Forty-seven thousand dollars went out of that account in five months.
And the breakfast was the point of it. Eight o’clock, dining room, relatives present. Amara was to be told in front of family that this was being done for her own protection, and I was to be handed a pen.
That is why my mother did not want her eating in there. You do not want the subject of the conversation at the table.
Amara had known since the October. Six weeks.
She did not tell me because of the deleted message and because she had worked out by then that anything she said to me on that phone got back to my mother inside an hour, and she had no idea how.
So she waited for the breakfast, because it was the first moment the three of them would have to put any of it in writing in front of witnesses.
She had the declined receipts. She had the account statements. She had a printout from the land registry in a cardboard box under a cot in a maid’s room.
PART 5 — EIGHT O’CLOCK
I did not go to bed that night. I sat in the utility room on an upturned crate until about half five.
