What the Nanny Saw

by Fiona Neill

  “What team?” asked Hector.

  “No idea,” said Nick. “No one has ever asked that question. But probably Mexican, because it’s a piece by a famous Mexican artist called Gabriel Orozco.”

  “I like it,” said Alfie. “Can we buy it for our bedroom?”

  Nick laughed.

  “We have a great collection of artwork here,” he said, more for Ali’s benefit than the twins’.

  “Antony Gormley, Lucian Freud, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter. But you’d probably find the antique book collection more interesting. There’s an entire collection of Samuel Johnson. That’s your period isn’t it?”

  “Actually, he only wrote one novel,” said Ali, “but he was a brilliant critic.”

  He was trying to make her feel comfortable, but Ali wished he would just ignore her and focus on Hector and Alfie.

  “We’ve got first editions of Byron and Shakespeare, too.”

  The elevator arrived. The twins jumped in and then jumped out again, worried the doors might close before Ali and Nick had gotten inside. Nick suggested they might like to see his office, because it had a really good chair they could spin around on.

  “Brilliant,” said Alfie and Hector simultaneously. They each took one of Nick’s hands, leaving Ali standing alone in the corner. Nick kept talking as the elevator went up to the thirty-first floor.

  “There’s a restaurant with a chef on the top floor. We entertain clients there. On the seventh floor there are lots of restaurants. Benugo, Mongolian grill, stir-fry. And there’s a gym, a medical center, and a dentist.”

  “Like a small town,” said Ali.

  Hector and Alfie weren’t listening. They were too busy playing a game in which one of them closed their eyes while the other tried to guess what floor the elevator had reached. When finally it stopped, they stepped into yet another large atrium. The twins careered up the corridor like bouncy balls.

  “There’s the Antony Gormley,” Nick said, stopping in front of a lithograph. “Cloud Man. I asked them to hang it here because I like its mystery. The idea that man’s identity isn’t fixed. Appeals to me.”

  “You should read John Locke, then,” said Ali. “That was his theory.”

  Nick turned right and headed toward his office. There was a metal sign that read “Nick Skinner” on the door. His secretary came in and made a fuss of the twins, twisting their curly hair between her fingers and asking Ali the kind of questions you would normally ask a parent: did they like football, did they prefer Star Wars Lego or lorries and trains, did they go to sleep at exactly the same time? Who walked first?

  Ali inspected his office. There was a leather sofa, and a large L-shaped walnut desk with three Bloomberg screens on one side and a photograph of Nick shaking hands with Gordon Brown at the Mansion House dinner in June, just a week before Brown had become prime minister. Ali remembered how Nick had come home glowing after this event. He was full of praise for Brown’s “brilliant” speech and recited whole sentences by rote to Bryony and Ali when he found them in the kitchen going through the daybook. He described how Brown had congratulated bankers for inventing “the most modern instruments of finance” and how their achievements meant the country would live in “an era that history will record as the beginning of a new Golden Age.” The gold had tarnished pretty quickly, thought Ali.

  She went to look at a photograph on the wall taken by Sebastião Salgado. It showed thousands of miners scratching through soil at the bottom of a pit, filling sacks, and then carrying their burden up huge ladders to the top of the Serra Pelada mine in Brazil to sift for gold. It was a vision of hell. Did he not see the incongruity of this picture hanging in this place? It didn’t surprise her, really. She had met enough wealthy people since she had moved into Holland Park Crescent to know that social conscience didn’t really extend beyond occasional attendance at charity events.

  “It’s a different kind of gold rush from the one in the City over the past decade. They earn about twenty cents a day,” said Nick, observing her interest in the photograph. “People do desperate things to help their family. I know I would.”

  Much later, after Nick’s disappearance, Ali thought about this comment. It was easy to recast so much of what Nick said during this period in the light of what subsequently transpired. Everything seemed nuanced. Even something banal like his decision to take up smoking could be misinterpreted. Did he go out into the garden at night to have a cigarette? Or was he doing something else? Did he really want to go through the recycling to remove documents for shredding because he was worried about identity theft? Could there be another reason?

