by S J Bolton
‘So, how do you know this bunch?’ Mark asked Megan at one point. Daniel was sure he’d been told already that she was an old school friend, but Mark rarely absorbed information that didn’t affect him directly.
‘I was at All Souls’,’ Megan replied.
‘Megan was head of school.’ It was the first time Amber had spoken, other than whispers to her daughters, for the better part of an hour.
‘I was a scholarship girl,’ Megan said. ‘It was a token appointment really, a chance for the posh private school to flash its progressive credentials. One pupil in a hundred was a peasant, so they made the peasants as prominent as they could.’
‘That isn’t true,’ Xav said quickly.
Megan leaned forward across the table so that, turning her head, she could see Xav. They stared at each other for a second. Xav had taken off his wedding ring.
‘No, you were the smartest of all of us,’ Amber added quickly.
‘So, where’ve you been all these years?’ Mark, thankfully, seemed oblivious to the tensions around the table. ‘Abroad? More ham anyone?’ He picked up the carving knife and waved it in the air.
‘I’ll have some,’ Felix held his plate out, even though he hadn’t eaten most of what was on there already. His glass, on the other hand, was empty.
‘Me too,’ Daniel said in solidarity. ‘Actually, give me a sec to finish this lot. Fabulous, Tal, as always.’
‘What’s Cooking in Summertown,’ Tal said. ‘Never let me down.’
‘I’ve been in the north-east,’ Megan told Mark. ‘In Durham.’
‘Lovely place.’ Mark turned to Daniel. ‘You were at uni there, weren’t you?’
Daniel’s mouth was full of unchewed ham; he could only nod.
‘Amber’s having a birthday party in a few weeks,’ Dex said to Megan. ‘You should come. I’ll send you the details.’
Daniel could have laughed at the horror on the faces around him, and probably would have done if he hadn’t been feeling the same way. Amber’s parties were always fancy affairs: black tie, marquee on the lawn, the great and good of the local party showing off their titles and tiaras. Megan wouldn’t be the first law breaker to attend by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s a big difference, when you’re close to government, between creative accounting and mowing down a young family in the dark.
For several seconds, they could only hear the electronic beeping from the kids’ devices. Talitha poured wine into glasses that were already full, Amber wiped a non-existent mark from Ruby’s mouth, Felix checked his phone and Daniel caught Mark and Dex exchanging puzzled glances.
‘How kind,’ Megan said. ‘I’d love to.’
‘Any luck replacing your accountant?’ Xav asked Felix, and the table seemed to sigh with relief at a new topic. Felix’s head of finance had left him in the lurch a couple of weeks ago. He shook his head. ‘Plenty of applicants – none I’d consider up to the job.’
‘You can contract it out, can’t you?’ Mark said. ‘We use a local firm. I can give you their details.’
‘I can, and I have been, but it costs a bloody arm and a leg.’ Felix put his knife and fork down as though relieved at an excuse to stop trying to eat. ‘And I’m already stretched with the new factory in Uganda. The trouble is, we’re too close to London. All the decent ones commute in for double what I can justify paying.’
‘In the meantime, Felix’s doing it all himself,’ Sarah chipped in. ‘He’s working every night till nearly midnight. Luke’s started bursting into tears when he sees his own father.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ Felix grumbled.
‘I would,’ Sarah snapped, and there followed that awkward moment, when a couple have overshared in public.
‘I’ll do it,’ Megan said.
And the awkward moment went into orbit.
‘I have a degree in finance and accountancy.’ She waited for one of the others to react. When they didn’t, she picked up her wine glass and looked around at them over the rim. ‘What?’ she said. ‘You thought I’d waste twenty years in prison?’
Sarah gasped. The boys at the end of the table, who’d been engrossed with mobile phones, fell quiet. Even five-year-old Pearl’s eyes widened as she mouthed the word prison to herself.
‘You were in prison?’ one of the boys said.
‘What for?’ another asked.
Megan opened her mouth.
‘No.’ It was rare for Amber to raise her voice, but when she did, they were all reminded of why people were seriously talking about her as a future prime minister. ‘This is not the place.’
Talitha got to her feet. ‘Boys, you and your friends can have dessert in the games room.’
The five boys, reluctant to leave the drama, began to argue. ‘I mean it,’ Talitha warned. ‘Take Pearl and Ruby and look after them.’
A brittle silence held while the kids helped themselves to dessert and left the room. Talitha checked the door was properly closed. Still no one spoke. Luke squawked and Sarah got up.
Megan said, ‘You must remember how good I was at maths, Felix. Well, turns out I’m equally good at finance. And I can start on Monday.’
