‘Please, let her finish.’
All eyes were on her again. ‘The thing is, working through the figures, I noticed something.’ Abigail didn’t know how to put this. ‘There’s an … anomaly.’
‘An anomaly,’ Oliver repeated.
‘What do you mean?’
Once more, she pointed at the screen. This time, Oliver pulled up a chair next to her, appearing more receptive to what she had to say. ‘You see, these figures don’t add up.’ Abigail glanced at him. ‘Whoever set this up wasn’t using the program correctly.’
Oliver looked at her. ‘Are you saying the accounts are wrong?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘We used to have an accountant …’ Oliver paused, glancing at his sister. ‘He left.’ He shifted his attention to the laptop screen. ‘I’ve been trying to do the accounts myself.’
‘Yeah, look how that’s working out,’ Carys said sarcastically.
Oliver ignored her. ‘So, are you saying the accountant was fiddling the books, stealing—’
Abigail shook her head. ‘Oh, no, nothing like that. If he or she had been doing their job properly, your figures would have looked a lot healthier.’
‘The accounts are better than expected?’ Lord Somerville asked.
Abigail turned in her chair. ‘Yes, absolutely.’ She heard a collective sigh.
Carys quipped, ‘Well, I suppose you must have been doing something right, Ollie.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Abigail said, turning to him. ‘It’s the way the accountant had set up the spreadsheet. I’m afraid it wasn’t quite right.’
Still sceptical, he replied, ‘Well, how do we know the changes you’ve made are correct?’
She shrugged. ‘I presume you’re going to hire someone else, so you’ll get a second opinion.’
‘That won’t be necessary.’ Lord Somerville walked around the desk to stand beside Carys’s chair. ‘You’re hired.’
Oliver turned to his father. ‘Now, just wait one minute. We can’t hire her. She’s not even qualified. She said it herself.’
‘And neither were you, Oliver, but you insisted on doing it yourself. She’s going to sit her last exam soon.’ Lord Somerville shifted his attention to Abigail, raising his eyebrows as if to say,That is the case, isn’t it?
Abigail looked from Carys to Lord Somerville. Since Toby’s death and the start of the compassionate leave from her job, her plans for her future had gone out of the window, because she didn’t feel she had a future without him. But now she was on her own, she knew she had to make plans. And she still needed to earn a living. Abigail nodded her head at the suggestion she was going to complete her exams.
‘That’s settled, then.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
Abigail looked at Oliver and thought the same thing. ‘I live in London. I only came down here to—’ She stopped short of telling them she was there sorting out Daphne’s cottage. She was still planning to put it on the market.
Lord Somerville said, ‘Well, perhaps this will change your mind and encourage you to stay.’
Abigail shot him a look. He wasn’t the first person to try to encourage her not to return to London. She was thinking of Lili as she looked around the study and caught Carys smiling. Oliver, on the other hand, was not. ‘I think it should be under a trial period.’
He looked at his son. ‘Alright, agreed.’
Abigail looked from one to the other. Hadn’t they heard what she’d just said? She was about to tell them it just wasn’t possible. She would be leaving soon. Then she had a thought. Why not? She was on compassionate leave for as long as it took. In fact, technically she was no longer on compassionate leave. They were keeping her job open, should she return. But as of now, if she decided not to go back to her old job, she was unemployed.
Toby had been right: she needed a purpose. And just then, her purpose was to find out why a stranger had put that cottage into a trust for him. She knew that some people might say,what does it matter?But it had mattered to Toby, which was why he’d ordered that DNA test. That reminded Abigail: she needed to visit his parents. If it had been important to him to find out, then it was important to her. She knew that in a few days, Emily would be back on her feet and would take the cleaning job over again. Unless Lili gave Abigail a job on the landscaping project, working in the grounds, she would most likely be leaving Somerville Hall very shortly. She didn’t want that. She wanted to find out more about the Somervilles – more about Daphne.
Lord Somerville was sitting next to Carys, looking at Abigail expectantly. Oliver walked around the desk and joined his father and Carys, standing between their chairs. He folded his arms. ‘Well?’