The Victim

by Jane Bidder

  Georgina with a G.

  Jeorgina with a J, on the front.

  Why hadn’t she noticed when it had arrived the previous week to replace the old?

  ‘I will still be covered, won’t I?’ she gabbled.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t answer that until I’ve made further enquiries.’

  Georgie’s hands began to sweat on the phone. ‘But it’s not my fault if some idiot has made a mistake!’

  Even as she spoke, she realised she was hardly endearing herself to the authorities. For that’s what this woman was! Someone who held the upper hand; the other cards, so to speak. The pun might have been funny at any other time.

  ‘Just a minute,’ she said suddenly. ‘You said my card had been used. Presumably that was on the phone?’

  ‘I can confirm that it was not a telephone transaction,’ replied the voice primly.

  Not? ‘Then it was used in person?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  So why hadn’t she said so in the first place? Georgie bit back the question. Far better to get this woman on side, like she did with tricky clients. ‘I’m so sorry if I sound snappy. It’s just that this is a really worrying time for me.’

  The voice softened. ‘I understand that.’

  ‘Can you tell me what time the card was used and when?’

  ‘4 p.m. in Croydon and then again at 10.50 p.m. in central London.’

  ‘But I had the card on me then! I got it out to read the number over the phone when I cancelled it.’

  The voice was low. Warning. ‘I’m afraid it’s possible for cards to be duplicated if they are out of someone’s possession, even for a short time.’

  Three hours. That’s how long she’d been at the Hon. Mrs R-R’s. Add another hour by the time she’d got back home to find her purse sitting ‘safely’ inside her bag at home. Was that long enough for someone to make a copy?

  ‘Like I said, Mrs Hamilton, we will look into it and be in touch.’

  Helplessly, she made her way back to the kitchen. Something had changed. Ellie was sitting at the table, her arms folded, looking smug. Sam seemed almost – but not quite – repentant. ‘My business account has been looted,’ said Georgie flatly. ‘And apparently it might be my fault because the name was misspelt on the new card and I didn’t check.’

  She sat down heavily. Beano – their much-loved dog whom they’d got from a rescue place soon after arriving ‘home’ – started madly licking her hand as if sensing her distress. ‘It was used – in person – by someone in Croydon and then again in central London last night, when we were all home.’

  ‘See?’ Ellie leaped to her feet. ‘Then it couldn’t have been me.’

  ‘The woman said people could duplicate cards,’ added Georgie reluctantly.

  ‘So you don’t believe me either?’

  ‘I didn’t say that …’

  Ellie was brandishing the local paper in front of her face. ‘Look! Some kid has been done for nicking a car. He apparently made a key to get into it and then used the Sat Nav to park it outside the owner’s house. Did it for kicks. Now one’s done it, others are going to do the same. Even Dad concedes that. Maybe that’s what happened to you.’

  Could that really be possible?

  They both stared at her. Ellie furious. Sam resigned. It had been like that at the beginning, Georgie suddenly remembered – back in the early days when it had taken her time to understand how a small child ticked. It was only in the teenage years that Georgie had come through – able to understand adolescent angst in a way that Sam (despite his own issues with his mother) had been unable to.

  But that didn’t matter. Not now. There were more important things to deal with.

  ‘I’m calling the police.’ Sam’s voice echoed the same thought in her head.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’ Even as she spoke, Georgie realised it sounded odd.

  ‘Dad’s right,’ said Ellie tetchily.

  There was nothing for it. It took almost as long to get through as it did to the credit card people. Still, this was scarcely a 999 call. Briefly, Georgie explained what had happened.

  ‘Nothing we can do about the credit cards, Madam,’ said the kind of voice you might expect behind a teacher’s desk from her days at school. ‘But we’ll file a report on the car. Registration number? Name of registered owner?’

