On a day so long ago that she could barely remember it, Claire’s phone began buzzing while she was folding towels in the upstairs bedroom. The first message was from her bank, asking her to confirm a login attempt. The second came from an old savings account she rarely used. The third was a code from an insurance portal she did not remember setting up.
At first, she blamed the usual things: leaked passwords, nuisance calls, the sort of digital mess everyone complained about but nobody understood. Colin came upstairs with two mugs of tea and told her exactly that. “It’ll be some scam,” he said, too quickly. “Don’t click anything. It should be okay.”
That should have reassured her. However, Colin was cautious by nature. He checked locks twice, kept receipts in labeled folders, and once returned a toaster because the plug looked “slightly defective.” But this time, he seemed almost carefree. Claire did not even consciously note it down, but it would come back to haunt her later.