Page 63 of The New House

She shakes her head.

‘You may get lucky,’ I say. ‘They’ll probably recover some of the funds. Maybe not all of it, but—’

‘We got the money through from selling our house two weeks ago,’ she says, her voice awhisper. ‘I gave Felix that, too. All of it. I gave him everything.’

‘Jesus, Harper! What were youthinking?’

She raises her white face to me. ‘That’s why I have to find him. It could take years for creditors to get paid and even then they won’t get all of their money back. But if I can find him, if I cantalkto him – he can’t have spent it yet!’

I glance in my rearview mirror at the knot of reporters outside the Glass House.

The crowd is growing as news of the company’s collapse spreads; it’s not just photographers and journalists now, but a far sadder and more desperate demographic: ordinary people like Harper who’ve woken up to the realisation that every penny they’ve saved for their retirement, to buy their first house, to put their kids through college – it’s all gone.

Harper abruptly drops her feet to the floor of the car. ‘Heknew, didn’t he?’ she says. ‘He knew the company was going bankrupt when he took our money!’

Even though this is a mess entirely of her own making, I can’t help but feel sorry for her. When the Porters broke our housing chain, I didn’t tell Harper about the issues with Copper Beech at Stacey’s specific request, because she was worried about the legal implications of sharing insider information with me. There was no reason for me to tell Harper why the Porters had pulled out anyway – I couldn’t have known she’d try to blackmail Felix and get caught up in the Copper Beech collapse. But she’s just akid. I should have looked out for her.

‘What about Stacey?’ Harper says. ‘Did she know too?’

‘No,’ I say firmly.

Stacey knew the company was in trouble, of course, but I’m sure she had no idea about the ransacked pension fund. She wouldn’t have stood by and allowed Felix to defraud ordinary hardworking people.

‘You need to talk to alawyer,’ I tell Harper. ‘See if there’s any way you can claw some of this money back. It’s only been, what, a fortnight since you gave him the money from the sale of your house? It may just be sitting frozen in an account somewhere—’

‘I’m going to kill him,’ she cries suddenly.

I snap on the child locks from my side of the car. ‘No, you’re not,’ I say.

‘Unlock the door, Millie!’

‘Harper, there are a dozen journalists out there,’ I say calmly. ‘If you storm up to his house in front of them, it’ll be about five minutes before the whole world knows the financial mess you’re in. Is that the smartest business decision to make right now?’

She hesitates, her hand on the door handle.

‘You can spin this,’ I add. ‘Find a way to make it work for you. But you need to think about it with a cool head, Harper, not rush in half-cocked. Figure out a way to control the narrative.’

I’m not sure why I’m trying to save her from herself. The girl’s caused me nothing but trouble: she’s got the hots for my husband, tried to blackmail me over Peter, and has made a thorough nuisance of herself turning up at my office at all hours. And yet I feel oddly protective of her. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost say we were friends.

Harper abruptly lets go of the door handle and slumps back in her seat. ‘I want that bastard to pay,’ she mutters.

‘Trust me,’ I say, ‘you don’t need to worry about that.’

kyperlife

harper and kyle launch the copper bottom pledge campaign!

2,028,984 views513K3.4K

This has been, like, the worst week of my life and I’m so,sodevastated for everyone caught up in the Copper Beech scandal with us, especially all of you in our Kyper Nation, because it’s just, like,sucha betrayal, isn’t it? But I think it really helps when we all come together and share our pain, and I’m really trying to hold love in my heart right now because when someone does something this, like, super-mean, you know it must come from a place of hurt. But when I think of the damage Felix Porter has done – I mean, there’s old people out there who’ve saved all their lives and they’ve losteverything.

And if it wasn’t for our amazing sponsors I don’t know what we’d do, but we’re so lucky because they’ve beensosupportive and they’ve done just such an incredible thing and agreed to underwrite our losses so we can fight back and stand up for all ofyou.

So today me and Kyle are launching our Copper Bottom Pledge campaign! We want something good to come out of what’s happened and we’re calling on banks to pledge to protect ordinary, hardworking people like you. Because even when they don’t do anything actually illegal, these traders are basically playing the stock market like it’s some sort of casino and it’s all great and wonderful until something goes wrong, because it’syourmoney they’re gambling with, and they need to learn there areconsequences.

So what we think is, we think thesepeople shouldn’t be allowed to treat your pension like it’s their personal ATM! We want you tomake your voices heardand boycott banks who won’t sign up to our Pledge to make these men – and it’s nearly alwaysmen,isn’t it? – accountable. There are two million of you in our Kyper Nation and we canuse that power!

Like Kyle says, the least Felix Porter could do is stay and face us instead of running away like a total coward. He’s left all of us in the lurch and just disappeared and so now we wantyouto break the internet and help us track him down!

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