  So many details. So much to remember. Such a vast amount of personal data in order to live! No wonder some people just gave up and led simple lives. An institution, at this very moment, seemed quite appealing. Someone else to make all the decisions. Someone who would make sure that her secret was safe. It would be all too easy for one check to lead to another …

  Thank heavens her passport hadn’t been in the bag.

  ‘I’m going out.’ Ellie’s eyes flashed.

  Georgie felt a tremor of alarm. ‘Where?’

  ‘To steal another car.’

  Sam groaned. ‘That’s not funny. I said I was sorry.’

  ‘No you didn’t.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry now.’

  ‘Too little, too late. You forget, Dad, I’m studying people like you at the moment. BMs, we call them. Bloody Minded. Unable to see further than their own noses.’

  Georgie had to hurry to catch up with her daughter by the front door. ‘Did you borrow anything from my bag?’ she whispered. ‘Like a shell?’

  ‘A shell?’ Her daughter gave her a strange look. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Ellie’s face was all the answer she needed. If anyone had taken it, it wasn’t her daughter. Perhaps she’d dropped it somehow. The thought made her heart sink with self-reproach.

  ‘Don’t blame Dad,’ she said to Ellie. ‘It’s difficult for him.’

  Those beautiful almond-shaped eyes swallowed her up, taking her back to that small child who’d arrived so unexpectedly. ‘It’s not Dad I’m disappointed with. It’s you.’

  Those eyes flickered. ‘For a moment, you doubted me too. Don’t deny it. I saw it on your face.’ Her hand reached out and touched hers. ‘But there’s something else troubling you, isn’t there? Why didn’t you want to call the police?’

  How long had she been preparing for this question, or something like it? Why hadn’t she told Sam the truth all those years ago? How could she have hidden something so big for so long?

  In a way, it would be a relief to shed the burden. To come clean and take the consequences, come what may. ‘Actually,’ she began, shepherding her daughter back into the privacy of the house, but before she could close the door, there was the sound of a car outside.

  ‘Mrs Hamilton!’

  This time her name was said with a joviality that, after all their sessions, would surely earn the right to use a more informal address. After all, the computer man had come highly recommended by Jo, who’d used him to set up her laptop connections in the shop. Some of the others in the local Women’s Business Network used him too.

  ‘Sorry I’m early but I had a cancellation!’ The small, bearded man beamed at her. Dimly, Georgie recalled the appointment which was written in her beautifully-formed calligraphy style in the diary.

  ‘I was going to run a check on your hard drive. Remember? See why it’s running so slowly.’

  Ellie was already by the gate now, heading down the road. At least her daughter’s absence had got her off the hook. For the time being.

  ‘Please, come in,’ she said to the computer man. ‘Just go straight to the office. I’ll be there in a minute.’

  At the same time, the landline rang. This was getting mental.

  ‘Georgie?’

  ‘Jo! I was just thinking about you.’

  ‘Have you got a second?’

  Something was up. She could sense it.

  ‘Remember when I paid you for the job directly into your bank account?’

  She remembered the job all right. Jo had wanted a new look for the shop and Georgie’s idea of differently coloured themed walls had proved
quite a lure for customers. She’d also got some editorial in Shop Beautiful as a result, great stuff for her portfolio.

  In return, Jo had given her a heavy discount for a beautiful pine wardrobe that she’d bought for Ellie.

  ‘Yes. I think so …’

  ‘My bank has just rung. Apparently you’ve been taking money out of my account.’

  ‘Me?’ Georgie froze. ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘Well, I knew you wouldn’t have done it.’ Jo’s voice was warily reassuring. ‘But someone posing as you has done it. Don’t ask me how. But I need to warn you that my bank’s security people are going to be in touch if they haven’t already.’

  ‘Is there any way that someone else could have got my bank details from you?’ continued Jo tightly. ‘Remember when you bought the wardrobe? I asked you to pay it into my private account because of the discount.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do. But …’

  Oh my God.

  ‘What?’

