A Theory of Love

by Margaret Bradham Thornton

  “What house party?”

  “At Eric Colson’s. He was there, but he left early—very abruptly—it didn’t make sense.”

  “You do understand what you’re saying?”

  “What? That I suspect something illegal? I have all along.”

  “But the authorities performed a thorough investigation.”

  “They were looking for the wrong thing.”

  “It’s not your responsibility to show them where they went wrong.”

  “Fuck, Nigel. Stop speaking in code. You know we can’t look away. We’ve suspected Marc since the beginning, and we looked and couldn’t find anything. But that document about the trade—well that’s evidence that he panicked. Last summer, Dan O’Connor advised me to look behind the nominee names, he suspected money laundering, but then we were served, so I didn’t follow through. But now that I know—or highly suspect—I can’t pretend that I don’t. Nigel, I don’t have a choice. Play it out.”

  “It’s not proven that Marc is laundering money, it’s just your intuition. You just went through a thorough investigation by the SFO and you were cleared. If you take this matter further, you will have no choice—there’s no turning back. I just want you to understand that. As lawyer to your firm, I would be remiss in not pointing this out. Highly, highly unlikely they are going to come back after you. You could separate your interests from Marc’s, which presumably, given the level of distrust and animosity, would be a good thing to do in any event. That way you walk away with half of your firm intact. The other way you lose everything, and possibly, if you are correct, risk charges being brought again. Just go home and talk to Helen and think about it. Take her out to dinner and celebrate. She’s been through hell and back, too. Why don’t we meet tomorrow morning to discuss this after you’ve had a chance to sleep on it?”

  Both Nigel and Christopher knew that Helen would not be able to pry him from his conviction, but only Christopher perceived that playing it safe was certain to bring about destruction.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  London

  Helen flew from her chair and kissed him. “I booked a table at Harry’s Bar. Let’s drink Bellinis all night. It’s finally over.”

  He took her arms from around his neck and sat down with her on the sofa. “It may not be.”

  “What do you mean? How could it not be over? You said the SFO had dropped the case.”

  For the next hour, he explained with more patience than he had shown her in the past year why it was not over, what he suspected Marc of having done. He told her about the implications. All she could think about as he was explaining it to her was Willie’s comments about what Christopher would do if he saw someone pinned underneath a car.

  Christopher laid out his view, and he laid out Nigel’s view, but there was never any question about what he was going to do. She asked him a few questions, a few hypotheticals, but she knew he had already made his decision. She sided with Nigel. Christopher was impatient that she resisted what he was saying. A part of her was ecstatic about the charges being dropped, a part relieved to think he could walk away from his firm, but another part angry that he did not consider her views. Over the time they had been married, she felt as if he had been in a vortex that took all his attention and energy away from her—away from them. Their life had been on hold. Why couldn’t he just walk away—didn’t she deserve consideration, too? But it was the fact that he had made up his mind before even discussing it with her. Without considering what his actions would mean to her, to them. And her questions were always answered with a form of patient toleration—never a genuine openness to consider an angle she might introduce.

  She remembered Christopher’s comment about Paolo Pavesi when she had asked him if he thought Paolo loved Bermeja more than his family. He had answered, “But first you have to ask if he is even capable of loving another person. Some people aren’t.” Had Christopher been speaking about himself? She could only ask that question now, she could not answer it. She had expected a reciprocity to her love that never came. She had waited too long.

  Chapter Forty

  London

  Philip Larkin had been wrong, they would not leave love behind. It was as if they were waiting for something that neither of them would be able to recognize when it arrived. The things that can wreck us—even if we survive—for which, about which, we are given no warning, no ability to be ready, no chance to prepare. A form of neverness.

  Helen felt as if she had lost Christopher, but maybe she had never had him. Everyone felt they knew him, but no one did, really. He was impenetrable to her, maybe even to himself. Maybe the mistake she had made was in believing that he could make room for her. But no matter what the errors and omissions, she no longer needed to keep secrets from him, she no longer needed to prove to herself that she didn’t need him. She called him at work and said she needed to speak with him, it couldn’t wait. Could he meet her at home?

  She didn’t know what she was going to say or how she was going to say it until she saw him. She told him about finding out she was pregnant and then having a miscarriage. All he could say was “Wait, say that again.” She did as he asked.

  “You were in Hong Kong. I couldn’t wait to tell you, but I didn’t want to tell you on the phone, so I thought I would tell you in Morocco, and then you couldn’t come—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me when I saw you?”

  “It was too late. When I was in Tangier I felt sick, and when I got back to London, my doctor told me I had miscarried—” She was shaking her head, keeping his words from her. “And you know the pathetic thing? I didn’t want to believe him—I even went back the next day to be sure. And you didn’t know any of this.”

  “But how could I have—I wasn’t there.”

  “You never are, that’s the whole point. You never will be.”

  “That’s not fair. I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me about this when I came back.”

  “I was so mad at you.” She was crying as she spoke. “And then I thought I would wait until we were together at Eastthorpe, but then at Eastthorpe you didn’t have time for us, you stayed up later than I did, and after that—as pathetic as this sounds—it made me feel stronger keeping secrets from you—to prove to myself I didn’t need you.”

