by Caro Fraser
‘Lovely girl,’ said Jonathan. ‘Heard a lot about her down the years from Vivian, but never knew her. Astonishing, the two of them getting together like that. The world is smaller than we think.’
‘Did you see the way she kicked Scooby?’ said Caroline.
‘I’m sure you must have imagined it. I didn’t see it.’ Jonathan closed the front door. ‘Maybe she isn’t fond of dogs,’ he added, and disappeared into the living room to watch the rugby.
Caroline went to the kitchen and began clearing up. Not being fond of dogs told you a lot about a person. She wanted to like Sarah, for Toby’s sake, but she certainly wasn’t the kind of girl she had envisaged Toby marrying, and didn’t look like shaping up to become the affectionate, respectful daughter-in-law she had hoped for.
Sarah slumped thankfully in her car seat and switched on the CD player.
Toby smiled ruefully. ‘Sorry to drag you away. I could tell you and Mum were just getting settled in for a good old chat about the wedding.’ Sarah glanced at Toby. He was a sweet man, but his social radar wasn’t terribly acute. ‘The thing is, I need to go into the office.’
‘On a Sunday night? Why?’
Toby’s good-humoured face tensed slightly. He maintained his smile, but the dark V of a frown appeared between his eyes. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the middle of the biggest financial shit-storm for some decades.’
Sarah felt a tingle of alarm. ‘But Graffman’s is OK, surely?’ Toby had worked for Graffman Spiers for seven years, and the job had given him his Docklands penthouse flat, his Porsche, his six-figure yearly bonus and, if Sarah was being perfectly honest, much of his appeal.
‘There’s some serious firefighting to be done. I got a text from my boss just before lunch, but I didn’t want to mention it in case the old dear got in a panic.’
‘Your job’s safe, isn’t it?’
Toby shrugged. His face gave nothing away. ‘Safe isn’t one of those words you hear a lot around the CDS department.’
‘CDS?’
‘Credit derivative swaps. They’re trading instruments.’ He glanced at her and squeezed her hand. ‘Don’t look so worried. It isn’t global meltdown. Anyway, we’ve got each other, and that’s what counts.’
Toby dropped Sarah at her Kensington flat, and sped off to Canary Wharf. Sarah wandered into the living room, sat down on the sofa and kicked off her shoes, welcoming the solitude. She’d decided to live alone after three years of sharing with her friend Louise – a lovely girl, but definitely a touch OCD on the tidying and cleaning front – and had fallen in love with this place from the beginning. It wasn’t large, just a one-bedroomed garden flat off Onslow Square, but Sarah adored it, even if the rent was on the high side. It had beautiful hardwood floors and an odd vaulted glass roof over the passageway to the kitchen, which itself was a small, tasteful miracle of well-used space.
It was growing dark, but she could still make out the ‘For Rent’ sign outside, which the estate agent had put up the week before. It made sense, she knew, for her to move into Toby’s Westminster riverside apartment. They would be married in a few months, after which they would carry on living there until they found a house. On Toby’s income they would be able to afford somewhere in a decent area, and Sarah had already spent hours online, taking virtual tours of houses in Notting Hill and Islington, hitting the Heal’s furnishing website and refining her search to the upper price range, and leafing through interior-decorating porn in WHSmith’s. But no matter how many desirable residences she saw, in however many leafy avenues or charming squares, she knew nothing would ever give her the cosy, private pleasure of her little Kensington flat. She didn’t like the idea of anyone else living here.
She got up and closed the blinds so that she didn’t have to see the sign, and padded through to the kitchen. She made herself a mug of tea and brought it back to the living room, put on some music, and stretched out on the sofa, feeling vaguely depressed and unsettled. Ever since childhood she had hated the fag end of Sunday, the weekend gone, Monday looming. Added to which, today’s visit to Colebrook House hadn’t exactly been a bundle of laughs. She’d felt disconnected from Toby, who, back in the familiar context of his family, had become more theirs and less hers. Caroline Kittering had been doing a bit of dividing and conquering, of course, telling Toby gossip about local people Sarah had never heard of, and making sure Sarah realised what a good cook she was, and how she knew all the little things that Toby liked. That was territorial, and only to be expected. Today was only the second time she’d met the Kitterings. The last time had been at a wedding of one of Toby’s friends, and she hadn’t particularly cared for them, their solidity, their smugness. She’d thought at the time that it wasn’t important. Toby was one thing, and his family were another. Today had made her realise how wrong that idea was. Toby and his family were one and the same thing, and once they were married, she would become part of it.
