The One That Got Away

by Jennifer Palgrave

  She winced but Brett seemed jovial rather than offended. He went on, ‘I’m very pleased to have helped the college with a few projects. I’m honoured that they’re naming the new library after me.’

  Lauren was stunned. She almost dropped the tea cup she was holding. The library, the very heart of scholarship, and her women’s college was naming it after a man. And a man like Brett! Of course, it had to be that they needed the money, but how could he be so insensitive as to accept the honour. He probably pressed for the naming rights. She still hadn’t framed her reply when he carried on.

  ‘I was sorry our conversation was cut short at the reception the other night.’ Another lie, Brett had been as ready to end the conversation as she had. He appeared to have forgotten all that now. He went on, ‘I was going to say that my wife and I are buying a piece of land in New Zealand. I’ve always liked your country, it did me well in the nineteen eighties. We’re flying over soon and expect to spend some time there while we’re putting the deal together. Darya would enjoy meeting you, might we get together?’

  Coming to New Zealand! Lauren’s normal instinct would have been to refuse. She didn’t really want to meet Brett’s wife, nor have anything to do with him socially. But for the sake of their investigation, she should agree. Back in New Zealand, she’d have the chance to talk to him more about the financiers he hung out with in the eighties. She wasn’t going to find out much at a sedate Cambridge afternoon tea.

  She urged herself to be friendly and replied. ‘Certainly,’ she said, ‘It would be nice to meet your wife. I’ll give you my card.’ She walked over to one of the trestle tables set up in the garden and put her cup down on the pristine white tablecloth. Then she hunted in her handbag and handed him one. ‘But I’m not going back immediately,’ she said, ‘I’m staying with a friend here for a couple of nights, then after I’ve visited my daughter, I’m off to Greece for a bit.’

  ‘That’s fine, it’ll be a month or so before we arrive. By then you should have a new government? How do you read the signs? Stability or a lurch to the left?’

  He would put it like that, wouldn’t he, Lauren thought. She picked up her cup again, and smiled at the college servant refilling it for her. She said, ‘I think it’s likely that Winston Peters…’–she stopped to see if he knew who she was talking about, and he nodded–‘I think he’ll almost certainly go into coalition with the National Party. Odd that his tiny party is calling the shots.’

  ‘That’s politics. Good for the economy, good for business, if the National government carries on.’ He continued, oblivious to the fact that Lauren might not agree.

  She couldn’t resist a pointed remark. ‘Some of your old cronies still around? No doubt you’ll be hooking up with them?’

  Brett gave her a quizzical look. ‘It’s a long time since I had business dealings in New Zealand. I went on to pastures new. But I have kept a few contacts from that time.’ I bet you did, thought Lauren. Brett continued, ‘Don’t know their wives, though, and it’ll be good for Darya to meet you. She’s a very cultured woman.’

  Lauren was pleased when the conversation finished. She hadn’t anticipated that the Lange plot might infect her social life.

  7

  ‘They are portentous things’

  On Friday Lauren wasn’t sorry that Rob, Rachel’s husband, was out of Cambridge on a work trip. It felt like one of their far-off student sessions. They’d met as students, best friends at a time of life one could tell all. Long conversations covering everything from boyfriends to putting the world to rights. Later, of course, it was talk about the children–they’d both married and had babies in Cambridge before scrabbling their way back into the paid workforce.

  After their meal, they sat with glasses of wine in the living-room. Rachel nestled in one of her big comfortable armchairs with its faded Jacobean coverings and said bluntly, ‘So how are you and Kirsten, all going well?’

  The question made it just like one of their student sessions. Lauren made a little grimace. ‘I’ve told you she moved to Auckland for a job in a big advertising company? That makes it harder–commuting relationships aren’t much fun. She gets to Wellington for work occasionally and I make sure I get up to Auckland every four or five weeks for a weekend. I book ahead and get cheap flights.’ She sighed and toyed with her glass, then went on, ‘It’ll be great to have extended time together on this Greek holiday, though ten days isn’t that long.’