  The notebook. The small one that she kept for customer details together with their bank account details. That had been in her bag too. Breaking out into a sweat, Georgie dashed back up the stairs to rifle through her bag again.

  It wasn’t there.

  ‘Georgie? Georgie? Can you hear me?’

  Make a paper note, the computer man had advised during his last visit. ‘Not that I want to put myself out of business but sometimes the old-fashioned ways are best.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said numbly. ‘I’m still here.’

  FIVE

  I like this bit. Using the card, that is. I don’t get to keep all the cash, of course. Only some of it, though they’re not to know that.

  After all, I’ve got to have something for taking chances.

  Between you and me, I’d do it anyway. There’s something about putting a stolen card in the machine and putting in the pin number that gives me a real thrill.

  It’s almost addictive. Like walking along a cliff edge. Wondering if someone is going to jump out and say ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  Some people live on adrenaline. That’s me. Otherwise, life just gets too boring. Who wants a nine to five job? It would drive me nuts.

  Hacking is a great career. You just have to know what you’re doing.

  I started off on the bottom level, like the kid who picked up the key. That was the stage I was at a few years ago. But then they realised I was a bit of a geek and got me onto the copying stage instead.

  All you need is the right machine and there you go. Different card. Same number. Pretty impossible to tell the difference. Don’t ask me how we get the pin. One of the other lads does that.

  ‘What did you do before this?’ you might ask me if I was on the telly.

  Funnily enough, I tried to get straight when I was sixteen. It was when my mate got six years. I thought, ‘Do I really want this?’ So I got a job at the bookies, but it was always the same. Miserable old men coming in and hoping that their life would change if they got a winner. When they did, they’d only bet it all again and then lose.

  Did my head in, it did.

  In between punters, I began playing round with the computer. Then one day, this bloke parked his Merc on a double yellow outside and came in to place a bet.

  He won a grand. But he didn’t get all excited. He just acted as though it was his right. That impressed me, it did.

  The next Tuesday, at 3 p.m. – always the time when my boss left me in charge – he placed another bet. Here we go again, I thought. Stupid idiot. You’ll only lose everything you got last time.

  But he didn’t. He won two grand this time.

  Once more, he acted like it was nothing special. So I got straight back on the computer. Like I said, I’ve always been good with figures. When he came in the next week, I told him that I’d worked out how he’d done it and I was going to shop him.

  It wasn’t true of course. It’s not as simple as that. My guess was that he’d bribed the other jockey – the one that was tipped to win – but I couldn’t prove it.

  I could bluff, mind you.

  ‘Shop me?’ He’d laughed, fingering the gold chain round his neck. His eyes narrowed. ‘I could do the same to you. I’ve watched you cream off the odd tenner here and there. My mates have been observing you, see.’

  That threw me. It was more than the odd tenner, you see. Maybe he was bluffing too. Maybe not.

  Then he ran a finger down the side of his nose. Did I mention it was crooked? The way he touched it made me think that if I didn’t play fair, I might end up with broken nose too.

  ‘Why don’t you come and work for me and we’ll call it quits?’

  And that’s how it all started.

  SIX

  Jo, who was always nice to everyone, was blanking her.

  Not surprising, really. Not after Georgie had had to tell her that someone had stolen the book with all her clients’ banking details. It was just one more puzzle in this increasingly complex nightmare.

  ‘Why did you leave it in the car?’ her friend had demanded when Georgie had gone down to the shop to explain the theft face to face. Jo pressed her lips together in distress. Ironically, she was wearing a pretty apricot shade of lipstick which, only the other week, Georgie had helped her choose.

  ‘I was carrying too much.’ It seemed silly when she said it out loud. ‘I was worried about dropping it.’

  Jo took off her glasses, rubbed them furiously against her Phase Eight silk top as if erasing Georgie’s crime, and then replaced them. ‘It might have been better if you had. Why didn’t you store it on the computer instead?’