Sarah closed her eyes. She shouldn’t be feeling like this. She should be blissfully happy. She was engaged to a charming, decent, good-looking man, who was a much nicer person than she would ever be and thereby made up for all her personal deficiencies, who was in a fabulously well-paying job, and could keep her in the luxury to which she would quite happily become accustomed. And, of course, she loved him. Toby was very loveable. Was she in love with him? No – but Sarah had long ago decided that being in love was a deluded state, and not necessarily the basis for a successful relationship. Marrying Toby was a rational act. She certainly didn’t want to stay single all her life, she was pretty much fed up with the exhausting pleasures of dating, and of short-term relationships, and Toby was quite a catch. She didn’t believe in a soulmate, or The Perfect Man. Life was all about compromise. And while Toby might not set her world on fire, the future with him looked secure, prosperous. She had already decided to give up her job when they were married. Being a broker didn’t exactly float her boat, and they wouldn’t miss the money. Toby earned enough for both of them. She would spend her time decorating whatever house they bought and then in a year or two, when she got bored with that, she might have a baby. Some of her girlfriends were already mothers, and it seemed like quite an amusing club to belong to. From babies her mind drifted to sex. She had to admit that, tender and affectionate though he was, Toby was ponderously unexciting in bed. But then, weren’t most British men? She sipped her tea, totting up the exceptions in her head. It was a short list. She considered Anthony Cross, whom she’d run into the other day. Would she put him on it? Probably, for enthusiasm as much as anything else. And a willingness to learn. But top of the list, head and shoulders above the rest, came Leo. With Leo, sex had been a game, a guilt-free pleasure ride of unbridled physicality and shameless gratification. She hadn’t seen him in four years, but she felt her stomach go into free fall just thinking about him. Perhaps there was such a thing as the perfect man after all. Of all the men she’d ever known, Leo’s outlook and personality were closest to her own. On top of which, he had money, taste, intelligence and wit. An ideal partner – only Leo wasn’t the marrying kind. Theirs hadn’t been a friendship exactly, more an enjoyable mutual antagonism, with recreational sex thrown in. Not the stuff of lasting relationships. So why did she always feel, with a confidence that bordered on certainty, that she would see him again, some time, some place?
She dragged her mind away reluctantly from Leo. It wouldn’t do. She was marrying Toby, whom she loved, and who would make a satisfactory husband in every possible way. She took another sip of her tea, but found it had gone cold. She had been thinking about Leo for longer than she’d realised.
That same evening, Anthony and his brother Barry were meeting their father, Chay, for Sunday supper in a gastropub in Hackney. Chay Cross was a successful postmodern artist who spent most of every year flitting between his homes in Madrid and New York, soaking up the admiration and hospitality of well-heeled investors and socialites who, with more money than sense, were prepared to cough up tens
and thousands for his works. This October he was on one of his regular visits to London to see his sons and check up on the progress of his pet project, ShoMoMa, a new museum of modern art housed in a former Shoreditch brewery which, with surprising foresight, Chay had purchased a few years earlier.
Their father’s artistic success remained a deep mystery to Anthony and Barry. Throughout their childhood he had been a shifting, insubstantial presence, an itinerant hippy moving from one squat to another, smoking an inordinate amount of dope, and dabbling unsuccessfully in a variety of creative mediums. He only came to visit their mother Judith when he was in need of a handout, though he had occasionally taken the boys on outings and camping weekends. His surprising rise to fame had come about when Anthony, an impecunious student barrister, had sold some of Chay’s paintings to a gallery in an attempt to pay off a debt. The gallery had found buyers for the paintings, critics had paid attention, and within a few months Chay Cross was being hailed on both sides of the Atlantic as ‘a wuthering expressionist of plangent, emotional rawness’ (Modern Painters), ‘an artist with a thrillingly gestative response to the world’ (Apollo Magazine), and ‘a craftsman bringing meaning, mythology and dream alive within veiled abstraction’ (Frieze). Since which time Anthony, whenever he was forced to consider one of his father’s vast monochrome daubs, had the uneasy feeling he might have been responsible for launching one of the greatest public frauds in the history of art. Still, he seemed to sit in good company alongside Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst.