  Rachel looked sympathetic. ‘It’ll give you more of a catch-up than a weekend does. You’re not thinking of moving to Auckland?’

  Lauren shook her head. She wasn’t. She loved her apartment, loved her network of friends–and who knew when Kirsten might move somewhere else for promotion? She’d had the same thought on Charlotte’s behalf.

  Rachel tactfully changed the subject. ‘What did you think of the get-together?’

  ‘Oh, I loved catching up with all those old friends–Ginny’s gone mother of the bride to look at, don’t you think? But still behaves like a teenager! And the research project seemed worthwhile. It was amazing to look at our college records, wasn’t it? No great surprises, but it was weird to read my admission essay again–I was such a know-it-all teenager.’

  ‘So what’s changed?’ said Rachel.

  Lauren made as if to throw a cushion at her, then continued. ‘But what about Brett Wilson funding it? I couldn’t believe it. He was such a pain as a student. Just because he was tall and could turn on a big smile and lots of charm, he thought he was the cat’s pyjamas. And far too self-centred to be giving money away.’

  Rachel was refilling her glass. She leant over and poured more into Lauren’s. ‘Self-centred all right, spoilt rotten is what I’d say. You know how Charlotte was almost defending him when we were at Fitzbillies? She mightn’t have been so kind if she’d known about the way he treated some of his other girlfriends.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Lauren was puzzled.

  ‘He hated being crossed, so sure he was always in the right. Didn’t you know he beat up Barbara Bagstock when she told him she was ending the affair? He broke her nose. In those days it wasn’t any use complaining to the police, they never did anything. Anyhow, he’s incredibly rich now.’

  ‘Yes, he is,’ said Lauren. ‘He went on to me about how great it was that the New Zealand government sold lots of assets in the eighties. Didn’t have any thought that I might find it offensive. They sold off stuff cheap that had always been publicly owned–assets like railways, airlines–and my place of work.’ She realised she still felt bitter about it. ‘He probably bought half of them.’ She was tempted to tell Rachel about the Lange plot and how Brett might have been involved. But the moment passed.

  Rachel said, ‘You may not be so wrong, I know he made his money wheeling and dealing on a big scale. A lucky man from a lucky country. I didn’t see as much of him as you did in student days, because you Antipodeans hung together.’

  Lauren laughed. ‘Safety in numbers–we had to protect ourselves against your English superiority.’

  Rachel refused to take the bait, and they turned to reminiscing about their lives when the children were young, and their setbacks and successes as they reentered the workforce. ‘I really enjoyed my work in publishing,’ said Lauren. ‘My life would have been different if I’d stayed.’

  ‘You might still have been with Rodney,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Not a hope,’ said Lauren, ‘I’d have worked out one way or another who I really was. Anyway, that Government Print job back in New Zealand was tempting. My mother was getting on and not very well. And it looked at that stage as if we had an exciting socialist government. Duh!’

  ‘Oh yes, you went over to Oxford to hear your prime minister, didn’t you? You came back raving about it.’

  ‘Yes, David Lange was great. But it was soon after that that I was back in New Zealand, realising that the government was in the grip of the free marketeers. The business sector loved the Labour government. And when Lange tried
to put the brakes on, wanted them to stop for a cup of tea, they hated it. That’s when Brett was there.’

  She’d said enough, getting onto dangerous territory. She shouldn’t let the Lange thing spoil her enjoyment of talking about old times with Rachel.

  ‘You were such a Labour stalwart in the early Thatcher years here,’ Rachel mused. ‘You didn’t consider getting involved with politics when you got home?’

  ‘I’ll say not! I was new to the public service and took their rules about neutrality quite seriously. And I was busy outside of work–Homosexual Law Reform activism, that seemed allowable, the campaign was full of public servants. And then I was coming out myself. Whew!’

  ‘Oh yes, your letters then–and it was letters then–were full of revelations. It sounded as if you spent your time either with the new girlfriend, or at meetings or on marches!’