  At the time, however, there was no reason to assume Nick was referring to himself. His phone rang soon after, and he went into his secretary’s office to deal with yet another call. The twins sat behind his desk and took turns to spin each other on his chair. Ali sat down at a coffee table on the other side of the room and picked up a copy of the Financial Times from his open briefcase. She skim-read a piece written by Felix Naylor about the perils inherent in banks, analysts, and ratings agencies all using the same mathematical formula to measure the risk of collateralized debt obligations. Beneath the newspaper was a little diary that Ali hadn’t seen before. She flicked through the past couple of months and was taken aback to see that Nick had an appointment with a therapist at the same time every Friday evening. She quickly hid it underneath the newspaper and unearthed a small haul of cheap-looking mobile phones, a couple of SIM cards, and a piece of paper with a phone number written in pencil.

  “What are you doing?” asked Nick sharply. Ali hadn’t noticed him come back in the room.

  “Reading Felix’s piece,” said Ali, nervously picking up the Financial Times.

  “And what do you think he’s trying to say?”

  “I don’t really know,” Ali said with hesitation.

  “What’s the formula called?” Nick asked.

  “She’s not at school,” Hector rounded on him.

  “Gaussian copula?” Ali suddenly remembered.

  “Well done.” Nick gave a quick smile. “He’s pointing out that the Gaussian copula doesn’t use historical data to measure the likelihood of defaults, it only uses data from credit default swaps over the past decade. He’s been listening to what I’ve been saying.”

  Nick spun Hector and Alfie in circles on his big black leather chair. When they were sick with dizziness they crab-walked to a walnut sideboard and picked up a photograph. It must have been taken shortly after they were born. They were in Tita and Foy’s drawing room, and Bryony held a baby under each arm like a couple of rugby balls. Her hair was wild, and her mouth slightly open. She looked glorious and defiant. But who was she defying? Ali wondered.

  One of the twins was leaning toward her breast, eyes shut, mouth open, as though rooting for milk through her silk shirt. It was unclear to Hector and Alfie exactly who was the greedy one. How would it feel not to be able to recognize yourself in photos? thought Ali. How could you feel unique, when every day you were confronted with an exact copy of yourself? And yet, when she had gone back to Norwich at the weekend, wasn’t that almost how she felt? She couldn’t recognize the person she was when she lived there. She couldn’t believe that she had spent most of her waking hours thinking about Will MacDonald. He was so mediocre.

  “Did you enjoy Norfolk?” Nick asked.

  “We had a great time, thank you,” Ali said. “We went to the beach, visited the lifeboat museum, and ate fish and chips on the pier. Hector and Alfie went out with my dad in his boat. Even Izzy came, although she refused to compromise with footwear and ended up going to sea in those enormous platform boots.”

  “It was very kind of you to take them,” Nick responded.

  “My parents enjoyed having them,” said Ali. “They’re a lot of fun.” She immediately regretted saying this because it mig
ht have sounded recriminatory, as though she thought he should spend more time with them.

  “Did you manage to catch up with any old friends?” Nick asked. She glanced at him. He hadn’t asked her so many questions since her first interview.

  “I went to Norwich on Saturday evening and the others stayed at home.” She kept the answer deliberately opaque.

  “Shall we go and see if Father Christmas has arrived?” Nick asked. They used the fire escape to go up to the top floor, so that the twins and Ali could admire the view over the edge of the building. They could see as far as the Millennium Dome, the other side of the river.

  “Totally against all the rules.” Nick laughed a little too wildly. She was unnerved by his lack of caution. When they opened the door at the top of the stairs, Ali realized they had arrived in the middle of Santa’s grotto. There were excited girls and boys queuing to see him, and benevolent fathers holding the hands of children who were clearly not used to this level of paternal involvement in their daily affairs. Everyone looked faintly bemused at their unorthodox entrance, including Father Christmas, who pointed out that one of them had knocked over an elf as they pushed open the door.