When Anthony arrived at the pub, Chay was already there, sitting at one of the scrubbed wooden tables reading the Sunday Times Review, wearing a startling Liberty print shirt, bright-blue Mordechai Rubenstein braces, grey flannel trousers and black canvas Oxfords. The look was distinctly, expensively New York. A halo of cropped, silvery hair shone on his bean-shaped head as he rose to greet his son.
‘Hi, Dad,’ said Anthony, returning his hug tentatively. They sat down.
‘You look well,’ remarked Anthony.
Chay nodded. ‘I’m good. And you?’
‘Yes, good, thanks. Busy.’
‘Busy.’ Chay nodded again. ‘You lawyers are always busy, I suppose.’
The tone was familiar. Chay had always made plain his disdain for his son’s orthodox choice of career. Not that it had put him above cadging fivers and tenners from Anthony on a regular basis back in the days when he’d been permanently skint.
‘What would you like?’ he asked Anthony. ‘A beer?’
‘Thanks. Pint of Shires, please.’
Chay rose and went to the bar. Barry came in a moment later. He was tall, like his father and brother, but more broadly built, with a cheerful, open face and dark hair cut in a shaggy crop. He was dressed in denims, trainers, a jacket and a T-shirt that read ‘Born To Chill’. He high-fived Anthony, and went over to his father at the bar.
‘Wassup, Dad? Get us a lager, would you?’ He went back and sat down with Anthony.
Chay returned with the drinks. Barry slurped the foam off the top of his pint and nodded at the jacket slung over the back of Chay’s chair. ‘Nice threads, Dad. Versace?’
Chay smiled. ‘Brioni. Seven thousand dollars.’
‘Give over! How can you spend that much on a suit and live with yourself?’
Chay shrugged. ‘It’s all relative. I earn ten times that selling one painting.’
‘Yeah, and that’s a bleeding mystery to all of us.’
Chay gave a thin smile. Although apparently serene in his success, it irked him when his sons chaffed him, as though afraid there might be a grain of truth in their jokes. ‘So,’ he asked Barry, ‘what are you doing with yourself these days?’
Barry sprawled comfortably in his chair. ‘Stand-up.’
‘Stand-up? You mean, like a comedian?’
‘He’s always been one of those,’ said Anthony.
‘Thanks, mate. I’ve seen you in court and I could say the same.’
Anthony smiled and took a sip of his beer. Since dropping out of sixth-form college six years earlier, Barry had had a variety of jobs – pizza delivery man, bouncer, barman, stripogram, cycle courier – and no one was quite sure what to make of this new career departure.
Chay mused, rasping his hand across his bristly skull. ‘Comedy, I always think, has great artistic integrity. Good to see another artist in the family.’
‘I don’t reckon integrity has much to do with it, Dad. Or art. It’s telling jokes to punters.’ Barry picked up the menu. ‘Let’s see what there is to eat. I’m famished.’
They ordered food, and talked. Chay was full of the art world, of glamorous gatherings and people. Barry had good stories from the comedy club circuit. Anthony had a few interesting tales from the law courts. The talk came round eventually to the banking crisis.
‘So much for global capitalism,’ said Barry. ‘Immoral businesses run by greedy people. I’d like to see the entire banking system wiped out.’
‘I’m not sure you would,’ said Anthony.
‘I bloody well object to taxpayers’ money, our money, being used to shore up these rotten institutions.’
‘Since when did you pay tax?’
‘I didn’t say I did. Hey – what do you call twelve investment bankers at the bottom of the ocean?’
‘What?’
‘A good start.’ Barry grinned and polished off the remains of his lager. ‘Seriously, I’d like to see them all out of a job.’
‘A couple of my friends who work in banking have been made redundant.’
‘My heart fairly bleeds.’