  Lauren sighed. ‘I did and the children just got the time that was left over. They were pretty young–but Rodney was good with them. He got that job at the University of Auckland and we dispatched them up and down the North Island. Hard, but they’re great grown-up people now. And life has certainly calmed down for me.’

  She thought again about her privileged life. ‘Julia’s always saying how easy our generation had it. But I don’t think we should feel guilty about it.’

  Rachel agreed. ‘It’s not that we should have had more hardship, it’s just that politicians were under the spell of right-wing economists in the eighties–over here, as well as in New Zealand. It’s meant that inequality’s got worse in ways we couldn’t imagine.’

  Rachel ran Lauren to the railway station late Friday afternoon. The two women hugged and waved at the turnstile and promised to keep in touch. Arriving in London, Lauren negotiated the underground, settled herself on the train for Brighton and texted Julia her arrival time.

  Andrew, her son-in-law, met her. ‘Julia’s cooking dinner and the children are having their baths,’ he explained as he drove her to their terraced house, modernized but otherwise not too different from the one Lauren had owned in Cambridge when the children were young. By the time they arrived the children were in their pyjamas and ready for bed. As soon as they saw her, they were clamouring for a story from Gran.

  There was just time for Lauren to hang up her clothes in the spare room. ‘Enjoy it while you can,’ Julia advised. ‘It won’t be long before the children will want a room each. Then visitors will have to have a divan in that cubbyhole Andrew calls his study.’ Andrew’s study was an ongoing bone of contention. He had it stuffed full of files, and piles of books and papers on the desk that overflowed onto more piles on the floor.

  ‘It’s ridiculous,’ Julia said, ‘in the middle of all that mess he’s got a powerful computer with a big screen, and that should be all he needs. A lot of their investigative work is done online now, and he should keep electronic files, not paper ones.’ Andrew was a forensic accountant. He worked for a government office concerned with white collar crime, especially tax fraud, and lots of his work could be done from home. Julia went on, ‘Look at me, I’m an academic and all I need is the kitchen table to work on.’

  Lauren murmured sympathetically but took care not to take sides. The children scrambled for space on her lap and argued about which book their Gran should read.

  It was a busy weekend. On Saturday it was amusement for the children, starting with the beach. ‘I know, I know,’ said Julia, ‘you think Brighton’s not a beach. All stones and deck chairs for hire, not like New Zealand’s long empty strands with their wild surf. But if it’s all you’ve got…’ In the afternoon they drove to Middle Farm, where the children enjoyed petting lambs, calves and a pony ride.

  Sunday was for the visitor to choose, and Lauren decided on Charleston farmhouse, home of the Bloomsbury artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. She loved the way they had decorated any available surfaces, walls, doors and furniture. And she enjoyed the walled garden, with its sculptures, mosaic pavements and tile-edged pools, its flower gardens a riot of colour. Inherited wealth, she mused, had the advantage of giving talent and innovation an opportunity to flourish. The children were not troubled by any such speculation. They liked running around the garden, but more especially the tea room.

  By Sunday evening, Adam and Tamsin were tired. They were giggling foolishly in bursts at a private joke, rolling their eyes, hands over their mouths. In the coming week Tamsin would stay home from child care and together she and Lauren would pick up Adam from school. Lauren did wonder if she was still up to nursemaiding, but she pushed the thought away.

  At dinner Andrew said, ‘Has Julia asked you about the Cambridge event? That was the reason you came over, wasn’t it?’

  Lauren thought what an annoyingly nice man he was, as she helped herself to a serving of Julia’s ratatouille. Not who she would have picked. She had reckoned Julia needed someone more exciting. Accountancy never looked like the most interesting profession, but perhaps forensic accountants were another breed.

  She told Andrew about the College project, and mentioned Brett, the ‘great man’ who was responsible for her trip. She made no secret of her surprise that Brett was imposing his name on the college library.

  ‘You wouldn’t want a building named after you, would you, Andrew? Don’t you think that’s really arrogant, given that it’s a women’s college?’

  ‘I should be so lucky,’ he said, helping himself from the large dish of brown rice while Julia shushed the children.