  You couldn’t win, thought Georgie miserably as she apologised for the umpteenth time, horribly aware that the bunch of stargazers she’d brought with her were a pretty pathetic apology. If you kept everything electronically, you could lose it if your computer messed up.

  But if you wrote them down, someone could take them. Her friend Jo wouldn’t be the only one, the police had warned her when she’d finally summoned up the courage to call them. She’d probably find that other clients would have their accounts tapped into.

  ‘Best ring each one of them,’ the officer had told her on the phone. ‘Give them a chance to change their details before something happens – if it hasn’t already.’

  So before calling in on Jo, she’d called each customer on her newly bought phone (Ellie had helped her go back through her website’s emails to find the details) to explain what had happened.

  Reactions varied from confused (‘What should I do?’) to downright angry (‘If I’d known this was going to happen, I would have used one of the proper firms in town.’)

  Only one person understood: one of the girls in their Business Network group whose laptop had been hacked. ‘It’s a horrible thing. You’ll probably find you lose clients, I’m afraid. Bit of a learning curve. So unfair too. After all, it wasn’t my fault.’

  But this was hers, Georgie told herself as she finally finished making all those calls. She had to take the blame for her stolen identity.

  After all, hadn’t she committed a similar crime herself, all those years ago?

  She’d been eighteen. Nearly nineteen. Not much younger, really, than Ellie. Rebellious and deeply resentful of life in general. In particular of her mother.

  ‘You always said you’d never marry again after Dad,’ she had raged when Mum had announced, out of the blue, that she’d been seeing ‘someone else’ and that she hoped Ellie would be happy for her.

  ‘Your father died before you were born.’ Her mother’s strong Yorkshire accent sliced through the furious air. As if she needed reminding! Hadn’t she felt different from all the other girls over the years? ‘Don’t I deserve some happiness now?’

  Georgie had gripped the side of the cheap yellow plastic kitchen table to steady herself. It was stacked with the remainder of her A-level textbooks. At least Mum had had the decency to drop the bombshell after the exams. The worst thing was that she had a point. Why should
she be alone for ever? Even so …

  ‘I’m not going to college if you marry some stranger,’ she found herself saying.

  Her mother’s eyes widened in shock. Georgie felt an unpleasant flash of pleasure. All her mother had ever wanted was for her daughter to get a degree like the girl next door. Well, it was all changing now.

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ Mum had said, moving towards her.

  ‘Don’t try and touch me! Yes I do.’

  In truth, Georgie had simply intended to shock when she’d first made her threat. But now it was snowballing and she couldn’t take it back.

  Mum was folding her arms now, shooting her a defiant expression. So much for the conciliatory approach. ‘What will you do then?’

  Georgie looked away. As she did so, her eye caught the cover of her Geography textbook. Asia sprawled out across the page in vibrant pinks and blues. Colours had always grabbed her more than words. It was why she’d been insistent on studying fashion instead of a ‘more academic subject’, as her teachers had put it.

  ‘I’ll go to Thailand,’ she said with more certainty than she felt inside. ‘For a gap year.’

  ‘A gap year?’

  The apprehension in her mother’s voice was almost worth it. Girls in her neighbourhood didn’t do gap years. They either went straight to work after school or straight to college. No luxury of lounging around for ‘people like them’.

  ‘Why not?’

  Her mother had turned her back now and was fussing with the tea towels; neatly folding them as if the action might sort out her daughter at the same time. ‘Who’s going to pay for that then?’

  ‘I’ll use the money Gran left me.’

  ‘That’s for emergencies.’

  Georgie snorted. ‘What do you think this is?

  Then she slammed the door behind her in what felt like a very satisfactory exit.

  It took a while to sort out things like tickets and visas: a period during which Georgie knew she was doing the right thing. You only had to look at the arrogant, cocky man whom her mother was planning on marrying (a salesman!), to know that she couldn’t have stood living there another day.