The Missing Years

The class was real. On Thursday I enrolled in an evening course in accounting, paying from the account that still held my modest freelance editing income. I needed somewhere to go that did not depend on a lie.

Before the first session, Mara met me with a folder of public company records. She was a commercial researcher, not a detective, and she insisted on the difference.

“Nothing stolen,” she said. “Nothing guessed. Plenty unanswered.”

Adrian’s celebrated investment firm, Vale Meridian, had begun with a loan from a company called North Quay Holdings. North Quay’s first registered director was my father.

My father had died eight months before that loan was made.

The executor of his estate had been Daniel Pike.

I read the date again. Outside the café, students passed carrying portfolios, laughing with the heedless generosity of people who still believed an evening was a small thing.

“Dad told me he was lending money to a young developer,” I said. “He said the security was excellent.”

“Do you remember the name?”

“No.”

But I remembered Adrian at our first dinner, asking about my father’s work. I remembered how impressed he had seemed by a man who collected overdue rent in person and came home with jars of homemade jam instead.

Mara slid over another page. Adrian had been North Quay’s company secretary six months before he supposedly met me by accident at the station.

My coffee had gone cold. I drank it anyway.

“There could be explanations,” Mara said.

“Yes.” I folded the page. “I’m finished choosing them for him.”

At class, the tutor explained that a balance sheet was a statement at a particular moment, not a complete account of a business’s life. I wrote that down, although I already understood it in another way.

When I returned home, Adrian was waiting in the hall.

“Daniel says someone’s been requesting company records.”

“Are they secret?”

“Of course not.” His smile came quickly, then settled. “People get the wrong impression when they don’t understand structures.”

“Then you can explain them.”

“Not tonight.”

He kissed my forehead and went upstairs. I remained beside the coat rack, holding my workbook against my chest.

The conversation had told me very little about the accounts. It had told me exactly how quickly a public question reached him.