Sweet Talking Money

by Harry Bingham

  ‘I owe it all to you, Meg.’

  ‘Oh, bollocks, you were built gorgeous. And brainy. And nice. God, when you think about it, it really is sickening.’ Meg looked genuinely shocked at the world’s injustice.

  ‘I didn’t mean that. You know, before you came along, I guess I was always lonely, but I had my science to run to. The more I ran, the lonelier I got, so the more I ran. That’s why I needed a Megging.’

  ‘Well, you turned it around, Cammie, not me … Hey, if you’re so grateful, do I get to ask you a personal question?’

  ‘You need permission?’

  ‘If I ask, you’ve got to answer honestly. Swear to God, cross your heart, hope to die.’

  ‘All that and some,’ said Cameron, crossing herself and gazing piously upwards.

  ‘OK. Question is: are you over Bryn? I know you think you are, but are you? Honestly, honestly, honestly?’

  ‘Ha. Bryn – Bryn, Bryn, Bryn.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘Oh, Meg, you know I’m so unhappy with Bryn at the moment. For a long time, I’d have sworn I was over him. Everything was going so well with Allen.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then, I don’t know, I had a phase when I kept wondering. I kept picking up these messages that he … had feelings for me, I guess. So I don’t know. I was confused. I thought maybe if things didn’t work out with Allen, it was possible that … I don’t know what I thought, Meg. I just know I was confused.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Oh, now I know, I know for sure.’

  Meg raised her eyebrows (what remained of them after twenty years of plucking) as high as they would go. ‘And?’

  ‘And the answer’s no. Meg, d’you know what he did? He made me sign my research over to the company, right at the start. He lied to me to make me do it. Lied. Some garbage about insurance companies. He did it just because he wanted to stop me leaving.’

  ‘He’s got his selfish side,’ admitted Meg, ‘but I think he’s got better, actually. It’s that bitch-troll wife of his, Cecily, that I blame.’

  ‘He lied to me, Meg. And because he lied, then if Altmeyer gets control of the company, I’ve lost every right to my research for ever. I won’t be able to publish. Jesus, I won’t even be allowed to see my own data.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Cammie, I didn’t know.’

  ‘And you say he’s got better. Well, as far as I’m concerned, that’s somewhere between a maybe and a certainly not. I don’t really care. The way I see it, he’s never once done anything which is just about me, or just about my science. When it comes down to it, it’s money with him every time.’

  Cameron paused, temporarily caught up in her own emotions. Meg was no piglet, but her companion on the sofa did look like a being from another race. Tall and beautiful, Cameron also had another virtue which separated her from ordinary mortals: she had virtually no consciousness of her own good looks, no flirtatious mannerisms now buried in the topsoil of ordinary behaviour. That meant that there was something extraordinarily direct – magnetic – in her displays of feeling: the sort of property that movie stars sometimes have on screen, hardly ever in real life.

  ‘That’s not quite true, is it?’ said Meg. ‘Didn’t he just give you shares in the company? Free of charge and everything?’

  ‘Sure, but that’s exactly it. Just look at his timing. He only gave them to me when he was pretty much certain the company was dying and the shares were worthless. Quite literally. He asked me how I was doing with the Altmeyer stuff. I told him I thought it was going badly, and only then … Meg, after all these months, it was only then …,’ Cameron’s voice broke and she looked away.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Meg quietly.

  ‘I don’t know if things will work out with Allen. And I don’t know if we’ll be able to save the company … But, well, whatever happens really, I think maybe I’ll go back home.’

  ‘Back to the States?’

  ‘Maybe Boston. Maybe Chicago. I’m sure Allen would be OK with the move, assuming that he – you know, assuming that we … any event, all I mean is, once things are settled here one way or the other, I’m kind of a free agent. There’s a lot of extra work I want to do. I could do it most anyplace. I think it might be good to get away from Bryn.’

  ‘You can’t go, I’ll miss you.’

  Cameron hugged her friend. ‘Yeah, me too.’

  ‘Alright, well you can go, but I’m coming too – only can we make it New York?’

