Pay dirt. That’s what runs through my mind as I reach in and pull out a sheaf of envelopes and paperwork. Ignoring the spiders that run out from under the racking, I scan the envelopes first – they are unopened, all in Caro’s name and appear to have come from the bank. I pause for a moment, listening hard, and once I’m sure I am alone, I run my fingernail under the flap and slide out the sheet of paper inside. It’s a bank statement, for an account in Caro’s name only, dated June last year. Rupert must have taken it from the pile of post and hidden it out here. I run my eyes down the columns, gasping when I see the balance. There is a vast amount of money in the account, but no transactions have taken place.

I turn to the pile of papers and start to flick through them. They are bank statements too, some for Caro’s account, and some for an account that is in both Rupert’s and Caro’s names. This account has a significant amount of money in it, too, but it’s not an account I recognize as Rupert using regularly. I start to organize them into date order, and I see that occasionally a lump sum will leave the joint account, transferred into an account I recognize as Rupert’s sole account. Nothing has left Caro’s account since the day of the party. I check every single one painstakingly, going through over two years’ worth of statements but there is nothing. Caro hasn’t touched her bank account since the day she walked out of the house. Rupert, however, has topped up his personal account – the one without my name on it – several times using their joint account.

Frowning, I lay the statements to one side, a flicker of doubt stirring low in my belly. Maybe I have it all wrong after all? But then who, if not Caro, has been doing all this? I dig deeper into the pile of paperwork, determined to leave no stone unturned. Just because she hasn’t used that bank account doesn’t mean she doesn’t have another one, one that she had been siphoning money into. Maybe, despite Rupert’s adamance that Caro would never have left him, she was planning to leave all along. The box seems to be never-ending, full of receipts, theatre tickets, formal correspondence and handwritten letters, that appear to be from a friend to Caro, written while they were at university. I resist the temptation to read them, not sure if my heart can take written descriptions of Rupert and Caro’s love affair, and I am ready to bundle everything back into the box when I see there is one final envelope at the bottom, the first spots of mildew starting to discolour it.