by Hilary Boyd
He couldn’t look at her.
‘I mean, if necessary, you could sell the flat, couldn’t you? We don’t need this grand place. We could find something smaller . . . Freddy, speak to me.’
His wife clasped his hand more tightly, then let it go and tried to raise his chin with her fingers, so that he would look at her. But he was crying now, in great breathless gasps, the sheer enormity of the mess only really hitting him at that very minute, as he viewed it through Lily’s eyes.
‘Freddy?’
She got up and came round the table, sat down beside him and put her arms around his shoulders, dropping a kiss on the side of his head. ‘Please, don’t . . . Just tell me, tell me exactly what the situation is. I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think. We’ll figure something out.’
Eyes brimming with tears, he finally turned to her, his fingers tearing at the napkin in his hand. ‘No. No, we can’t work it out. This is way, way worse than anything you could possibly imagine. So bad that when you hear the full extent of my fuck-up, you’ll never speak to me again.’
‘Stop it, Freddy. You’re frightening me.’
He steadied his breathing, wiped his tears away with his napkin. ‘I’m a gambler, Lily. Plain and simple. I’ve lost it all, gambled it away over the past year or so.’ He saw the incomprehension in her face. ‘Everything’s gone.’
‘Everything? What do you mean?’ She moved back.
‘I mean every single penny . . . gone.’
‘But what about this flat? It must be worth millions.’ Her voice was still strong, still hopeful.
‘It’s rented.’
‘Rented? But you said . . .’
‘I lied to you.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I wanted to be someone I’m not, someone you would love.’ It sounded pathetic, but it was true.
Lily was silent as she sat beside him, arms now hugging her body, head bent.
‘You’re a gambler,’ she said, as if she’d suddenly heard what he said. She looked up and he saw her eyes were full of disbelief. ‘I don’t understand. What sort of a gambler? Horses? Cards?’
‘Roulette.’
‘You’ve gambled everything you own at a roulette table? Honestly? When? When were you doing this?’ And then he saw the penny drop. ‘Those nights when you said you were working . . . you were in a casino?’
‘Sometimes. Not very often until recently . . . This last year, maybe nine months, has been particularly bad.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Lily said, almost to herself.
‘I always think I’ll win,’ he said softly.
‘But I thought we were happy. Why would you destroy that?’
‘I’ve been happier with you than I’ve ever been in my whole life.’
Bewilderment filled her eyes. ‘So why, Freddy? Why did you need to do it?’
‘I don’t know.’ He didn’t, but he was aware his problem had nothing whatsoever to do with Lily or the life they’d shared these last few years.
‘How long have you been a gambler?’ she asked, after another moment’s silence.
He didn’t answer, didn’t want to face the fact himself.
‘What – all your life? Before you met me? After you met me . . . ? God, I can’t believe this. Why the hell didn’t you tell me? We could have done something. There are hundreds of places you can go to get help.’
She got up, angry now, finally angry. After a few moments’ pacing up and down the kitchen, she came back to her chair and plonked herself down. ‘Okay . . . listen. This isn’t the end of the world. You might have to go bankrupt, but we can survive that. Maybe you’ll lose the studio, but we can live on my money, rent somewhere cheaper. I’ll pay for the wedding . . . You can get help.’ She rubbed his back encouragingly. ‘Nobody died, Freddy.’
Not looking up, he said, ‘Good as. Your money is gone too.’
Freddy watched the colour drain from his wife’s cheeks.
‘All of it?’
‘All of it.’
‘No! No, you can’t have . . . You said you’d given it to your broker. You said Jonathan had invested it. You said . . .’
‘I lied.’ He looked her straight in the eye. ‘I lied to you, Lily. Comprehensively lied. I stole your money, literally stole it, from under your nose. There’s nothing left.’
‘But . . . are you honestly telling me we have nothing – no money, no assets, no investments?’ She blinked, her mouth working furiously. ‘How much? Tell me how much you’ve lost.’
