The meeting about the balance took place without Celia. Priya had asked for written explanations of several entries and wanted time to compare those explanations with the documents before another discussion.
Vivienne invited me to hear the general findings because I had helped collect the earlier correspondence. Priya agreed, provided no recipients’ personal details were discussed. I arrived with a notebook and left most of its pages empty.
“Start with what people think they know,” Priya said.
Vivienne sighed.
“They think somebody has emptied the account.”
“That isn’t what the statement shows.”
Priya placed a single sheet on the table. It contained three figures: income, recorded expenditure and remaining balance.
Twenty-four thousand six hundred pounds had come in over the eighteen-month period. The schedules described twenty-one thousand two hundred as spent. Three thousand four hundred remained.
Even I could subtract one from the other.
“So the summary matches,” Vivienne said.
“The arithmetic matches.”
“If a payment is described as a room booking, the balance falls whether a room was booked or not. A matching balance doesn’t establish that the description is true.”
Vivienne looked at the sheet as though it had become less familiar.
“I checked those numbers every month.”
“I can see that.”
“I thought that meant—”
She stopped. Priya waited without completing the sentence for her.
The review was following payments from the bank information to the schedules and then to supporting documents. Some were straightforward supplier payments. Others were reimbursements, where Celia said she had paid an expense herself before reclaiming it.
“Are those two flower purchases in the total?” I asked.
“Yes. I’m checking the reimbursements against Helen’s records.”
Vivienne stood to turn down the heating, although the room wasn’t hot.
“What about Beth’s application? We were told there had to be a wait.”
Priya turned to a second page, which she kept facing herself.
“I haven’t found a simple cash shortage explaining it. But I still need to establish the commitments at the time and what reason was actually given.”
“Celia said it needed sorting.”
“Do you have that in a message?”
Vivienne went to get her phone.
The delay gave me time to understand something unpleasant. An empty account would have been easy to point to. This required us to ask whether ordinary-looking help had happened at all.
Vivienne found the message. Priya asked her to forward it without cropping away the surrounding exchange. I looked out of the window while she did so.
“What can we tell donors?” Vivienne asked.
“That the review is in progress, the balance is confirmed for the statement date, and some expenditure needs verification. No names. No assurance that everything is fine.”
“They’ll hear that as an admission.”
“It’s an accurate description.”
She looked at me for support. I had given her too much of the wrong kind already.
“I would rather receive that than another message saying routine,” I said.
Vivienne nodded once, unhappily.
Priya gathered the pages. She was still waiting for confirmation from an accommodation supplier. Several claimed stays needed checking, and personal details would be handled through the authorised review rather than passed around the group.
“If the supplier doesn’t recognise them?” I asked.
“Then we establish exactly what they can and can’t confirm. We ask for any alternative explanation. We follow the money.”
She closed her folder.
At the door, Vivienne asked whether three thousand four hundred pounds was enough to keep the fund alive.
Priya considered the question.
“Money isn’t the only thing it needs.”
Vivienne remained beside the open door after Priya went to her car. She asked me whether I had understood the difference between the balance and the spending.
“I think so.”
“I did too. When she said it, it was obvious.”
She looked back towards the table where the monthly sheets had been stacked.
“I kept checking the part that gave me the answer I wanted.”
On my way home, Beth messaged to ask whether I had a spare folding clothes rail for a display rehearsal. I did. It was in the shed beneath several things Tom meant to repair.
I told her she could borrow it and went to dig it out.