The Difference

The next morning, Emma met Calum at a café near Waverley Station. He was in his thirties and looked uncomfortable when she arrived. He put a folder on the table.

"I don't want you to write that the trust destroyed my life," he said. "It didn't. I finished my course. But I had to find the money myself."

Inside the folder were an award letter, a college invoice and two emails from the trust. The first email said that a payment was being processed. The second, sent months later, apologised for a delay.

"Did the college receive anything from the trust?" Emma asked.

"Not as far as I know. I paid the balance myself."

"Would you allow the college to confirm that from its records?"

"Yes, if they still have them."

Emma copied the dates and asked Calum to send the documents securely. She did not photograph anything without permission.

"Did you complain?" she asked.

"I went to the trust's office. They said the person dealing with my case had left. Nobody told me who it was."

"Was it Claire Morrison?"

"I don't know. I never met her."

A tram passed the window. Emma watched it for a moment. She wanted to connect Claire's disappearance to the scholarship problems. But wanting a connection did not make it real.

Back at her flat, she compared the two students' experiences. Ailsa had received less money than she had expected. Calum said the college had received nothing. Their situations were different, and both needed independent checks.

Emma prepared requests for the college's payment records, the trust's scholarship rules and any minutes from meetings where the programme had changed. She would also need to ask the trust for an explanation. Malcolm Vale was still its chairman, but she wanted clear facts before contacting him.

That evening, Ailsa sent a photograph of her award letter. The amount was described as a maximum, just as she had said. Yet one line caught Emma's attention: Payment schedule to be confirmed in writing by the trust's accounts office.

Ailsa said she had never received that schedule.

Emma could not be sure it had never existed. But she now had a specific document to ask about. Someone in the accounts office should know whether payment schedules had been prepared and where they were kept.

She opened a new notebook page and wrote: Who approved the payments? Who kept the records?

Underneath, she added the name she had seen in the old accounts.

Fiona Kerr.

The next day, she would look for a reliable business contact number.