  An annoyed-looking middle-aged elf in an unflattering ruched skirt came over and suggested that they go out the front entrance and queue for presents like everyone else. The implication being that she obviously thought Nick felt entitled to break the rules because of his position in the company.

  “Why are there donkeys, Daddy?” asked Alfie.

  “So the children can have rides,” Nick said, and shrugged.

  “How do you think they got them up here?” Ali asked in disbelief.

  “In the elevator,” said Nick. “This party is all about the art of the possible.”

  They went farther into the heart of the room. There was a carousel with small children enjoying limitless rides. In the corner were a couple of clowns doing magic tricks. Ali counted at least three fire-eaters. There was a photo booth where children and parents (mostly fathers) could have their pictures taken together, and a three-tier chocolate machine billowing melted milk chocolate for children to dip in sticks holding marshmallows. The small child who had been sitting on Father Christmas’s knee opened a present and inside found a DS that must have cost almost a hundred pounds. Ali thought it was a cross between Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Wizard of Oz. The noise was deafening. A singer, rumored to be Pixie Lott, was due to come and entertain everyone in a couple of hours. Ali was perplexed. This didn’t look like a bank in crisis.

  She put her nose in the air as she might on the beach in Norfolk, trying to get a good sniff of the salty headwind. It smelled of photocopier and air-conditioning. She felt a sense of unease that crept from the center of her body until it had reached the end of each limb. She shook out her hands and legs, trying to shrug it off. She thought of Holland Park Crescent, with its basement gym and wine cellar. She considered the basement cinema with leather chairs bigger than seats in first-class flights. The larder filled with food that more often went rotten rather than being eaten. The paintings. The antiques. The parties where famous rock stars pimped themselves for thousands of pounds. There was something wrong with a world where she couldn’t go back to university because she was funding her sister to go into a drug clinic. Although, unlike Nick’s CDOs, Ali’s investment in Jo was already paying dividends. According to her parents, who had visited Jo on the weekend, she had gone through withdrawal and was working intensively with a therapist to unravel the pattern of her addiction.

  The rich are always listened to more than the poor, thought Ali, remembering something Felix Naylor had said to Bryony during an argument about how City values had come to dominate British life over the past fifteen years.

  “The trouble with people who make money is that their ego is a reflection of their bank balance,” he had said. “The more money they make, the higher their opinion of themselves. They have no self-doubt, and people who don’t question themselves are dangerous.”

  It was, as Foy might say, le loi de l’emmerdement maximum. Sod’s law. She remembered a conversation she had overheard about subprime mortgages in which Nick was extolling the virtues of lending to families of low income because they had to pay more to borrow, which meant their debt generated more revenue. She had wanted to point out that he was talking about people like her parents but didn’t dare.

  “It’s quite something, isn’t it?” he said to Ali. “The events team organizes it.”

  “It’s really over the top,” agreed Ali. “I mean, there doesn’t seem to be a liquidity problem here.”

  “What do you know about liquidity problems?” He laughed.

  “I hear you talking,” said Ali, feeling embarrassed.

  “You really have three-hundred-sixty-degree vision around our family, don’t you?” Nick said. “I’ll have to remember to be more cautious in the future, otherwise I might be accused of revealing privileged information.”

  PART THREE

  18

  June 2008

  It was, everyone agreed, very bad luck that Foy’s seventieth-birthday party came at the end of a week that saw Lehman’s announce such huge losses that the bank made headline news around the globe. Doubly misfortunate, because just days before the party Nick’s boss in London called to warn he would be resigning before the week was out and hoped they would understand if he and his wife couldn’t make it. Even Izzy felt compelled to commiserate with her father when he returned home from his latest trip to New York, having survived the latest cull.