He welcomed her anger. Until his last sentence extinguished her hope once and for all, she still seemed intent on being kind, on helping him . . . loving him. He didn’t deserve that.
He began to gather up the multiple debts in his head, line them up for inspection, but the task was too great.
‘A lot.’
‘How much?’
He knew she wasn’t going to let it go so he began the dismal litany. ‘Sixty to a man called Lau Heng, seventeen for the wedding, two months’ salaries at the studio, about fifty. Overdraft, forty odd. Tax . . . God knows. Your money. My bookie, Barney . . . Lost track of how much I owe him.’ He saw the shock on her face. ‘There are others pending. Our ex-accountants have applied for a County Court Judgement. The studio rent is overdue . . . It must be close to half a million.’ He had no idea, in fact, if this was true. The real sum could be twice as much for all he knew.
Her mouth dropped open. ‘You’ve gambled half a million pounds? Half a million of other people’s money?’
Freddy tried to take her hands, but she snatched them away, hunched over, swaying slightly back and forth, her bare feet pressed together on the rungs of the chair.
‘I don’t believe this.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I know it’s pointless to tell you that, because it’s beyond sorry, and there’s nothing I can do to make it better. But I am sorry.’
‘What are we going to do about the wedding?’ Lily said after what seemed a long while, her voice small, her eyes, now raised to his, blank with shock. ‘What are we going to do, Freddy?’
He pulled her to him and she buried her head in his shoulder, this time not resisting his embrace. The life seemed to have gone out of him. It was as if his body were not his own. He felt no pain, no sorrow – although he knew he was sorry. Neither was there any urgency to sort things out. For the first time in his life he didn’t have a plan. He didn’t even feel he had the strength to comfort the woman he held in his arms. Nothing. He felt nothing at all. Freddy March, once revealed in all his true glory, had ceased to exist.
Chapter 17
Lily shut herself in their bedroom, leaving Freddy slumped in the kitchen. They had run out of things to say, because Lily didn’t know what to ask. The problem seemed so massive, the shock so great, that her mind was blank.
Now she was pacing the large room like the proverbial headless chicken. She didn’t know whether to get dressed, fall back into bed and cover her head with the duvet, go out, call someone, cry, beat the life out of her husband. She was shivering, wired to the hilt, and completely baffled.
She thought she should be scared, but she wasn’t sure what to be most afraid of. A sudden and complete absence of money? Her husband’s lies and secret addiction? Her marriage? Her son’s wedding fiasco? How, in God’s name, was she going to tell Dillon and Gabriela that the wedding was off? Sitting down on the bed, she realized she was having trouble believing what Freddy had said. The whole thing felt like a hoax, a ridiculous novelizing of their lives, and any minute now he would appear at the bedroom door to tell her it was nothing more than a bad joke.
Just now, in the kitchen, Freddy had kept asking her why she wasn’t angrier with him. But how can you be angry with a situation you don’t understand? Yes, the facts were there, but getting her head round the destru
ction of the whole edifice of her life surely took longer to digest than a mere hour. She would be angry; other people would be angry too, she anticipated that. But right now she just felt crazy.
*
Hating to be alone in the debris of the bomb just detonated, Lily went to find her husband, even though Freddy had been the cause of the explosion. He was exactly where she’d left him, his head sunk on his arms at the kitchen table, eyes shut. Is he asleep? she wondered, incredulous that anyone could find even temporary peace in his situation. But he lifted his head when he heard her bare feet on the tiles, staring at her with his dark eyes, now bleak with misery. She wanted to shake him, to make him tell her he was mistaken, that no such preposterous nightmare existed. She waited, absurdly, in vain.
Freddy got up, came round the table and took her in his arms. He was warm and felt safe and strong as always. She allowed herself to wallow in his embrace. They stood pressed together for a long time, neither wanting to let the other go.
When finally they pulled apart, she said, ‘We’d better tell Dillon.’
‘I’ll do it,’ he said.
‘What about the rest?’
