by Hilary Boyd
‘Sorry, Dill, sorry. I’m as much of a mess as you. I just don’t know if Ted is serious . . .’
Now it was Dillon’s turn not to listen. He didn’t have the will to deal with his sister’s affair. From what she’d said, this Ted fellow had always sounded suspect, on course to break her heart, but it would do no good to tell her so now.
They sat in silence, the sky darkening outside the café window.
‘God, look at us,’ Sara muttered. ‘Two months ago Mum and Freddy were blissful, I was nicely engaged to Stan, your super-glam wedding was on track . . . Things were so sorted. And now it’s like we’ve all been fucking shipwrecked.’
Dillon nodded slowly. ‘I know, right?’ Then a thought struck him. ‘Gaby won’t leave me if we postpone the wedding till next year, will she?’
Sara considered this. ‘If she does, she does. It wasn’t meant to be.’
‘Always count on you for encouragement.’
His sister gave him an apologetic grin. ‘No, well, can’t come up with anything better right now.’
‘How’s Mum?’ he asked as they stood on the pavement a few minutes later, giving each other an awkward hug. His mother had been the elephant in the room since the two had sat down earlier. He felt guilty about her, but he wasn’t ready to let go of his anger yet. Cowardly as it was, he also didn’t want to hear that her life was as shit as his, and have to sympathize.
‘Ring her and find out,’ was his sister’s wafting reply, delivered over her shoulder in a sing-song voice as she strode off towards the Tube, dark coat billowing behind her.
*
When he got home, Gaby was on the phone, speaking rapidly in Portuguese. When she saw him she turned her back, not even acknowledging his presence and barely pausing in her conversation. The call was interminable. Dillon wanted to wrench the phone from her hand because he needed to talk to her right now, tell her the decision he’d finally settled on. The wedding would not happen this year. He was knocking the whole thing on the head, putting an end to all the uncertainty. It was the best thing for both of them.
When Gabriela finally said goodbye to whoever she was talking to she turned to face him. Her pretty face, normally so expressive, looked oddly blank.
‘Who was that?’ Dillon asked, a knot of fear forming in his stomach.
Gabriela didn’t answer, just shrugged her small shoulders. She was staring at him, phone clutched in her hand, looking as if she wanted to speak, but saying nothing as she stood stock still by the sink. She was dressed in grey sweatpants and a tight, long-sleeved black T-shirt, the neck low, revealing the top of her breasts. Her hair, normally so groomed, was lank around her face, her eyes still retaining puffiness from the days of crying. Dillon wanted to take her in his arms, but something held him back.
‘I’m going home,’ she said.
‘Home?’
She came to him then, took his hands in hers, looked up at him with her large brown eyes. ‘Mamãe is very upset, querido. I have to go and see her.’
Dillon didn’t understand. ‘She’s not coming tomorrow?’
Gabriela seemed evasive. She dropped his hands. ‘No.’
‘Is she ill?’
‘No, she’s not ill, but she’s very upset. She thinks . . . she thinks . . .’
‘What? What does she think, Gaby?’
His fiancée wouldn’t look at him. ‘Oh, nothing, it’s stupid.’
He pulled on her arm till she met his eyes again. ‘What? Tell me what she said.’
After a long pause, she said, ‘She thinks you never wanted to marry me. That this is an excuse. She says it’s not possible that someone would lose all their money like that.’
Dillon felt himself flushing. ‘I don’t understand. She thinks I’m lying about Freddy?’ He was stunned.
She shrugged, said nothing, twisted her arm out of his grasp and turned away.
‘Gaby? Come on. You know that’s total crap. She – you can’t honestly believe for a single second that I’ve made the whole Freddy thing up just to get out of marrying you?’
She swung round to face him, gave him a sad smile. ‘No, of course I don’t think you made it up, querido. My mother is not very sophisticated. She doesn’t understand people like your stepfather.’
‘She’s not the only one.’
‘No . . .’
‘Please . . . please don’t go to São Paulo. Not now.’
