A hundred and nine people had put money into something that paid returns out of what the next person put in.
And then he said the thing that stopped my hands.
“Your grandmother’s sixty-one thousand went in on the same three days as some fairly large subscriptions. Whoever moved hers wasn’t stealing it for himself. He was topping up a gap.”
Sixty-one thousand of a dead woman’s money was used to make three other people’s monthly statements look right.
And I sat at that table and thought about the hundred and nine. Some of whom I know. One of whom taught me A-level maths and is seventy-three.
I had spent three months thinking of this as a thing done to my family.
What I have had to take.
Three words in a kitchen in 2021.
Gran. Don’t.
That is the one. Not broken. Not barren. Not the flowers with the card.
