by Fiona Neill
“I have spent most of my life pleasing other people rather than pleasing myself,” she told Ali. “Make sure you don’t do the same.”
Nick’s office on the ground floor of Holland Park Crescent was hastily cleared out, and a single bed installed. A chest of drawers was found for Foy’s clothes. Ali helped arrange Foy’s belongings in his new bedroom. When she pointed out that Eleanor was one of the guests on the far side of the family lineup outside the Oxfordshire church where they had got married almost half a century earlier, Foy asked Ali to remove her from the photograph.
“I need to excise her from my life,” he said dramatically, as he watched Ali cut a careful line until Eleanor floated to the floor. Ali picked up the narrow strip of black-and-white photo and wiped Eleanor’s face, as if searching for clues that might indicate whether the affair had started before or after the wedding. He instructed Ali to chop Eleanor into tiny pieces and to burn them in an ashtray. Ali found a matchbox, but inside was a small pile of SIM cards, so she fetched her lighter instead. Foy held the ashtray with trembling hands until Eleanor turned to ash. The smoke alarm had gone off, but Foy didn’t appear to notice.
“This isn’t going to resolve your problem,” Ali advised him.
“Why did she wait all those years?” Foy asked, shaking his head in wonder.
“Guilt?” suggested Ali.
“How could she expect Tita to forgive her?”
“Then revenge,” Ali said. “Perhaps she wanted to make you as unhappy as she is.”
Tita was right. Instead of taking responsibility for his actions, Foy was already looking for other people to blame. A nurse came to the house with what she called “disability aids,” which Foy quickly named his “lack-of-sex toys.” A grab rail was put in the bathroom next door, and a stool placed in the shower. He was encouraged to wear an alarm round his neck in case he fell over and couldn’t get up on his own.
The nurse explained that his mobility would improve, the tiredness would fade, and his speech might come and go for a while, but there was no reason to believe there would be any permanent side effects. The chances of having a more serious stroke over the next three months were high, and as well as taking blood-thinning medicine and aspirin every day, she urged Foy to make immediate changes to his lifestyle.
“No alcohol, fatty food, or salt,” Bryony instructed Malea in front of Foy, the day after he was permanently installed at Holland Park Crescent. Bottles of whiskey and other spirits were removed from the drawing room, where he would spend most of the day. Cigarettes were hidden. “Brown rice and chicken for lunch, and a short walk to Holland Park in the afternoon. No other excitement. Ali will read to you from the newspapers in the morning and evening. It’s important to rest after a stroke.”
“I haven’t had a bloody stroke,” said Foy petulantly. “It was a transient ischemic attack.” His speech was slurred and his mouth drooped to one side, but he seemed to have no problem expressing himself. He still pulled up the twins when they made grammatical errors and managed to persuade Malea to hide a saltcellar in the Chippendale chest of drawers in the dining room where he ate all his meals because he couldn’t get downstairs.
“That’s just a fancy way of saying ‘mild stroke,’ Grandpa,” Izzy chided him, as she wrapped a rug around his legs. Since the stroke his legs were always cold. “And if you don’t look after yourself, you’ll have another one, and then Granny will never have you back.”
Sometimes, as Ali was reading to him, Foy would fall asleep in the sitting room chair and call out for Tita in his sleep.
“She’s gone,” Ali would whisper.
“I feel like someone who’s had his leg amputated but still feels as though he’s got the limb,” said Foy. “I’m at forties and fifties.”
Ali thought of the days that followed as the calm after the storm. Much later, she would realize they were more akin to the eerie interlude of quiet found as the eye of a hurricane passed over. Bryony was optimistic that the changes made at the top of Lehman’s would see the bank through the credit crunch, with Nick’s position enhanced. It looked as though the Korea Development Bank might be interested in a deal. The new regime had asked him to investigate the real value of collateralized debt obligations that had originated in Europe, to get a more accurate idea of the scale of losses facing the bank. Bryony saw this as a positive sign of Nick’s rising currency in New York. She allowed herself to imagine them all moving there for a couple of years and asked Ali if she would consider coming with them. Her enthusiasm was so convincing that even Ali began to imagine vliving on the Upper East Side and maybe enrolling in a graduate program at Columbia.