Another shrug, then Gaby wandered over and sat down on the sofa, drawing her legs up under her, brushing her hair off her face and winding it in a rope behind her head.
Dillon followed her, sat down beside her.
She said, ‘Bruna says Mamãe thinks it’s a bad omen . . .’
Frustrated, Dillon cursed loudly. ‘A bad omen? That’s fucking ridiculous. How can Freddy going bankrupt have anything to do with you and me?’ He scrutinized her face. ‘You don’t believe that, Gaby . . . For God’s sake, tell me you don’t believe that.’
A silence followed that seemed to stretch for ever. Then Gaby said, ‘No, of course not. I’m not superstitious like my mother. But things like this make me think.’
‘About what?’
‘About us.’
Dillon’s heart banged in his chest so hard he clutched his crossed hands to his sternum, pressing hard as if to keep it in place. He gasped, then the feeling subsided almost as quickly as it had come. He took a few steadying breaths. ‘I love you, Gaby. I love you so much. Don’t leave me.’ Tears, from the physical effort of keeping himself together, began to spill down his cheeks.
His fiancée saw them and her face filled with pity. ‘I love you too.’ She wiped his left cheek with her fingertips, a gesture so gentle it only made him cry the more. ‘But you are difficult to love sometimes. You seem all closed up. I try to get through to you, but you shut me out.’
Dillon stared at her, baffled. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s this got to do with the wedding and your mother?’
‘It’s not. It’s to do with us.’
‘Are you saying . . . What are you saying?’
Gaby let out a sigh, a sigh of such unhappiness that Dillon embraced her at once. But there was no responding hug: she just lay in his arms like a doll, quite still. Neither moved for a while. Dillon was waiting for her to answer him.
When she finally pulled free, she seemed more distant, more business-like, getting up off the sofa without looking at him, collecting her phone from the table, walking towards the small bedroom at the back of the flat.
‘I have to go home,’ she said.
Chapter 23
The night Freddy had woken naked on the sofa, beside his still-sleeping wife, he had not meant to leave her. Not then, not yet. He wanted more time, just to be with Lily, somehow to imprint upon her how much he loved her, before tearing himself away to put his life in order. But as he’d tiptoed quietly through to the bedroom to get dressed, left the flat to get some supper – soup and decent bread, maybe, something light – before Lily woke, he realized he was just prolonging the agony, dragging out the cold inevitability that he couldn’t stay with her.
Lily was too generous, too loving. She just didn’t seem to fathom the extent to which he’d let her down. But one day she would, and then she would be very angry. Best to part before that happens, he told himself. And he hoped, by the time she began seriously to resent him, he would already have shown her his dedication to cleaning up his act, getting his house in order. Then they could be together without having first torn each other to shreds. It’ll only be for a couple of months, max, he told himself, as he’d walked along Bayswater Road in the darkness, directionless, no plan in mind except a childish need to escape further recriminations, further responsibility.
*
The person he’d finally phoned, around ten thirty that night, was an old girlfriend. They had b
een friends first and last, with a brief, ill-judged liaison in between, to which neither of them had been committed, the boredom of a hot summer in London – fifteen years ago now – weakening their resolve. She had since bagged herself a lugubrious Austrian count, and had four blond Sound of Music-style children, but they’d remained occasional friends.
Freddy knew Bettina would ask no questions, her house in Belgravia big enough to accommodate him – and half London, indeed – without anyone really noticing. He could hole up for a day or two and avoid all the people baying for his blood, from the Official Receiver to Lau Heng and Barney, his bookie.
It was not so much the liquidation of the company or the inevitable personal bankruptcy that Freddy feared – although he knew he would have to work hard with the Official Receiver to justify some recent accounting lapses. No. That was just a process, he told himself, albeit a tedious and time-consuming one, which would put restrictions on his financial future, his reputation, but wouldn’t threaten him personally. It was the other creditors – below the radar – who could make life very unpleasant for him. But he was kidding himself. The whole thing turned out to be much more daunting than he’d expected.