  ‘’Course we can.’ Cameron looked at her watch. ‘He’ll be here soon.’

  Meg nodded, kissed Cameron, and got up to go. ‘Good luck.’

  5

  Allen had come in late, but not too late. ‘A celebration, huh?’ he asked, sweeping his gaze around the spotless apartment and candlelit table.

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Kind of?’

  ‘Celebrating the fact that you’re about to be the world’s loveliest boyfriend and my own favourite respiratory scientist.’

  ‘I wasn’t before?’

  ‘Sweetheart, I’m always crazy about you, but right now I also need your help.’

  Something in Allen always brought out the girlish in Cameron. Partly it was the way they’d come together, with Allen as the confident, experienced lover and Cameron as the anxious novice. Partly it could even have been Allen’s height. At slightly over six foot six, he was one of the few men who reduced Cameron’s five foot nine to something like charming inconsequence. On the other hand, there must have been something else going on as well, because for a long time, their conversation had avoided their one obvious common interest, the world of science, where Cameron’s forceful mastery always ended up bringing them into conflict. But right now, standing girlishly with her weight on one leg, looking up at him through her fringe, her hands loose on his hips, she was hard for him to resist.

  ‘Help, sweetheart? Of course. What with?’

  Cameron wheezed theatrically. ‘Help with the airways. Respiratory disease.’

  ‘You’re working on respiratory disease?’ His voice rose in surprise.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Cameron swivelled from side to side, rotating on her weight-supporting leg and moving her hands gently from his hips to his buttocks.

  ‘You’re growing out of all that terrible immune support nonsense?’ joked Allen. ‘Good girl. About time too. You want to talk about it now?’

  ‘Uh-uh. Later. First of all, I want my favourite boyfriend to come eat with me.’

  The flat was perfectly tidy, the pale parquet floor for once uncluttered with Cameron’s papers, the steel worktops in the kitchen wiped clean and ready for action. To Cameron the flat looked too sterile when clean, something like a cross between a battleship and an operating theatre. But still. He preferred it this way. She succeeded in putting food into the microwave without either incinerating it or leaving it cold.

  ‘This is great,’ said Allen as the first couple of courses slipped by. ‘And you managed to tidy the flat. I mean, you didn’t just start to tidy it, you actually succeeded in making it tidier. You must really want my help.’

  ‘I do, yes.’

  Allen raised his eyebrows in an invitation to her to tell him more, and so she did. Not the real story, of course. Allen had never been convinced by Cameron’s conspiracy theories, nor would he have had any time at all for burglary and theft. So Cameron invented a tale: how her laboratory was beginning to take on outside contract work as a way of raising additional money. They were doing some work for a third party in the area of respiratory disease, and Cameron badly wanted help with some of the technicalities.

  ‘They came to you for respiratory work?’ said Allen in surprise.

  ‘Well, we have a pretty good reputation, you know.’

  ‘Of course, immune support, maybe, whatever that really amounts to. But respiratory?’ He shrugged. ‘Anyhow, what’s the. problem?’

  Cameron began to explain some of the intricacies of the problems she was looking at.
Once again, as so often before, Allen was silently struck by Cameron’s astonishing command of an area of medicine miles removed from her own field. He said none of that, however, but used his own superior knowledge to begin to guide her through the maze.

  ‘You know, sweetheart,’ he said at one point. ‘You shouldn’t really be asking me this. A lot of it sounds fairly confidential. I’m sure if you ask your clients they’ll be able to help.’

  ‘Maybe, but I want to ask you.’

  ‘That isn’t standard practice, though. In fact, it’s really quite unorthodox.’

  ‘Please, sweetheart, please, please, please.’ She dropped kisses, like little cherry tomatoes, on to his mouth. ‘Please, please, please, please, please.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ he said, laughing. ‘If I help you, will you promise to keep the flat tidy?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.’ More cherry tomato kisses, one per word – even though Cameron hated cherry tomatoes and didn’t normally kiss like that.

  ‘Romantic dinners every night, long dresses, maybe a massage or two?’