As Megan spoke, she lifted her sunglasses from the top of her head and shook her hair out, before folding them beside her plate. Her evident self-possession, though, seemed at odds with the sunglasses, the ends of which were chewed and discoloured.
‘I mean Tuesday,’ she said. ‘Monday’s May Day, of course. A bank holiday this year – should be madder than usual.’
‘Tal, what’s in this?’ Sarah said, as she peered over a bowl of what looked like trifle. ‘Can I give it to Luke?’ She looked at her husband, though, not Talitha, and even Daniel could read the message in her eyes.
‘Oh, Christ no – it’s laced with brandy!’ Tal stared towards the games-room door. ‘I’ve just given the kids hard liquor.’
Amber gave a soft squeak and turned an alarmed face to Dex.
‘So, we’ll have a quiet afternoon,’ Mark shrugged. ‘Won’t do ’em any harm.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ Amber snapped back. ‘Your youngest probably weighs more than I do. Ruby’s only three.’ She got to her feet. ‘Honestly, Tal.’
‘They’ll be fine.’ Dex, whom Daniel had never seen ruffled, took hold of his wife’s hand. ‘Sit down.’
‘What do you think, Felix?’ Megan said.
‘What about this tart thing then? Is this safe?’ Sarah’s voice had grown shrill.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Sarah, it’s not my responsibility to feed your child,’ Talitha snapped.
Xav closed his eyes, as though he could make the whole scene go away.
‘I’ll take ten grand a year less than you’re offering.’ Megan addressed Felix as though theirs was the only conversation in the room. ‘But only for the first six months. By that time, I’ll have more than proved myself.’
Felix said, ‘How do you know what I’m paying?’
‘You were advertising on LinkedIn and the FT,’ Megan replied. ‘It’s hardly a secret.’
Surely one of the others will step in now, thought Dan, give Felix a hand? It was a bit like watching a snake stalking a rat, though; they couldn’t take their eyes off it.
‘Meg, if you need money, I’m happy to help,’ Felix said. ‘I can get you back on your feet again.’ He glanced around at the rest of them and the words trust fund seemed to dart around the group like a telepathic message. Xav nodded his head slowly, silently giving Felix permission.
‘We should discuss this,’ Sarah muttered.
‘I don’t want a loan, I want a job,’ Megan said.
‘Not a good idea,’ Sarah repeated.
‘It’s quite specialist,’ Felix said.
‘Not really. Your annual turnover is fourteen million pounds, operating profit margin is seven per ce
nt, and you’ve been growing ten per cent a year, which is all good. Problem is, you haven’t thought through your strategy for financing the growth. As the business has grown, the finished goods stock has expanded, as has the credit offered to your customers. All this needs finance and, in short, you’re running out of cash, which is why you’re late paying suppliers and your credit rating is slipping. Don’t you remember the old accountants’ saying: “Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity and cash is reality”?’
‘How do you know all this?’ Felix looked stunned.
‘You file your company accounts every year and your credit rating is listed on Dun and Bradstreet. You have a website, several social media accounts. It’s not hard.’
‘I want to know why you were in prison.’ Dex grinned around the table, as though to give the impression he was joking. They all knew he wasn’t. ‘I may have to reconsider the invitation to my wife’s party.’
Amber found her bag. ‘Let’s talk on the way back,’ she said to her husband. ‘Tal, thank you, but I think we need to get the girls home.’
‘Actually, maybe I should be—’ Daniel began.
‘Twenty years ago, I stole Felix’s mother’s car and drove it the wrong way down the M40,’ Megan said. ‘I hit a car and killed the three passengers, two of whom were very young children.’
Sarah clutched her son a little tighter.
‘Shit, that’s who you are.’ Mark gave his wife a ‘What the fuck?’ look.
‘Was it an accident?’ Dexter asked.
‘No, Dex, because nobody gets the sentence I did for an accident, at least not unless someone powerful is trying to stitch them up.’
Megan didn’t look at Talitha as she spoke, which was probably as well, because Talitha had turned the colour of a corpse.
‘I did it for fun,’ Megan went on. ‘For a laugh, I did it a lot – there was CCTV footage to prove it. I was reckless and dangerous, and I was sent down for twenty years. At eighteen years old, imagine that.’
Xav got to his feet. ‘I need some air,’ he announced, before striding out of the room.
‘Did you know?’ Dex said to his wife. ‘I mean, at the time. Did you know she was doing that?’
‘Oh no,’ Megan jumped in. ‘None of my friends had any idea. They were out of their heads on drugs that summer – they had no idea about the dark little games I was playing.’
She got to her feet and leaned over Amber’s shoulders. ‘Probably not information you want in the public arena. Don’t worry, I can be discreet.’