*
Bettina had disappeared with her brood to Scotland for the last of the Easter holidays, leaving the house silent except for the occasional incursions of Alya, the delightful Malaysian housekeeper, who insisted on making his bed every morning as if he were in a hotel.
He had gone back to Sussex Square two days after he’d left, ringing the bell repeatedly before he went up, to check that Lily had gone. He’d been fairly certain she wouldn’t stay there without him, sure that Prem would step in, look after her, give her back her old job, perhaps. And he’d been right. There was no sign of his wife, although her presence lingered painfully, the ginger scent of her body cream pervading the bathroom, a few items of clothing still in her side of the built-in wardrobe.
With an Addison Lee taxi ordered to arrive in half an hour, and spooked by being in the flat, which no longer belonged to him, Freddy had snatched up his stuff as if he were robbing the place. All the furniture, linen, towels and kitchen contents were part of the exorbitant rental, and now seemed like a painful reminder of his careless extravagance. So he took only personal items, things that mattered to him, including his clothes, laptop and tablet, chargers, a box file of papers, their wedding photo – which Lily had ominously left behind – two framed drawings by his wife and some books. He also packed his Canon 5D and high-end Bose sound system, which he intended to trade for cash. The stuff he didn’t need for his intended travels he stacked in a corner of the capacious basement storeroom at Bettina’s house.
The following week he spent shut away in one of Bettina’s spare rooms, amid the most ridiculous luxury of floor-to-ceiling silk Colefax and Fowler curtains, deep-pile wool carpets, cashmere throws in timeless greys, Floris bath oils, and pure Egyptian cotton sheets with a thread count higher than the sum total of his remaining cash.
His time was entirely taken up with clearing out his old life and creating a new, anonymous one. Because the burden of those to whom he owed money lurked like a monkey on his shoulder, he no longer felt safe in the street, although he told himself he was exaggerating, that it was absurd to think he might be physically attacked in broad daylight in the middle of London in the twenty-first century.
He also wanted to avoid a chance encounter with an acquaintance or friend. When he was out and about he felt that everyone was looking at him, as if his shame were burned on his forehead like a branding. It wasn’t his imagination either. Tommy Nars, a technician he’d worked with years back, had been approaching him on the Soho pavement the previous day. He’d thought of Tommy as his friend and had employed him in the past. He watched the man swerve when he saw him and cross to the other side of the street. Just the thought of that encounter cemented his desperate need to escape.
So he raked through his emails, answering virtually none, then began the laborious process of saving addresses and other email data before closing the account and setting up a new Hotmail address.
He bought another pay-as-you-go mobile and took a while transferring essential numbers, breaking up his old Sim and flushing it down the loo, like a gangster.
He dug out a credit card in his previous name, Frederick Slater, which had a small borrowing limit that he had kept ticking over since he’d changed his name by deed poll in his twenties, the card replaced every few years but seldom used. He’d forgotten about it until he found it in the bottom of the box file. It wouldn’t solve anything for very long, but it might buy a plane ticket or a hotel room . . . rent a car.
He fixed a meeting with James Hardy, his solicitor – James had insisted on seeing him immediately.
It was a nightmare. The man bombarded him with a list of documents as long as your arm that Freddy would have to produce for the receiver, questioning him on every last aspect of his complex finances until Freddy felt like screaming, ‘Shut the fuck up!’
He was disoriented. None of it made any sense to him. He had never been good on detail, always leaving it up to others to sort out his financial affairs. But those people were now gone. Even Angus, who had hung on, offering his services – Freddy suspected because he wanted the experience – had backed off when Freddy explained he couldn’t pay him even a small amount.
‘I need to get away,’ Freddy had said to James.
James, a man of Freddy’s age, suave and jolly, undoubtedly rich, with a trencherman’s paunch and expensive tortoiseshell glasses on his broad nose, looked aghast. ‘You can’t go anywhere, dear boy. Our receiver friend will demand your presence at a meeting, probably within the next two weeks. You’ll have to pitch up. And there’s a mass of paperwork to prepare . . .’ He stopped, frowned. ‘Get away where?’