The twins made a new friend, a girl called Storm, who came to the house and invented a game called triplets that involved her dressing up in exactly the same clothes as Hector and Alfie. Jake stayed in Oxford to work in a wine bar. Bryony worried that it did nothing to enhance his CV, but Nick seemed unconcerned. Ali got a text message from him. “Come and visit.” She didn’t respond, and erased his number from her phone in case she was tempted to call.
Sophia Wilbraham got a new, much older nanny and found a top marriage guidance counselor who prescribed weekends in country hotels and less focus on her children. Ali’s parents stopped calling to give updates about her sister. Eventually, Jo came out of her clinic and claimed to be cured. She wanted to come and stay with Ali. Ali refused. Jo wrote a letter saying that she understood Ali’s reticence and respected her boundaries. She also said that she had found a part-time job in Cromer and would start paying back the money Ali had spent on rehab. A week later a check for the first thirty pounds arrived in the post.
Nick went to work early and came back very late. Bryony came home earlier. There were no deals for her to work on. She spent her days firefighting negative stories in the press on behalf of clients whose share prices were tanking because of the credit crunch. In the evening, everyone now headed to the drawing room to keep Foy company. It added a cozy dimension previously lacking from life in Holland Park Crescent.
Then, at the beginning of July, Nick came back from another trip to New York with even gloomier news about the scale of bank debt. They were sitting in the drawing room with Foy. Ali was reading a newspaper piece to Foy about Gordon Brown’s first year in office.
“Two-thirds of Britons think Gordon Brown is an electoral liability,” Ali began.
“Just shows how sensible the British public is,” grunted Foy. When he was tired he spoke without really moving his lips so that he sounded like a second-rate ventriloquist. Ali couldn’t remember a day when she had managed to read an entire article from beginning to end without Foy interrupting. Being sedentary made him even more belligerent, especially if Nick was in the room.
“How did your presentation go?” Bryony asked Nick.
“I told them that the Product Control Group hasn’t checked the price of around a quarter of CDOs. Then I had to explain that they seemed to have used the same mathematical models as the traders to value the rest, which means they are worth even less than we thought. Some of them are probably worth a thirtieth of the value they ascribed. With CEAGO, they actually used a lower rate for the high-risk tranches than they did for the low-risk senior debt. Mad.” Nick looked exhausted.
“What’s CEAGO?”
“It’s the biggest CDO position held by the bank at the moment. Lehman’s has around one-point-two billion dollars in CDOs and CEAGO accounts for five hundred twenty million dollars. It’s difficult to know how much it’s really worth but I reckon we still hold ninety-seven percent of it.”
“So how did they take it?” Bryony asked.
“Beside the real-estate losses, it didn’t look so bad.” Nick gave the quick half-smile that had become shorthand for further bad news. “We’re a hundred twenty billion down there.”
“If you hadn’t tried to make a fast buck selling mortgages
to poor people who couldn’t pay them back when interest rates went up, then you wouldn’t be in this position,” said Foy. He had developed an unfortunate habit of dribbling if he spoke too fast. Malea had tied a colorful blue-spotted scarf around his neck to mop up the spit. Behind his back, Nick referred to him as the Milky Bar Kid.
“Home ownership was one of Mrs. Thatcher’s most fundamental beliefs,” pointed out Nick.
“You’ve been too greedy. You’ve corrupted yourselves, and you’ve corrupted the political system. All those bloody Labour politicians are in thrall to the City.” Foy ignored Nick’s comment.
“I didn’t see you complain when Nick bought you The Menace,” muttered Bryony.
“You bastards are going to bring down the whole financial system,” said Foy. Then, mercifully, he fell asleep.
“At least they see you as a steady hand on the tiller,” said Bryony quietly.
“There is no tiller,” said Nick.
