda Evans
, it read. There was no mistaking it: her name was emblazoned right across the plastic in raised metallic letters. This Maestro card was undoubtedly hers, as was the emptied bank account.

Andi had the hideous sensation that she was descending very fast in a lift. This couldn’t be happening. She was good with money. Stingy and mean, Angel called her, but then Angel could afford to have a more carefree attitude when there was always a big sister on hand to bail her out. Who was there to rescue Andi if the rent was due and she’d blown it on a handbag instead? Or if she’d maxed out her credit cards and couldn’t make the minimum payment? Their father, Alex, lived abroad with his wife – he had sold the family home shortly after Andi and Angel’s mother had died – and couldn’t be expected to stump up money whenever Angel got economically sidetracked by a designer frock or the latest must-have shoes. Save a postcard or two, their father was pretty useless at keeping in touch. Not that this was anything unusual. He’d been exactly the same when his daughters were in boarding school. Holidays had been spent with housemistresses or the pitying mothers of friends; plays and prize-givings had seldom been attended, and birthdays had been rather sad affairs. Such was the life of children of a globetrotting diplomat. Andi and Angel’s father had paid the school fees, bought the tuck and then carried on as usual, moving from one glamorous embassy to another. No wonder she had, as Tom had put it earlier, “control issues”
when it came to money.

Do I have issues with finances?
wondered Andi. If she’d had any money left, a few sessions in The Priory might have helped answer this question. Now was probably not the best time to start thinking about her father. The point was that she only had herself to rely on. Nobody else was ever going to appear and bail her out; that was for certain. Unlike Angel, whom people seemed to fall over themselves to help, Andi had always been seen as the grown-up one, the sensible big sister who could always be relied upon. It made her feel about as exciting as a paint-drying test run in the Dulux factory, but old habits died hard. Today she had only taken a break from the office, and the huge pile of work that was going to take her half the night to complete, because Angel had phoned in floods of tears. Her latest credit card had been refused, Angel had told her, and she desperately needed some cash just to tide her over until payday. She was going to sell her Gucci lookalike bag on eBay tomorrow! She could pay Andi back by next week.
Please? Please!

As usual Andi had caved in. She’d promised her sister she’d help, just this once more, and had left her desk – much to the displeasure of Zoe who, pointedly eating her wrap at her desk, had warned Andi that she needed to be back on time. Running down the Haymarket in the blazing heat had been almost enough to give Andi a heart attack, but add to this the stress of finding all her money vanished into the ether and she was now a near-certain candidate for the local casualty department. Angel might have to wait. Normally the Bank of Big Sis
was pretty reliable but today it was unexpectedly closed for business. Maybe she’d check once more just in case it was a technical error?

Stepping back into the queue, Andi wondered whether Tom would know what was going on. Tom was charming and silver-tongued but he was as much use with finances as chocolate was for making teapots. In fact he was so ostrich-like when it came to ignoring calls from Barclaycard and hiding bank statements that she was considering buying him a pile of sand and suggesting he just stick his head in for a bit while she paid the bills again and cut up his cards. Fishing out her mobile from her leather satchel, Andi attempted to reach him, but her call went straight to answerphone. Typical. He was probably deep in
Loose Women
and oblivious. She’d try again later.

Andi sighed. Between them her sister and her boyfriend left her juggling everything. She was so good by now that Cirque du Soleil could have snapped her up, which was a far cheerier prospect than spending hours in the office with Zoe making snide comments and giving her the most difficult clients. Most of the time Andi credited herself with doing a pretty good job of holding everything together, but sometimes it might have been nice just to lean on somebody else and ask them to share the burden.

“All yours again,” said the man who’d stepped in front. He was stuffing twenties into a wallet. Andi’s heart plopped into her shoes. So the machine
was
dispensing money then. There went the vain hope that it was broken.

Tucking a stray curl of red hair behind her ears, she forced herself to take a deep breath and to start again. In went the card and with shaking hands Andi punched in her PIN. One balance request revealed exactly the same information as before; this was followed by a swift checking of her savings account and then her credit-card balance with paper slips, just to put the awful truth into writing.

Andi leaned against the wall to stop herself from falling over. It was at times like these she wished she hadn’t been such a swot at school, preferring to bury her nose in the library; if only she’d slunk around the back of the PE huts with Angel and the others to read illicit Jilly Coopers and learn to smoke. Andi had never had so much as a drag in her life but right now she could have killed for a nicotine hit.