  ‘Yes, yes and yes.’ Still more kisses. ‘Oh, and sweetheart, this has to be our secret. Nobody else is to know. Not ever. Not ever, ever, ever.’

  ‘It’s a deal.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  1

  Time passes, hurtling by at high speed.

  What lies at the end of the tunnel? A chink of light, or a wall of rock? The company’s death or its miraculous salvation?

  At present, it’s impossible to say. The only thing certain is this: they’ll know soon enough. One way or another, they’ll know.

  2

  Everyone’s busy. Cameron has her super-top-secret work. Bryn too is always occupied. And on top of it all, there’s the General Medical Council investigation, which is a nuisance that needs seeing to.

  The investigating officer from the GMC was a nice guy. ‘To be perfectly honest with you, we don’t anticipate any kind of problem,’ he admitted early on. ‘The trouble is when we get complaints, it’s essential for us to follow them up. In the present climate, we just can’t afford to look anything other than highly responsive … and with novel medical techniques like yours, it’s always better to be on the safe side.’

  Bryn and Cameron made a bid to see if they could bring things to an early close, aiming to end the enquiry within Altmeyer’s thirty-day envelope, but there was nothing doing. ‘Being on the safe side’ meant, apparently, that the investigation would take ‘at least three months, I’m afraid, and realistically these things do have a tendency to drag on’. So Bryn and Cameron supplied the data the GMC required, and sent Rauschenberg to sit, stony-faced, in front of endless committees of enquiry. There was no chance that the enquiry would have a negative outcome, but no chance either that they would escape Altmeyer’s hammerblow. Time continued to hurtle.

  3

  Twenty-five of the thirty days have passed. Elsewhere, people are enjoying their Christmas holidays, opening presents, getting drunk, listening to their kids scream. But not here, not now. There’s work to do, and work, as ever, must come first. Bryn intrudes on Cameron’s space, high up in the tower. Once again, it’s dark. The streetlamps of London glow orange through her windows. Cranes are lit up with strings of fairy-lights, strewing jollity on the frozen air. The silent Thames rides softly, sixty feet below. It’s a little like the first time they met: the brilliant scientist, the alien banker.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’

  They’re still uncomfortable with each other. Bryn’s disastrous lie continues to hang between them. But Bryn is here to build bridges.

  ‘Good news,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘My dad. He’s getting a lot better.’

  ‘Really? I thought –’

  ‘I know. My mum put your pills into a milkshake and whizzed them up, so he didn’t know he was taking them. Now that he does know, he takes them even without the milkshake.’

  ‘Bryn, that’s great, absolutely great. How are the symptoms? Brain-fog? Lethargy?’

  ‘Better, all better. He’s not a hundred per cent, but Mum says he’s stronger every week.’

  ‘And the chemicals? You know it’s critical that –’

  ‘Dai does all the chemical work. Or me. Dad’s promised not to go near them again.’

  ‘That’s great. I’m so pleased for you, I really am.’

  ‘You’re a star, Cameron. An amazing person and a wonderful doctor.’

  ‘No, it’s nothing, really, all I –’

  ‘It’s not nothing. You brought a man back to life, when his own doctor was just poisoning him more. That’s not nothing.’

  ‘OK, I didn’t mean –’

  ‘Cameron, I know … Look, I know you’re still upset with me. I understand why. I don’t expect that …’ Bryn halted, inhaled, took control. ‘Cameron, in five days’ time we’re about to meet Altmeyer and fight for the future of our company. I don’t think we should do that with you still furious at me. I think we need to patch things up, not just for our sake, but for the good of the company.’

  ‘Uh …’ Cameron could hardly help but agree. Ever since Bryn’s awful revelation on the barge, they’d barely spoken to each other. When they had, they had been polite, but strained. It was no way to behave when so much was at stake. ‘What did you have in mind?’

  ‘I thought maybe a weekend away. Perhaps, you could come down to the farm, meet my parents. My dad would absolutely love to say thanks directly.’

  Cameron scrunched up her face, as though chewing bitter lemons. ‘Meet your folks, huh? I don’t know, there’s still a lot of work to do.’ She drummed her fingers on the mountains of paper that lay around her. ‘I’d been kind of figuring on working up to the last minute.’