  “A billion is a lot, isn’t it, Dad?” Izzy inquired over their first dinner together in weeks.

  “It was two-point-eight billion dollars, actually,” said Nick, nervously drumming the table with his fingertips. “In just three months. Quite a feat, really, given it was the first time we’ve ever recorded a loss.”

  “At least you’ve still got a job,” said Bryony.

  “Sometimes I really wish I hadn’t,” said Nick.

  He closed his eyes and rotated his head in slow circles to loosen up his neck muscles. Then he gave Bryony a smile so forced and fleeting that its attempt to reassure was instantly undermined.

  She eyed him sharply. The antidepressants should have started neutralizing the anxiety by now. In April, after some persuasion, Bryony had finally managed to get him to take her Fluoxetine, arguing that no one could trace the prescription back to him. Still, Nick was struggling to eat, cutting tiny morsels of beef and hiding them beneath upturned Yorkshire puddings that resembled small bunkers. A pile of newspapers was strewn across the table beside him. “Lehman Slumps to First Loss as Credit Crunch Takes Toll.” “Wall Street’s Leading Woman Pays Price for Lehman’s Losses.” “Lehman Chief Accepts Blame for $2.8 Billion Loss.”

  “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said, and sighed.

  “You’re beginning to sound like Chicken Licken,” said Bryony.

  “Well, the sky is falling,” retorted Nick.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The losses should have been even bigger.”

  “How can you hide losses?”

  “Enron-style creative accounting. There’s a repo fund where we temporarily sell our best assets just before results are announced, to boost our balance sheet. Then we buy them back a week later.”

  “Surely that’s illegal?” Bryony asked.

  “It’s legally doable but morally reprehensible, which is why no one talks about it. I don’t think any other banks are doing it, at least not to the same extent. It’s a drug peculiar to us. I’ve been railing against it since last year.”

  “Why don’t you just cut your losses and sell off the sticky assets?”

  “Because it’s too late,” said Nick. The drumming fingers had stopped, and he was now running them through his hair over and over again. It
was a new habit. He’d stopped getting haircuts, Ali suddenly realized. It seemed significant, but she wasn’t sure why.

  “All the real estate and mortgage assets are virtually illiquid. We can’t sell them without taking a huge hit, and most of them are impossible to sell. The short-sellers have got their sights trained on us. David Einhorn is gunning for us.”

  “Who’s he?” asked Bryony.

  “Big-cheese hedge-fund guy. He’s the one who pointed out that we’ve got twenty percent of cash tied up in the debt on the Archstone-Smith property deal, and he’s said publicly that we’re hiding losses.”

  “Maybe he’s just looking for his big short to come good.”

  “He’s right, Bryony. That’s what he is,” said Nick.

  “The U.S. government isn’t going to let a bank as big as Lehman’s go to the wall,” said Bryony, trying to reassure him.

  “The Fed has no appetite for bailouts.”

  “Bear Stearns was different,” said Bryony. She paused for a moment. “Perhaps you should resign, too?”

  “Perhaps I should,” said Nick enigmatically. “But then how would we pay the mortgage on our Regency villa and our Jacobean folly? The banking sector isn’t exactly awash with jobs at the moment.”

  “Just one more year,” said Bryony, leaning over to steady his restless hand with her own. “Then you can leave it all behind.”

  “That’s what you say every year,” said Nick.

  “There is no education like misfortune,” pronounced Izzy. “And before you say anything, it’s not from a self-help book. It was Ali.” Izzy was in an exuberant mood. She had just finished outlining her summer holiday plans with her parents: a week surfing in Cornwall, three weeks in Corfu with friends, a party in Norfolk (with a Latin American theme), and a party in Scotland (with a Moroccan theme).

  She sat at the table, enveloped in a cloud of perfume, a sure sign that she had been smoking. Relieved that last summer’s neo-punk look had been diluted in favor of a more feminine vibe, Bryony and Nick had decided to overlook the cigarettes.