She flicked through her diary, looking for her internet banking details. She never used it. She had the debit card for day-to-day expenses and all their bills were set up to be direct payments. What did she need with internet banking?

When she found the login and password, disguised as a phone number, she loaded the bank’s site. The little red circle spun round as she waited and then she pulled up their joint account.

She frowned. Maybe she was looking at the wrong page. No. She was in the right section. But that couldn’t be right. There should have been something in the vicinity of twenty thousand dollars in there. But she looked at the screen trying to compute the information in front of her.

The balance of the account was only five hundred dollars. Where had their money gone?

Nicky tried ringing Mark for the fourth time. No answer. She sent another text and tried to make it sound more urgent without sounding too panicky. The news had been full of stories lately about cybercrimes and identity theft. She felt sick in her stomach at the thought.

After what felt like hours, he finally arrived home.

‘Honey, something terrible’s happened. Someone’s hacked into our account and taken our money.’ She ran up to him.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I wanted to do something nice for your birthday …’ her words spilled forth desperately as she tried to calm her fear. ‘We need to call the bank.’

Mark sat down on the sofa and patted the cushion next to him. Nicky lowered herself beside him. Why was he being so calm about this?

‘Nicky, our money is perfectly safe. I transferred it into a high-interest bearing account. So we can get that deposit sooner. We only keep enough in that account now for daily expenses.’

‘What? When did that happen?’

He patted her knee. ‘When we first discussed your prize money. I told you Gregory had a financial adviser. He said this was the best way to do it.’

Nicky racked her brain, trying to recall the discussion they first had about it. All she could remember, though, was leaving it up to Mark to organise.

He frowned. ‘The high-interest account isn’t locked. We can transfer money back anytime we like.’

‘How do I do that?’

‘Well, we have to go through the financial adviser. But with a bit of notice he can do it. There’s plenty of money in my account to pay for a holiday though.’

‘Oh. But I wanted to do this for you. Use my money.’

Mark took her hands in his. ‘Nicky, you seem to keep forgetting we’re engaged. There’s no mine or yours. It’s all ours.’

Nicky shrugged. It wasn’t quite the same.