“Why do people always use nautical metaphors to describe the crisis?” Ali had asked one evening, after yet another conversation in the drawing room about when Lehman’s might hit the iceberg. Nick had looked at Ali as though he wasn’t sure how she fitted into his life. He was so tired that he wasn’t even sure how he fitted into his own life. Instead he had given Ali a blank look and turned back to Bryony to tell her that the numbers were unreal and it was difficult to find the right adjectives to describe how bad it all was.
He then described the atmosphere of barely suppressed panic at the New York office. He told Bryony how Dick Fuld had come down from the top floor to address everyone through the internal communications system and had then attended a meeting with senior management in which he kept telling people to stop talking about losses and to fight back.
“He’s losing it,” said Nick.
“No, I’m not,” shouted Foy, suddenly waking up.
• • •
Shortly after this, Felix came to the house unannounced one Friday evening while Nick was still at work.
“Ali,” he said distractedly, looking over her shoulder for Bryony. “How are you?”
“She’s with Foy in the drawing room,” said Ali.
Felix had put on weight. Ali could see his paunch challenging the buttons on the front of his shirt. He was wearing a jacket and tie, but everything was lopsided. Ali followed him into the drawing room, where she was in the middle of a game of cards with Foy. He wanted to teach her to play poker, but they had compromised with rummy to avoid excitement. Felix stood by the mantelpiece, speaking breathlessly. He picked up invitations, glanced over them, and then unthinkingly put them back without noticing whether they were upside down or on their side. He took off his jacket, and Ali saw big fat circles of sweat under his arms.
At first Ali put his behavior down to nerves. He was never completely relaxed around Bryony. Then, as she listened to what he was saying, she realized he was punch-drunk with news from the City. He explained that he had come straight from his office, later than anticipated, because a bank in Pasadena had collapsed, causing the oil price to spike, the Dow to plunge, and Lehman’s shares to sink to an all-time low. He wore the happy fatigue of someone for whom the crisis meant front-page stories and a nice fat byline.
“The idea that the crisis in the banking system is somehow isolated from the rest of the economy is bullshit,” Felix told Bryony excitedly as he entered the room. “It’s like a Russian doll. Everything is connected. CDOs, mutual funds, structured investment vehicles, monolines, credit derivatives . . . The market isn’t self-healing. It’s fucking self-harming.”
“Which must be gratifying to you,” Bryony said calmly, as she leaned forward and kissed him on each cheek.
“Hello, Felix,” said Foy, peering round from the side of the chair. “I’ve been saying it for ages. Paying these people too much money made them believe too much in their own mythology. Most of them are mediocre, but giving them these bonuses makes them think they’re fucking gods.”
“Totally agree, Foy,” said Felix. “Why should some fixed income trader get a million-pound bonus while a cancer surgeon on the NHS gets none?”
“Nick called the market last summer,” said Bryony protectively.
“I bet he still took his bonus in January, though,” said Felix.
“Nick has never been completely motivated by money,” said Bryony.
“Come on, Bryony, don’t be naïve. Nick would be the first one to storm into Jeremy Isaacs’s office if he didn’t think his bonus reflected his value to the company. Don’t tell me he approved billions of pounds of bonds backed by subprime out of social duty because he felt sorry for poor people who didn’t own their own house? He did it because he made money from it.”
“Nick never set out to be so rich,” said Bryony. “He’s been lucky to ride a bull market the past few years, and he’s one of the smartest brains in fixed income. He was one of the people who invented credit default swaps. They’ve called him to New York to try and help sort things out,” said Bryony.
“So the mess at Lehman’s is as bad as it looks, then?” asked Felix. Bryony fell silent, aware that she had fallen into a trap. Felix saw her face and relented.
“It’s just that for so long Lehman’s looked as though it was immune to the subprime contagion. And then, suddenly, their figures look way off.”
“Well, you guys printed the story they told you pretty unquestioningly,” said Bryony. She offered him a drink and then called down on the intercom to ask Malea for a vodka and tonic. “So what brings you here?”