  “Helen, my love, calm down. You don’t have to tell me this now.”

  “Yes, I do. That’s the point. It may not be important to you—”

  “Of course it’s important to me, I just don’t want to see you this upset.”

  “Christopher, this is my life.”

  “I would have flown home.”

  “No. No, I don’t think you would have. I think a part of me didn’t want to even get to that point. To ask that question. I was afraid of what the answer might be.”

  “What is it you want me to say?”

  “I don’t know. The fact that you can ask that question after three years of being together—”

  “You saw what I was taking on, every step of the way. I feel badly I didn’t know what you were going through, but you’re being unreasonable.”

  “God damn it, Christopher, do reason and logic ever not matter to you?”

  “Helen, come on. I was trying to keep everything from falling apart. I had to get to the other side. There was no middle ground. You had to have seen that.”

  “That’s the problem. There is no other side. It’s a three-ring circus you’ll never leave. When this is finally over, you will work even harder to restore what’s been lost. It will start all over again.”

  “Of course it will be hard, but it will be nothing like three years ago, when no one knew me and I had no clients. There will be plenty of young bankers who will send me their résumés. We just had to get clear of all of this.”

  “I stood by you.”

  “You’re right, you did, but I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “It’s not a question of right or wrong. You don’t even seem to recognize how difficult it
was being with you. Your world has nothing to do with mine. And I tried to be a part of your world but—God, did I not fit in.”

  “I never tried to hold you back. I always encouraged you in your work to take on difficult topics—I knew you could handle them.”

  “That’s right, you did. But look where we are now. While your firm was under investigation, you shared very little, and anytime I tried to be helpful you got impatient with me. And now you’ve made a decision that will affect us both without ever thinking to speak to me, to consider my view. It didn’t even cross your mind, and that really hurts. I’m not blaming you, but what’s the point? I’ll never come first, and I wasn’t expecting to be first all of the time, just once in a while. It makes me feel pathetic. I just don’t like who I’ve become being with you.”

  * * *

  When she told him she was leaving, she interpreted his silence as not caring enough to fight back. And yet despite all that had happened, she would have given anything for him to have said, “Helen, don’t go.” She had carried hopes and dreams and expectations around with her. “Sometimes when I waited up for you, I’d fall asleep with images that took me to faraway places—as if they were a pillow against which to lay my head. But I don’t have them anymore. They’ve disintegrated, and when I look for them, I can’t find them.”

  He listened and said nothing. It was as if he had lost his voice. He recognized everything she said. He didn’t try to hold her back. He knew she thought he had been making a choice when he hadn’t been. He had passed the point of inflection, and now nothing could surprise him. There had been only one way out of the trouble he was in, and he had not been willing to trust anyone but himself to get himself out. Over the months, he had reviewed everything his firm had done, had learned U.K. and E.U. securities law, read cases and opinions, had trusted she would wait. But he had watched as she had grown more distant, as if she were trying out what she had already decided. He had done nothing about it.

  It is the rare person who can describe seeing something unfolding before anyone else. That’s not to say they understand it, just that they see it happening. He understood it was over. But when she walked out the door, he felt as if his skin were being torn off his body. At that moment, hope was not a thing he wanted. He had always taken refuge in things—numbers, spreadsheets, analytics—no emotions, no angst, no disappointments—just cold, hard, inanimate objects and symbols. For a long time he had felt as if he had been holding walls from collapsing and he had nothing left to offer her. He couldn’t tell her he was sorry and that he would try harder, because he knew that wasn’t at the heart of it.

  Chapter Forty-One

  London

  The week Helen left, Christopher arranged to speak to Dan O’Connor. While he did not know U.K. law, Dan told Christopher that if he were his client in the U.S., he would advise him not to go to the authorities.

  “Don’t be naive. In the real world, prosecutors aren’t all good guys. In fact, many of them aren’t. One of the reasons I decided to go into the private sector was that too many of my fellow prosecutors were just looking for heads. Most of them have political ambitions. In fact, that’s why a lot of them become prosecutors in the first place. For them, reasons one through nine are about headlines—truth and justice a distance tenth.

  “If your partner is clever at spinning his own version, you’re putting yourself at risk personally in pursuit of a conceptual idea. You’ll be getting yourself into a street fight with the mafia—some of whom call themselves prosecutors, some of whom call themselves partners. And in a street fight—with two from the mafia and one from the Boy Scouts—who do you think is going to win? And listen, if Muñoz is involved, I’d bet my last nickel there are grounds somewhere for criminal charges. You should stay as far away from all this as you can. It’s a corrupt world. The risk-reward isn’t worth it. For what? To prove a point and send your partner to jail?

  “It’s not about truth and justice, it’s about protecting yourself and your family from a system that is unpredictable. You have to do what’s in your narrow self-interest. Do you want your fate in the hands of twelve strangers? Think about it. And Christopher, I don’t know about the SFO, but if the U.S. Attorney’s Office had looked into a firm and found nothing, and the firm either ceased business or split up, the chances of us going back to investigate are zero to none. Remember, these guys want high profiles and big headlines. Even if Marc has done some illegal things, they can’t have been so big or they wouldn’t have been missed the first time.”