‘I don’t know, Lily. I don’t know.’
She went to sit down, resting her elbows on the table. ‘Won’t it just mean bankruptcy?’ She looked up at him, willing him to engage. ‘That’s only for a year, I’m sure. We can survive it, can’t we?’
Brushing his hair off his face with both hands, combing his fingers through the waves, he shook his head. ‘It’s not as simple as that. The Chinese guy who lent me the sixty thousand won’t be pleased. He’s not the type to go for a CCJ. Then there’s Barney. I don’t know what he’ll do, but he has some distinctly villainous sidekicks.’
‘What are you saying? That someone will send the heavies round to rough you up?’ She was joking, but he raised his eyebrows.
‘Something like that.’
‘Seriously?’
‘I owe a lot of money to a lot of people, Lily. They’ll be angry. And they’ll think I’m hiding stuff, that if they threaten me I’ll cough up.’ He sighed. ‘I get it. How would I feel if someone owed me such a huge amount of money?’
‘So . . .’
Freddy, leaning against the work surface, his hands in his pockets, didn’t speak for a while. Lily was someone who liked to have a plan. She had always been of the opinion that any problem had a solution if you looked hard enough. And she felt he wasn’t looking hard enough. ‘For God’s sake, Freddy. You must have worked out this would happen sooner or later. Don’t you have a Plan B?’
Not looking at her, he said, ‘I always thought the next spin would sort things out.’
Throwing her hands into the air, Lily said, ‘But that’s ludicrous. How could you be so stupid?’
‘All I can say is that it felt possible at the time.’ He met her eye. ‘In fact, it still seems possible. If I had enough stake money, I would try again.’
Lily didn’t know how to respond. ‘How much have you got left?’
‘About a thousand.’
‘How long is this flat okay?’
‘Till the end of April, but the landlord might kick off once he hears about the bankruptcy.’
Silence.
‘What are we going to do?’ she asked, for what must have been the tenth time that morning.
Her husband didn’t reply at once. Then he said, ‘Can you go and stay with someone? Prem, maybe.’
‘Me?’
‘Lily, look, I’m a liability. You mustn’t be around me right now. It not only might be dangerous, but I have to sort this out on my own. You don’t deserve any of this. The best plan is that we separate. Let me deal with my appalling mess.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Plan B, if you like.’
Lily’s heart lurched. Through the gruelling morning of revelations, not once had she imagined that they wouldn’t work it out together. ‘Separate? You want us to separate?’
Freddy grabbed her hands. ‘Listen to me, will you? You need to understand. I don’t want to. You know the thought of being without you tears my heart out. But it’s not fair on you. I can’t do what I have to do and expect you to stand by and watch.’
‘What is it you have to do?’
‘I’ve told you. I don’t know exactly, but it won’t be pretty. And I don’t want you to be part of it.’ He looked away. ‘Anyway, I can’t understand why you’d want to be with someone who’s done what I’ve done to you.’
‘I love you?’ She gave him a puzzled frown, wondering, after all they’d shared, that she needed to say it.
A look of frustration, presumably at her stubbornness, crossed his face. ‘But I’ve fucked up. I’m not that man you say you love. I’m a fraud, a liar . . . a compulsive gambler. You don’t love this version of me, Lily. How could you?’
Lily didn’t know how she could either. She only knew that she did.
‘It’s only bullied politician’s wives who stand by the garden gate, holding hands and smiling at their scumbag husbands,’ Freddy added. ‘You don’t have to do that . . . You mustn’t do that.’
Lily’s phone, sitting on the kitchen table, buzzed. It was Dillon. She showed the screen to Freddy, who took the mobile, pressed it to his ear and walked quickly out of the room. She didn’t follow, having no desire to hear what was said. She was suddenly overwhelmed by a rare cowardice in the face of her son’s inevitable distress. I’ll speak to him later, she told herself, feeling sick at the thought.
Shut in the bathroom, the shower on full, she crouched in the wide stall hugging her knees, warm water pouring down on her bent head.