Ali and Foy settled back into their game of cards. They were sitting by the window. Outside, Ali could see a taxi with its meter running. It was waiting for Felix. Ali found this disturbing, because it underlined the sense of urgency surrounding this visit. Bryony and Felix now sat facing each other on the sofa. Their knees were almost touching, in a way that suggested previous intimacy rather than renewed attraction. The late-evening sun poured through the window, highlighting their faces in profile.
“There are rumors,” began Felix. His face was curiously malleable and always revealed the emotion of what he was about to say before the words came out of his mouth. Ali wondered whether this was a skill honed during his career as a journalist or whether it was something innate. Ali saw Bryony’s cheek muscles tighten and the familiar twirl of her tongue around the inside of her mouth. She wasn’t reading his signals correctly.
“If this is about my Ukrainian client, I’ve got nothing to say,” said Bryony. “Present us with proof, and then his lawyers will know exactly what it is that you think he has done instead of all this insinuation and gossip. Lots of East Europeans did unsavory business deals when the wall came down. But whatever he’s done, there is no way that he was involved in trafficking women. No way.”
“It’s closer to home, I’m afraid, Bryony,” said Felix. “I’ve had a tip-off about Nick.” His voice grew quieter until Ali couldn’t hear any more.
• • •
The next day, at exactly five-thirty in the morning, there was a persistent ringing on the front doorbell followed by loud banging. No one usually bothered with the chrome door knocker apart from Malea, who loyally polished it once a week, and Izzy, who used it as the mirror of last resort when she was leaving the house. Most people stood patiently by the video intercom system, waiting to be buzzed in.
Although Ali was asleep on the fifth floor, the dull thud was enough to make her stir. She sat up in bed, wondering in sleepy confusion whether it was Bryony’s personal trainer or Nick’s driver, but they usually came in through the entrance in the basement. She looked at her clock, saw the time, and got out of bed as the noise intensified.
She assumed Bryony was now awake, although to judge from the empty bottle of wine left on the kitchen table last night, Bryony’s head must feel as thick as goulash. Perhaps it was eve
n Nick arriving home, having lost his keys. He worked so late at the moment that it wasn’t inconceivable his day was just ending as everyone else’s was beginning. His waking hours were spent trying to encourage the great Lehman sell-off to reduce the bank’s debt.
For a moment she allowed herself to hope it might be Jake, coming home unannounced after a late-night party in London to celebrate the end of his first-year exams at university, except they had finished a month ago. Then, just as quickly, she banished the thought.
Leicester barked and growled. He was on full intruder alert, hurling himself at the letterbox, waiting for someone to put his hand through, knowing this was the only circumstance where he could legitimately sink his teeth into human flesh.
Ali would later discover that the Financial Services Authority had spent almost six months planning its dawn raid on 97 Holland Park Crescent. Thanks to the architects that had overseen renovations, each member of the eight-person team had an up-to-date floor plan of the interior. They also had a blown-up image of the outside of the house taken from Google Earth.
They knew how many mobile phones needed to be collected and how many iPod Touches needed to be checked; they had a rough idea of where computers might be located and Nick’s briefcase might be found. They knew that the driver, Mr. Artouche, would be arriving in half an hour with Nick’s car, and that this should be searched as quickly as possible and the SIM card removed from the car phone. You could tell a lot about a man’s life from what you found in his glove compartment, Ali heard the man running the team tell a junior police officer.
The only detail they had overlooked was the presence of Nick’s father-in-law, Mr. Foy Chesterton. No one involved in intelligence gathering had noticed that the most critical room for the purposes of their investigation had been turned from an office into a bedroom over the past week. All the computer equipment had been removed and the filing cabinet relocated upstairs in Bryony’s office.
Ali pulled on her dressing gown and went out onto the landing to look out the window at the front of the house. There was a large white van outside with its back doors wide open. There were people wearing plastic overshoes, carrying large transparent polyethylene bags toward the front door. No one was wearing a uniform, but most were dressed in cheap-looking suits in drab colors. In the house on the other side of the street, Ali could see the neighbors observing the same scene from behind the curtains of the first-floor window.