  Christopher understood that Nigel and Dan were giving him their best advice, and he understood the rationale behind their thinking. He knew each side of the equation, but he also knew what Marc had done, and even though he knew they were ending their association, he wanted to have no part of the illegal activity. Going to the authorities was the only way he could be certain of that.

  Christopher confirmed his decision to Nigel, but first he was going to tell Marc what he was going to do. Nigel was clear. “It’s a lunatic’s move.” Christopher didn’t owe Marc anything. Furthermore, the SFO would most likely instruct him to wear a wire.

  “I’m not doing that.”

  “It’s the only way to protect yourself.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not going to do it. Marc isn’t going to say anything to me anyway. I had nothing to do with what he was up to. There’s no evidence. I’ll take my chances.”

  * * *

  Marc was in Paris. Christopher flew the following day and met him in the bar at the George V. Marc was sitting at a table in the far back. He was tanned, he had just gotten back from Il Pellicano. Christopher could tell he was expecting to celebrate.

  Christopher explained what he had figured out.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But what does it matter? It’s over.” Marc raised his glass of champagne.

  “I’m going to the authorities to lay out my suspicions, just as I’m laying them out now. Consider this a dress rehearsal.”

  Marc scrutinized Christopher with dark, impenetrable eyes. Hatred and animosity transformed his face. “You’re a fucking idiot.” He stood up, tossed two hundred-Euro notes on the table, pushed past Christopher, and left, neither wanting nor waiting for a response.

  Christopher wasn’t surprised by Marc’s reaction. He had expected all artifice to disappear. He also knew that by telling Marc what he was going to do, he was giving him a head start.

  * * *

  The following day, Christopher went to the authorities. After another three months of investigations, the SFO confirmed that Philippe Pavesi was implicated in a money-laundering scheme that involved dirty money being brought to a Mexican bank controlled by Muñoz. The dirty funds were then transferred to nominee names in Liechtenstein accounts controlled by Philippe and invested in various funds and instruments devised by Marc. When and what Marc knew, the SFO could never be sure. The SFO did not have enough evidence to convict him personally. Marc had been clever enough or lucky enough to escape individual prosecution. Nigel said he had never seen one so accomplished at staying in the gray zone. The one thing Christopher was sure of was that Marc had panicked. The false document implicating him was proof.

  After the investigation and the resulting settlement and fines, Christopher had very little of his firm left to salvage. He could start over, but he knew what it took to build a business. His colleagues and clients had witnessed the betrayal, and they had admired the way he had acted when everything was on the brink. They now urged him to consider restarting his business, throwing his shoulder against it one more time, but he didn’t have it in him. He spent the last week seeing his clients, explaining what had happened. Thoughts of the future were not yet in front of him. And now that it was all finally over, he would take some time to think about what he would do next.

  Christopher assembled a small team of accountants and lawyers to unwind the remaining pieces of the business. He found good positions for his few remaining employees and neg
otiated the sale of the assets management business to a small U.K. bank. He got what he could for the lease of the Black Friars Lane office. Helen had once told him that she felt he could pack up his life in minutes. She was wrong, but he understood why she had said that. When he locked the office door for the last time, he thought how all those decisions and all those hours were crumpled and discarded with a 180-degree turn of a key.

  While the investigation was going on, his mother had decided to move from Fontainebleau to an apartment in Paris. Her manager had quit and she needed help closing up her farm. She had more horses than she could handle. Laure was seven months pregnant and confined to bed rest, so Christopher complied.

  We have to break ourselves apart sometimes, Christopher thought as he drove to Fontainebleau. Somewhere along the way he had tried to make himself immune from disappointment. He had spent so much of his energy keeping everything shut, battened down, not throwing any part of himself open. Not looking back was something so well practiced that it was, by now, a reflex. It was the only way he had known how to protect himself. But it had not worked.

  As he drove through the town to his mother’s property, he thought, Destruction comes about in such a clear and fast way. He knew his marriage was over. He had not been willing or able to give Helen what she wanted or needed. Had he subconsciously been trying to push her away? Maybe in the end that was what had made her leave. In the middle of the night he reached for her and knew she was not coming back.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  London

  Helen stayed away from her family and any friends wanting to give advice. She returned to her small top-floor flat on Old Church Place in Chelsea. She had forgotten how much she loved the cool light that came in from its north-facing windows. She put most of her things in storage to avoid any traces of Christopher. Once a week, she had dinner with Peregrine to help push his work along. Peregrine had little understanding of relationships, so the topic of Helen and Christopher never came up. She knew the best thing for her to do was to keep her head down and write as many articles as David would allow. As the summer months approached and work began to slow down, Helen walked into David’s office and said she wanted to go as far away from London as she could. David covered his face with his hand. “Okay, but hopefully it’s not another prima ballerina in search of the letter ‘J’?”