Sarah had stood at the back, staring in disbelief and saying nothing. The £50,000 she had committed to the bank by way of guarantee secured against the property assets of the company had seemed so safe at the time. The collapse of the property market had changed everything. The Liquidators were suggesting 5 pence in the pound. How could she tell David?

The anger that burned in her was fierce. She had seen Peter at the back of the hall. Just a non-executive director but she knew that he was the one pulling the strings behind the scenes - unobtrusive, but very much in control. He had never spoken to her. To him and his fellow directors, she was a small cog in the corporate wheel and completely invisible.

Then, unbelievably, came the news that Peter had moved to a senior position at her husband's company. Her misgivings had been intensified and her worst fears quickly born out. The strategies he had adopted just did not seem to make good long term sense.

When David pointed out the dangers inherent in the changes, Peter had immediately put pressure on him to quit. With the recession in full swing and no jobs to go to, it was stale mate and David had been forced to back off.

The weeks dragged by amid a miasma of indecision and unpleasantness. It was the worse for Sarah, who unknown to David, was being pressed by the Liquidators for the £50,000 she had committed. In addition, the home mortgage became increasingly in arrears. Time was running out for Sarah. She had to do something and there seemed no easy options.

Like David, she had sought refuge in work, taking any job however little it paid. One lunchtime, at the end of a particularly boring and poorly paid temporary job in central London, she had attempted to print out a CV on her portable word processor. It was her last day and it could keep her in their minds for work opportunities in the future. The onscreen firework display that greeted her told her immediately that her portable computer had been infected by the same computer virus as had brought down her previous employers.

It had often been used as a remote link to her former employers computer network so on reflection this was hardly surprising.

For Sarah, stressed out with worry about money and desperate for the dates and employment data contained in the portable, this was the last straw. With no clear plan in mind except the driving force of her burning anger, she decided to confront the youth in his bedsit in Fulham .

The terraced houses she found on arrival were dingy. Originally, the proud homes of London's rising gentry, they were now mostly converted into expensive and temporary multiple dwellings for single parent families and youngsters seeking the bright lights of London. Behind the houses, mattresses lay in smouldering heaps with remnants of cars that had been broken for parts and then left for junk.

Used to the reassuring formality of middle class suburbia, Sarah found the untidiness and deprivation threatening and she very nearly turned back. But her anger still burned strongly and drove her on. Perhaps the youth might have a virus killer that would enable her to recover her employment records. He at least owed her that!

Cool diplomacy had been her intention but tact had never been a strong point. The door to his flat was slightly open and without knocking, she pushed it aside.

"So precisely how much were you paid for wrecking the computer system," she demanded.

He stood in the middle of the room with a mug of coffee in his hand looking surprised – even shaken. Caught unawares and knocked off guard by her furious onslaught, he made no attempt at denial.