The Liberation of Alice Love by Abby McDonald

thousand pounds in that account!”
    He stared at her. The expression on Alice’s face must have been vivid enough to convince him, because suddenly, Mr. Weatherton gulped.
    “You’re…sure?” Their eyes met, a mirror of panic.
    “Oh, yes.” Alice nodded faintly. “It was my deposit, for the flat…” She trailed off, helpless.
    There was silence.
    “Wait here,” he ordered, lurching to his feet. Alice managed to obey him for all of five seconds before leaping up herself, following him across the branch floor.
    “It’s gone?” she exclaimed, her voice picking up volume now. Mr. Weatherton had seized control of somebody’s computer and was frantically clicking through the files. Alice felt dizzy. She gripped hold of the partition wall for support. “It was in my account and someone just…took it? Don’t you have security?” she demanded. “What about all those questions I have to answer just to talk about my balance?!”
    “Please, Ms. Love, if you could just stay calm and wait in my office!” Mr. Weatherton didn’t look particularly calm himself. In fact, a strange vein was bulging on the left side of his forehead.
    “But I don’t understand!” Alice repeated, louder. She was vaguely aware she sounded hysterical, but she was beyond caring. “Shouldn’t you have some kind of alert set up? Especially after my card fraud! How can someone access my account and take that much money without you knowing?”
    The amount flashed into her head, and Alice felt sick all over again. Oh, God. She let out a whimper.
    “Please, Ms. Love, give me a moment here.” Mr. Weatherton hurriedly summoned a pimply assistant and had him guide Alice back, away from the now-nervous-looking customers. She followed him to the small room, numb. She hadn’t checked her account the past few days, but why would she? Nobody logs on every night to make sure someone hasn’t stolen a vast amount of money; besides, the only problem she’d had was with a misplaced card and PIN, and that was over now, Ahmed at the call center had reassured her. Over. How was this even possible?
    “Can I, uh, get you anything?” The boy hovered awkwardly, and even though Alice shook her head, he reappeared a few moments later with a paper cup of cold water.
    She took it silently.
    Thirty two thousand pounds . Thirty two thousand pounds. The words spun around in her head so often, they began to lose all meaning. This wasn’t a shopping spree of lingerie or a shiny new iPod bought using her card. Alice didn’t even know how to picture that kind of money. It was nothing but numbers to her, black print on her mortgage agreement, but to whoever took it—that was money to them now. Real money.
    She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, but eventually Mr. Weatherton returned. Alice looked at him dully as he took a seat and nervously set about reshuffling his papers.
    “Well?” she asked, her earlier outrage fading to a chilled resignation. “Do you know what happened, Mr.—”
    “Call me Rodney.” He pulled at his tie, a sheen of sweat now coating his forehead.
    “Rodney,” she repeated quietly. Apparently they were now bonded by disaster. There was another pause.
    “It, uh, appears that the money was transferred by telephone.” Rodney’s disapproving demeanor was now limp, the expression in his eyes, defeated. It was hardly reassuring, Alice noted, as if from outside herself. “You—I mean, the caller identified themselves as you. They cleared all the usual security checks,” he added quickly, as if that somehow made it less of a monumental failing.
    “But…” Alice tried to reengage her brain. “Where did the money go? You must have some record of that, at least. Can’t you just…cancel the transaction?”
    Rodney exhaled. “They asked for priority handling, for convenience. The transfer cleared this morning.”
    Alice stared. It took them forever to process a simple check deposit, but that kind of money could disappear