The Auditors Are Coming

LIVING ROOM OF FLAT – NIGHT

Lights up on ALBERT, in a dressing gown, pacing. His flat is cluttered. A clock ticks. On the desk: calculator, wine bottle, sandwich, and scattered papers. A framed balance sheet hangs on the wall.

ALBERT:

They’re coming.

No, not “they” as in deep state operatives. Worse. The auditors.

Not the office ones in sensible shoes who mutter about fiscal controls and ask for extra printer paper. I mean the real ones. The ones who come in the night. Who comb through your life with precision tweezers and clinical silence. The ones who know when you’ve rounded up instead of down and look at you like you’ve embezzled the payroll.

It’s not paranoia if the ledgers don’t balance.

They sent a letter. Not an email – a letter. Cream-coloured, heavyweight paper, slightly scented with menace. “Routine Review of Accounts”. That’s what they called it. Routine. That’s how the guillotine started – routine beheadings.

Sits at desk, rifling through receipts.

They’ll be here by morning, I can feel it. My books aren’t clean – they’re… they’re “ambiguous”. There’s a box of unclaimed expenses in the cupboard, and I think I once claimed a romantic dinner as a “strategic alignment meeting”.

And I never declared the squirrel.

What squirrel? Exactly.

I need to be ready. Everything must be in order. Chronological. Alphabetical. Emotional.

They say the auditors can smell guilt. I’ve sprayed everything with lemon-scented air freshener, but will it be enough?

Looks at the clock.

Tick, tick. Time’s closing in. And the margins – oh, the margins – they’re narrowing.

Rummaging, distracted by paper.

Where is it? I had a perfectly formatted mileage log from 2024… It had pie charts. Pie charts.

Pulls a photo from the desk; looks at it.

That’s Frances. She understood depreciation better than anyone I’ve ever met.

She used to say I had “asset potential”. We met during an advanced accruals seminar in Milton Keynes – romantic, if you like your love stories accompanied by spreadsheets and amortisation schedules.

We used to reconcile our bank statements together. Naked.

But she left me for a forensic auditor. She wanted someone who could “dig deep”. I preferred to file.

She took the dog. And the printer.

Returns to sorting.

There! Ah – no, wait – wrong VAT year.

Freezes.

Have I been claiming my lunchtime biscuits as operational costs?

Worried.

Do Hobnobs count as sustenance or indulgence?

Pulling receipts from dressing gown, shoeboxes, books.

There was a discrepancy last month – just a penny. One solitary, insolent penny. I couldn’t trace it. I reversed every transaction, recalculated everything twice. It vanished like it wanted to. Like it knew.

Sits, exhausted.

I didn’t sleep for three nights. Just stared at the ceiling, whispering, “Where did you go, you tiny bastard?”

Some people lose sleep over love. I lose it over fractions.

Sits bolt upright, alert.

Did you hear that?

Listens – nothing.

That was the lift. Or the plumbing. Or the sound of justice descending in loafers.

They’re early. They’ve come to catch me off-balance. Bastards.

Grabs calculator, holds it like a weapon.

Well not today. Today, I am reconciled, categorised, and cross-referenced in triplicate.

Eyes ceiling, suspicious.

The light fitting. That’s new. Wasn’t here last week.

They’re watching. They’ve wired the ceiling rose.

Reaches up, unscrews the bulb.

You think you’re clever, don’t you? Hiding in plain sight like a standardised invoice.

You won’t find what you’re looking for. Not here. Not in this home of clean margins.

Throws open cupboard – papers spill out.

No-no-no! Why are these not in chronological order? Who filed the 2021 energy bill between the 2018 expense reports?

Oh. I did. I remember now – I was angry that day. She’d said my spreadsheet had “poor emotional formatting”. I retaliated with deliberate misfiling.

Digs out an annotated HMRC manual.

Section 12, Clause 8.4: “Receipts may be accepted in non-legible condition provided the taxpayer can reconstruct events through reasonable inference" and sheer bloody panic.

Reads aloud, reverently.

“In the beginning there were entries. And the entries were with codes. And the codes were with revenue. And the revenue was God.”

Crosses himself with a pen.

Forgive me, balance sheet, for I have sinned.

Sudden stillness, walks to framed balance sheet.

But what if… what if it’s not just the numbers?

Removes frame, opens it. Turns over the sheet to its blank side and holds it in awe.

Of course. No figures. No totals. Just… white space.

Sits slowly.

I’ve spent my life quantifying everything. Logging every detail. Assigning values. Emotional costs as liabilities. Hopes as intangible assets.

Touches his chest.

And yet – here – there’s nothing reconciled. Just open accounts, and… adjustments I never made.

How do you classify a missed opportunity? A word not said? Is regret a long-term liability or a recurring expense?

Pause.

I remember my father’s final days. He kept a chequebook by his hospital bed. Not to spend. Just to balance.

He said, “Son, always end the day even. Or at least know where the imbalance lies.”

Beat.

But I don’t. I’ve hidden things. From them, from myself.

I have a memory I never logged: a summer morning. Just me, barefoot in the garden, warm grass underfoot, no lists, no ledgers. I didn’t assign it a category. I didn’t give it a code.

Maybe that’s the real discrepancy.

Looks towards the door.

Maybe they’ll find it. Maybe they should.

Pause – stillness.

But no one knocks.

Tick, tick. Nothing.

Sips wine from chipped mug.

Perhaps… they’re not coming. Perhaps they never were.

Perhaps the audit was a reconciliation not of spreadsheets.

Funny. I’ve spent decades chasing precision, fighting decimal places into compliance.

But life doesn’t round neatly.

It bleeds. It skews. It hides things in miscellaneous.

Maybe I’ve been afraid – not of the auditors – but of imbalance. That if I stopped adding, counting, correcting…

I’d see the gaping zero at the centre of it all.

I reconciled my bank accounts. I reconciled my lunch receipts. I even reconciled the bloody squirrel.

But I never reconciled myself.

A blank page. Clean. Ready.

In the end, I accounted for everything but myself.

He places the blank sheet back in the frame.

Still… that’s a tolerable margin of error.

Lights fade.