Freddy doesn’t mean it, she kept telling herself. He’s falling on his sword, trying to protect me after the event. Trying to do the decent thing, even if it’s a bit late in the day. Separation would break his heart – he told me that. He just thinks he ought to leave. He’s pre-empting what everyone else will say.
An anguish akin to the grief she remembered after Garret’s death assailed her, made her gasp for breath. No, no, please . . . Her words were silent. I can’t lose him, please, I can’t. Not Freddy as well. Please, not Freddy. She did not know or care to whom this plea was addressed. Not a believer in the God her parents had introduced her to in Sunday school, and subsequently at the church they attended every week without fail, she found herself, nonetheless, at moments of crisis, reverting to her childhood training and saying prayers to the heavens, putting her fears out there, seeking help from an undefined higher being.
*
Her hair damp, skin glowing from the heat of the shower, she automatically rubbed cream into her face, spritzed her arms and legs with body oil, as she did every day, pulled on a pair of black jeans and a long-sleeved white T-shirt over her underwear. She opened the bedroom door and listened. Was Freddy still talking to her son? But there was silence in the large flat. She padded along the corridor to the sitting room. Freddy was not there, only her mobile lying on the coffee table.
She called out to him, went back along the passage to the kitchen, called again. She could hear the note of panic in her voice, but the fear that he had already left her dissolved her guts, made her heart wild in her chest. There was a silence in the empty rooms she found eerie and threatening.
With shaking hands, she pressed Prem’s number. Her friend answered immediately.
‘Hey, you must be psychic, I was just about to phone you. Do you and Freddy fancy supper on Saturday? Raj and Hal are over and I know they’d love to see you. But no doubt you two are gallivanting off somewhere smart, as usual.’
Lily found she couldn’t speak.
‘Lily? Are you there? Hello?’
A sort of strangled sob escaped her.
‘Lily . . . say something, for God’s sake. What’s happened?’
Words tumbled out through her tears.
‘Slow down, take a breath
. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.’ Prem’s voice was urgent. ‘What was that about Freddy?’
‘He’s . . . he’s . . . lost all our money, every . . . penny. Gambled it . . .’ Another bout of sobbing drowned out the rest.
‘That’s insane.’ There was a shocked silence. ‘Listen, Ian’s gone to lunch and I can’t leave the shop till he comes back. But—’
‘No, it’s okay, I know you’re busy. I just . . . I just . . .’
Lily had a moment of surprise that it was only lunchtime. It felt as if a whole day, a year, a lifetime had passed since she’d woken that morning, so oblivious to what was about to happen.
‘I’ll text him right now, get him to come back. Stay where you are. I’ll be with you as soon as I can.’
Prem hung up, leaving Lily to give full vent to her tears.
Chapter 18
Gabriela had been screaming, cursing, then invoking God and the Devil in a turbulent mix of Portuguese and English, since Dillon had told her about his phone call with Freddy. Now she was just lying on the sofa – the new one, specially bought for them to sleep on when her mother came over for the now non-existent wedding – and sobbing noisily.
He’d gone into the office at six that morning to sort out the edit, having slept barely a wink. The tiresome document was taking for ever and Dillon was sure he was missing stuff, his mind so far from the words on the screen that his normally forensic ability to spot a mistake had all but deserted him.
He hadn’t slept because his stepfather’s sangfroid in the face of Suzie’s threats – supposed to soothe Dillon, no doubt – had been very far from reassuring. Not even his mother’s clear belief in every word that came out of her husband’s mouth had convinced him. So it hadn’t come as a huge surprise when Freddy had finally told him the unpleasant truth.
That it was not a surprise, though, did nothing to diminish the shock – or the dread of telling his fiancée. He knew he couldn’t ring her with such bad news: he had to be there for her. So he had told his boss that Gabriela wasn’t well. He’d then downloaded the file he needed to finish onto his laptop and biked off home at top speed, his brain whirring as he tried to put together the best words to explain their predicament.