  He shook his head gently, and lowered himself cautiously on to a stack of paper. It wasn’t a particularly firm foundation for two hundred pounds of Welsh beef, but it was a skill you needed to develop when calling on Cameron at work. ‘That’s not quite true, is it? The lawyers are going to need their hands on your stuff any day now – before the weekend, anyway. If you don’t want to come then just say so. I’d understand.’

  ‘You really want me to meet your parents?’

  ‘Yes. But more than that, I want to mend fences. You don’t have to forgive me, but … well, we’re going to need to look united and strong in front of Altmeyer. At the moment, you either look like you want to strangle me or you want to scream. I thought a weekend away from all this might help us.’

  She nodded.

  Things had been getting very claustrophobic recently. It had been good working closely with Allen, but she could tell that his patience with her work intensity was beginning to wear off. A weekend away would do their relationship good. And Bryn …? Well, Cameron wasn’t necessarily prepared to forgive Bryn as such, but in her heart she knew that he was a basically good guy. Maybe a bit selfish. Certainly more concerned with money than her beloved medicine. But everyone had their faults. She didn’t have to love him, just work with him. ‘Of course. Good idea. Sure.’

  ‘Great, fantastic. I’ll tell Mum you’re coming.’

  ‘Oh, damn.’ Cameron halted abruptly. ‘They live in Wales, right?’

  ‘You’ve finally got it, have you, woman?’

  ‘Shoot! I won’t be able to come.’

  Bryn raised his eyebrows. ‘May I ask …?’

  ‘It’s stupid. It’s just my passport is away for renewal …’

  Bryn laughed, the merry sound ringing through the darkened room.

  ‘What the hell? We’ll just have to slip over the border by cover of night.’

  4

  Crossing into Wales turned out to be surprisingly easy, border guards most noticeable by their absence. Rain and darkness accompanied their journey, and the last twenty miles passed in a midnight patchwork of steepening slopes, lanes narrowing between wet hedges, the occasional flash of headlights, the sounds of sheep baa-ing and the rush of tyres on slip
pery roads. They drove mostly in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.

  It was Gwyneth Hughes – nervous, dressing-gowned, starting to show her age – who opened the door to them, cautiously because of the unaccustomed lateness of the hour.

  ‘Oh, Bryn,’ she said, arms tight round his neck. ‘Bryn.’

  He hugged her attentively before gently shaking her loose. ‘Mum, this is Cameron.’

  ‘Oh, Dr Wilde, please … You’re very welcome.’

  Gwyneth Hughes was thrown by the appearance of authority – medical authority at that, rain-soaked and on her doorstep – and she made a bizarre little gesture, more like a curtsey than anything else, her pink-quilted dressing gown lapping against her ankles as she bobbed. Cameron responded graciously. ‘Mrs Hughes – Gwyneth, is it? – hi, real nice to meet you.’

  ‘Mum, do let’s come in, Cameron’s getting soaked standing there.’

  They bustled into the sitting room where a Christmas tree twinkled in the corner and a fire was dying in the hearth. Gwyneth at once started hurling logs into the grate, as though she’d been given one minute to create an inferno.

  ‘My husband, Dr Wilde –’

  ‘Please, it’s Cameron, please just call me Cameron.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Dr Cameron, my husband, you see, he’s in bed, a farmer you know, has to be up early, otherwise –’

  Otherwise nothing. From the top of the broad wooden stairs came heavy footsteps and a crashing roar. In pyjama trousers and a towelling robe which instantly shook itself free of its cord, Mervyn Hughes came pounding in.

  ‘Dr Wilde!’ he bellowed. ‘Cameron, is it? I can call her Cameron, can I, Bryn? Bloody medical miracle, you are. Bloody miracle, and, by God, a pretty one. Eh, Bryn?’

  ‘Mervyn, dear, your language.’

  ‘Bloody miracle. I went to my GP and told him about you. Don’t give out any of those head-pills, I told him. Enzyme P450, I said. Bloody miracle stuff!’