Freddy shrugged. ‘Anywhere. Can’t stand it.’
James raised his fair eyebrows. ‘No, no, I can see that. Nasty business all round. But once you’ve got the documents together and had the meeting, things will settle down.’
Freddy nodded as if he were agreeing. James knew nothing about his other debts, or his gambling.
‘There were times when I took money from the company . . . not large amounts, but will that be a problem?’
‘What do you mean, “took money”?’
‘Well, borrowed money from the company . . . personally. I think you call it a “director’s loan”?’ He didn’t really have any idea what it was called.
James was instantly alarmed. ‘What are you telling me? You took money from the company you weren’t owed?’
Freddy was uncertain.
‘That’s very serious. How much are we talking? And how often?’
Freddy genuinely had no idea. He remembered five thousand he’d liberated after a client had paid up, gone in one night at the tables. Another two grand the month before. But it could have been a lot more, he knew. Stake money, he’d seen it as, and had been certain he’d return it the following day.
He told James what he could remember, the solicitor giving no sign that the amounts were either better or worse than he’d supposed.
‘Hmm . . . We’ll have to deal with this ASAP, certainly before you see anyone at the Receiver’s Office.’
‘But I’m the director of the company. I can pay myself what I like, can’t I? It’s not like I’m embezzling someone else’s millions. It wasn’t more than a few thousand . . . sort of loans for fundraising, trips to meet investors and stuff. I was trying to save the company.’
James shook his head. ‘Fine, if you didn’t owe anyone else money and your staff were being paid. But that doesn’t appear to be the case. They’ll take a dim view about your fitness to be a director, anyway, with this list of transgressions. You’ll certainly be disqualified for a while.’ He stopped and said nothing more as he chewed his lip, head bent, the bald patch in the middle of his pink scalp sudden
ly visible. When he looked up, Freddy saw resolve on his plump features.
‘Okay . . . listen. Go through your statements and pinpoint when these so-called loans were paid out, then highlight them with a note as to what you needed the money for and send them over to me so that we can see the full extent.’ He frowned at Freddy, obviously not sure his client was in complete possession of his faculties. ‘Can you do that?’
‘I can, I suppose.’
‘Then we’ll have to come up with a plan PDQ, reasons why these borrowings were legit, find some corresponding expenses, without compounding the problem and getting us both into trouble. By the way, who’s been acting for you on the accounts since Mike Stone kicked off? Presumably you told whoever it is about the loans.’
Freddy hadn’t told Angus anything, of course, so he replied, ‘I just had a trainee guy managing the payroll.’ At which the solicitor merely pursed his lips.
‘There’s a bankruptcy deposit to pay, Freddy, as I’m sure you’re aware. Up front. Five hundred and fifty pounds,’ James went on.
‘Five hundred and fifty? I don’t have it. Surely nobody does who’s going bankrupt.’
His solicitor sighed. ‘And an application fee of a hundred and thirty. Altogether six hundred and eighty.’
‘But that’s ridiculous. Where am I going to get money like that when all my accounts and cards are frozen?’
‘Maybe a friend could lend it to you. Your principal shareholder . . .’ he consulted his notes ‘. . . Mr Blackstone. Would he help out? He has a vested interest.’ He was looking at Freddy as if he despaired of him, although Freddy was sure he couldn’t be the worst offender James had ever dealt with, by a long chalk. ‘Where’s your wife in all this? Has she got money?’
‘She did have,’ Freddy muttered darkly. ‘No.’
‘Well, go away and think about it. It’s not a lot of money for some of your friends, I imagine.’
*
Every day Freddy had been on the verge of calling Max. He was the only person who could save him. But his friend had made it abundantly clear at their last meeting that he wouldn’t give Freddy another penny until he was clean and could prove it. ‘The day you can convince me that you’ve stopped for a decent length of time, I’ll help out.’ Max had said something like that. How can I ever prove I’m not doing something, anyway? he asked himself petulantly. And what is a ‘decent’ length of time?