The Liberation of Alice Love by Abby McDonald Page B

money back.”
    “And the rest of it?” Alice felt utterly useless.
    Julian gave her a reassuring hug. “I’ll get a copy of your report. We’ll find out exactly what’s been going on. Now, how about some tea? And I’m trying a new carrot cake, with nutmeg and cardamom. You can be my guinea pig.”
    Alice nodded limply, watching him move around her in a comforting bustle of activity. He was right. There was nothing else she could do right now but drown her sorrows in hot, sweet tea. But even that went against Alice’s every instinct, and as her body gave in to the wave of exhaustion sweeping through her, her mind was already searching for some kind of solution.
    She needed a plan.
    ***
    Julian set about using his accountant contacts to fast-track a copy of her credit report while Alice began poring over every fraud guide she could find. Work the next day was a blur, nothing but a vague memory of phone calls and conversations she forgot the minute she put the phone down, but the moment Vivienne waltzed off to dinner, she dashed home; meeting Julian at her flat to assemble every piece of paperwork she would need for her claims.
    “Bank statements, credit card bills, utilities…” Alice laid out the papers on her coffee table, next to the bottle of wine and homemade chocolate torte Julian had brought as comfort food. “What am I missing?”
    “Just this.” Julian came into her sitting room, bearing a corkscrew and thick sheaf of pages from her printer. “Miss Alice Love’s credit report, fresh off the presses.”
    “Pass me that.” She reached up. Julian held out the wine opener. “No, the other one.”
    “Not so fast.” He collapsed heavily on the sofa. “I should look first, find out what we’re dealing with. Some of the statements I see at work are all over the place.”
    “Fill me with confidence, why don’t you.” Alice took a large slice of cake, but her stomach was twisted too tightly with nerves. She picked at it, anxious. “Well? The bank said there had to be something going on for my score to have slipped so low.”
    Rodney had been flustered, yes, but on that he was certain. With a rating like hers, she’d be lucky to even get a tiny overdraft, let alone a hundred-thousand-pound mortgage. Somebody had taken another loan out in her name, and nobody had known the difference. Alice felt another surge of terror. There could be thousands more pounds of debt out there.
    “Hmm…” Julian frowned, flipping through the pages.
    “Is that a good ‘hmm’ or a bad ‘hmm’?” Alice watched him carefully, but the seconds ticked by without any further comment. “Please, Jules. I’m dying here!”
    He looked up. “Don’t panic,” he started, voice cautious.
    She panicked.
    “What? What does that mean?” Alice snatched the list from his hands. The very long list. She held her breath as she scanned the details. Names of banks and credit card companies jumped out at her: not just major ones, but firms with names like CreditLoans4U and BadCreditPlus. There were loans, and credit cards, and unauthorized overdrafts stretching back almost two months.
    “How much is it?” She gazed at the dense print, aghast. All of this, in her name!
    “We’ll start contacting the companies right away,” Julian told her in a low, soothing voice. “And inform them what’s happened. The sooner we get the process going, the better.”
    “But how much is it?” The numbers were blurring in front of her eyes.
    Julian sighed. “As far as I can tell, around sixty thousand pounds. So far.”
    Alice felt her mouth drop open.
    “I…You can’t…I don’t…!”
    “Like I said, we’ll straighten this out,” Julian told her, a reassuring hand on her arm. Alice struggled to listen, blood pounding in her ears. “I’ll find someone at my firm, or maybe Stefan knows something. But you should be prepared for it to take a while.”
    Alice could only whimper: “I think I need that corkscrew now.”
    ***
    “You know,