‘Well, no doubt you’ll get good material for your comedy routine out of it all.’
Barry turned to Chay. ‘I’ll bet Dad agrees with me – don’t you, you old unreconstructed Marxist? You always used to bang on about the greed and corruption of the markets. I’ll bet you’re delighted at the nationalisation of the banks. Totalitarian government in charge of the economy, right on, eh?’
Chay put his head on one side, and gave a wise smile. ‘I have to confess my views have mellowed over the past few years. I used to be rather naive about money.’
‘You mean when you didn’t have any?’
‘Wealth brings responsibilities. Money needs to be invested, made to work.’
‘That sounds suspiciously like capitalism,’ murmured Anthony, remembering Chay in his idleness, wheedling loans from friends, living on handouts from long-suffering relatives, pontificating all the while about the redistribution of wealth and the iniquities of the capitalist system.
‘The rich are rich for a reason. The more of them I meet, the better I understand that. I’ve been lucky enough to have made some very useful contacts. Last year I met someone who has helped me to make some spectacularly good investments.’
Barry looked at his father with keen interest. ‘Really?’
‘What would you say if I told you I’ve been getting steady returns between ten and eleven per cent for the past two years?’
‘I’d say it sounds too good to be true,’ replied Anthony.
‘And I’d say, please can I have a piece of it?’ exclaimed Barry.
‘That’s just it. Not everyone can. This financier is very selective about his client investors. I know people who’ve begged him to take them on, but have been refused.’
‘How did you meet him?’ asked Anthony.
‘I was introduced to him by a mutual friend at a country club in Palm Beach.’
Anthony recalled the terrible squats his father used to live in, the candlelit rooms, bare floorboards and damp walls, lentil stews, incense sticks, sleeping bags. Now he was glad-handing top-flight investors in Palm Beach country clubs. You had to marvel at it, really. ‘And he knows something that no one else does?’
‘Every field has its experts, and this guy just happens to be the best. He’s absolutely solid. He’s a very astute businessman and philanthropist, highly regarded in New York social circles.’
‘What’s his name?�
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Chay shook his head. ‘His name wouldn’t mean anything to you. But the reason I mention him is that I was thinking I could invest the capital sums I’ve set aside for you both with him, if you like.’
Anthony caught Barry’s keen expression, and could tell he was busy calculating how much that rate of interest would net him over the next few years. Barry set a lot of store by the couple of hundred grand that Chay had, allegedly, earmarked for each of them, and which they were to receive on their thirtieth birthdays. Barry nodded. ‘Yeah, do it, Dad. I mean, ten per cent – what’s not to like?’
Chay turned and looked enquiringly at Anthony. Anthony reflected, twisting his beer glass on the tabletop. At last he said, ‘No, it’s OK, thanks. Leave mine in the bank.’
‘Are you mad?’ said Barry. ‘You have to speculate to accumulate.’
‘He has his mother’s cautious streak,’ said Chay. ‘Not one of life’s adventurers. Not a risk-taker.’
Anthony forced a smile. He was getting heartily sick of being labelled boring and cautious, but in this particular instance he didn’t feel like living dangerously. It seemed odd that anyone should be getting those kinds of returns in the present economic climate. He shrugged and said, ‘I’ll leave it to you wild creative types to do the bold, daring stuff.’ He drained his drink. ‘Just remember – if it looks too good to be true, it usually is.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got to go. I’m in court tomorrow.’
‘Go on, then, you young pillar of the judicial establishment,’ said his father. ‘I’ll probably be over again around Christmas. I’ll be in touch.’
‘Fine. See you. And thanks for dinner.’ He nodded at his brother. ‘Barry.’
‘Cheers, Tony,’ replied Barry. ‘See you around.’ Barry tapped his pint glass. ‘Come on – get them in, Dad. You’re the one with the money.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Monday morning was not going well for Rachel. Her meticulously planned schedule took its first knock just as she and Oliver were about to leave the house, when Oliver had announced that he needed to take six baby photos of himself to school for a class project. Why was it, Rachel wondered as she hurried to the study to rummage through boxes, that children came up with these things at the last moment? She was already running late, and was bound to miss her train at this rate.