  ‘How do they get to be so bloody rich, anyhow?’ Lauren asked.

  Andrew laughed. ‘He’s probably on file with us. We have a wall of filing cabinets that we call “the ones that got away”. Practically every one of those billionaires has something shady, but we can’t usually track it down–they’re protected by shells, hedges, small ex-colonial jurisdictions. That’s just the UK citizens. Then there’s all the Eastern European oligarchs and so forth from a bit later.’

  ‘Brett’s Australian, but he’s lived in England forever–went to Cambridge here when I was a student and never went home. He had family money to play with. He boasted to me that he bought New Zealand assets in the eighties. He may not have done anything unlawful, but he was certainly one of the vultures hanging about when we foolishly sold the family silver. Sorry about the mixed metaphor,’ she finished.

  ‘It’s not a bad metaphor,’ said Andrew. ‘A lot of them did hang about–and birds do like shiny things–and even if they weren’t on the wrong side of the law, they often had offsiders who were. After dinner I don’t mind having a look in the study. I can’t tell you confidential stuff, but there might be something there.’

  Meal over and cleared away, children in bed, Lauren and Julia settled themselves in the living room. Lauren declined rooibos in favour of conventional tea. Andrew disappeared into the cubby hole and emerged twenty minutes later holding a wodge of papers. ‘Well, how about this,’ he said. ‘Brett Wilson was one of the tycoons investigated when the government held its enquiry into money laundering, remember–about ten years back? It’s all in the public domain. These are news clippings, so you can have all this, they’re spare copies. We have everything online at the office now, I just haven’t got round to tidying up here.’

  Julia rolled her eyes as he handed Lauren the papers. ‘Like I say, he’s in our category of the ones that got away–so squeaky clean it’s suspicious. Nothing on him, but I’d bet my last dollar that an awful lot of spring cleaning went on to make it look like that. Now he can afford to be philanthropic–he won’t even miss what he’s donating to your college.’

  Andrew sat down in his favourite armchair. He looked like a man who would have enjoyed a pipe and slippers. He went on, ‘Nothing necessarily wrong with getting rich. But it too often involves not paying taxes–that’s my agency’s business. And the constant mergers and acquisitions make life very hard for us, as well as for people who thought they had secure jobs.’

  ‘Thanks, Andrew.’ Lauren began reading through the
reports. She was quiet for about fifteen minutes, then sighed and said, ‘I don’t really understand all this financial stuff. I can see I was right, though, Brett does have an interest in several New Zealand companies that used to belong to everyone. The rotten sods.’

  Julia wasn’t sure if her mother was cursing the Bretts of the world or the government that sold the assets. It reminded her. ‘Mum, you’ll have been following the coalition talks in New Zealand? Isn’t it extraordinary how long it’s taking Peters to make up his mind. Perhaps he won’t go with National.’

  ‘Oh, he probably will,’ said her mother gloomily. ‘At least I won’t have time to worry about it this coming week while I’m looking after the children.’

  That wasn’t altogether true, Lauren made sure she looked at New Zealand news online at least once every day. By the end of the week, when she was due to fly out to Greece, she couldn’t quite believe that there was still no new government. She’d enjoyed her week; time with Adam and Tamsin was precious–but she was tired, and looked forward to a real holiday.

  The Ryanair jet touched down in Athens. It had been a good flight, despite the 4am awakening, the pre-dawn taxi to Gatwick, the hustle onto the plane and the run for the best of the unallocated seats. The cheerful cabin crew disturbed the peace by announcing football results, and trying to sell raffle tickets. Lauren had pounced on a window seat and was transfixed as Europe unfolded below her–the Channel, the flat fields of northern France and the Alps with early snow on the peaks and in the mountain valleys. Then across Italy, and the blue of the Mediterranean, and a smooth landing into Athens.

  She cleared Customs and made for the exit. She did not expect Kirsten to meet her, but couldn’t help scanning the small crowd of greeters. No Kirsten, of course. She found her way to the Metro, boarded and changed for Piraeus following instructions she’d printed out from the internet.