Free Before We Met: A Novel by Lucie Whitehouse

belittled. When they’d met, she’d been entirely independent, succeeding at her career, supporting herself financially, renting an apartment in the West Village and living a good life in one of the most expensive cities in the world while managing to save, too. Now look at her: unemployed, living in someone else’s house on someone else’s money, and not even being kept in the picture about that. She took a deep breath and felt the anger burn in her chest.
    And then there was the other big question: why did Mark need to extend the mortgage at all? Clearly there was something going on she didn’t know about. Was he in some sort of financial difficulty? She frowned. The idea seemed incredible. Mark wasn’t struggling – he couldn’t be. He earned a huge salary and lived like he did, albeit in the best of taste.
    She thought back over the past few weeks. Had anything changed? Was he behaving any differently, so far as money was concerned? No, she didn’t think so. True, he hadn’t been talking about anything expensive like updating the car or booking a holiday, but the way he spent money day to day was the same: they went out to dinner just as often and he took black cabs without thinking. He’d bought her one of the huge hand-tied bouquets of flowers from the stall near Aragon House last weekend and, having bought one herself for her mother’s birthday, Hannah knew how expensive those were. And he’d come home with two new shirts last week; if he were really under the financial cosh, would he still be shopping on Jermyn Street?
    Perhaps it wasn’t him who was in trouble but DataPro. Maybe he was borrowing money on his personal account to pump back into the business. How could she find out? She’d have to ask, and if he was hiding this new mortgage from her, he evidently didn’t want her to know. But again, she was confident that DataPro wasn’t in trouble. They’d talked a lot about the recession and how it was affecting the business, and he’d told her several times that things had slowed a bit but were steady. Though they weren’t huge accounts, they’d signed two new clients since the beginning of last month, and there was the prospect of the one in New York, too. ‘Flat but comfortable,’ was what Mark had said.
    She dropped the papers back into the box and leafed through the next few, seeing letters from Jupiter Asset Management and UBS, Santander and Kent Reliance. ‘ Dear Mr Reilly ,’ read the one from Santander. ‘ Thank you for your letter dated 24 October. I am pleased to confirm that following your request, your two-year fixed-rate savings account will now be closed and the final balance transferred to your linked bank account .’ She flicked back through the others and they all said the same: his accounts would be closed and their final balances – minus, in two cases, interest penalties for withdrawing the money before the end of fixed terms – would be transferred to his current account. None of the balances were huge by the standards of someone with a salary like his, but in total he would have about £73,000.
    Hannah experienced a wave of something close to nausea. What the hell was going on? What was he doing? Why was he marshalling all this money?
    Another woman , said the insidious mental voice, but she dismissed it. Why would he need to gather his money together if he were having an affair? It didn’t make sense. It does if he’s planning to leave , said the voice. Maybe he’s got a mistress and he’s going to use the money to buy another house, one where she can live and he can visit her until he’s summoned up the balls to leave you.
    Stop it – just stop it! This was insane – she was thinking like some sort of madwoman. Mark wasn’t having an affair; he didn’t have a mistress. A mistress, for Christ’s sake – what sort of concept was that, anyway? This was London in the twenty-first century, not Paris in the nineteenth. And Mark wouldn’t bother with a