‘Come at eight o’clock.’ Felix spoke with his eyes closed. ‘I’ll have some time to show you the ropes before most people get in. We’ll give it a try.’
20
A short while before dawn on May Day, thousands of the city’s residents left their beds to listen to Magdalen College choir sing from its famous tower to welcome in the spring. As usual, Daniel was one of them; as usual, he wished he could be anywhere else in the world.
Daniel hated May Day. He hated the forced jollity and the sense of being in a crowd that had no beginning and no end; he hated the pools of vomit on the pavement and the girls in torn ball gowns fast asleep on street benches; he hated the blanket of litter left behind and the sheer bloody cost of policing it. Nevertheless, as master of one of the principal schools in Oxford, he had a standing invitation to the May Day breakfast at Magdalen College.
He took a call as he was approaching Magdalen Bridge. It was Tal. He could barely hear her above the noise in the background, which told him that she, too, was in the city centre. He was running late, didn’t really have time to talk, and the crowd ahead had merged into an impenetrable mass.
‘Where are you?’ He squeezed his way towards a wild-haired, green-faced bloke throwing blossom into the air.
‘By the covered market,’ Tal replied. ‘I’ve lost Mark and the kids. Bit of luck, I won’t find them again.’
‘How was it after I left?’ he asked.
After Felix had agreed to give Megan a job, she’d seemed exhausted by her victory, and Daniel had called an Uber to get her back to her bedsit near Iffley Road.
‘Amber and Dex left close behind you,’ Talitha replied, ‘acting as though I’d poisoned their kids, and the others went soon after, Sarah giving Felix some serious grief.’
The green-faced man had two stag-like antlers protruding from his head. He had his back to Daniel and there seemed no feasible way around him.
‘Mark is livid,’ Talitha was saying. ‘The boys found coverage of the accident on the internet. He can’t understand why I invited her to the house.’
‘You didn’t say anything, did you?’ Daniel sidestepped onto someone’s foot. His face came up against a mass of hawthorn blossoms; already they were on the turn and stank of piss.
Talitha said, ‘What do you take me for?’
‘Tal, we need a plan. We can’t let her blackmail us like this.’
‘What if she’s not blackmailing us, though? What if she really can’t remember? If we keep our nerve, it could all settle down again.’
It was impossible to move forward by this stage, the crowd having become a solid mass of flesh and bone. Daniel pushed his way sideways until he was right up against the steel barriers that kept people away from the bridge wall. On the other side was a narrow walkway, lined with security guards.
‘We need to give her the money,’ he said.
‘Giving her the money could be what jogs her memory. Shit, they’ve found me. I’ll call you later.’
Directly in front of Daniel, a young man with glazed eyes and an Eastern European accent was arguing with one of the security guards for permission to leap from the bridge.
‘You have to let me,’ he said. ‘I am a professional.’
The guard shook his head.
In the old days, students, often still in the formal dress of the previous night’s balls, marked May Day by leaping from Magdalen Bridge into the river below. More than one jumper had been seriously injured though, and for as long as Daniel could remember, jumping had been banned. That morning, the line of security staff resembled a presidential visit.
‘I have done it before,’ the young man tried.
Another headshake from the massive guard. Daniel pulled his invitation card from his inside pocket and held it out.
‘Can you help me out?’ he called to the guard. ‘I have to be in the college in five minutes.’
The guard took his time, took in the smart suit, which didn’t look like he’d been wearing it all night, and the gown, and then shrugged. ‘You’ll have to climb over,’ he said.
Daniel stepped up onto the barrier, took the guard’s offered arm and leapt for it. The guard caught him and Daniel managed to get himself, and his gown, over.
‘Hey, how come he is allowed to jump? Who is he, anyway? Batman?’
‘Thanks, mate,’ Daniel said.
On the river side of the barrier, he could make his way quickly to the other side of Magdalen Bridge. He was within spitting distance of the college when he heard his name being called.
‘Dan!’
He couldn’t believe it. Megan was waiting by the entrance, formally dressed in a blue suit and heeled shoes. ‘I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,’ she went on and for a moment, Daniel was completely lost. Had he invited her to meet him here?
‘Good morning, Master.’ The porter on duty moved the barrier aside to let Daniel through.
He hadn’t, of course, but he had been talking to Xav about the May Day celebrations on Saturday. She’d overheard them.
‘Lovely day, sir. This lady with you?’
Daniel opened his mouth to say no, but Megan was steering him along the short, cobbled path and into the main quad.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ she whispered into his ear. ‘I’ve always wanted a closer look.’
The quad was packed with people.
‘What fun,’ Megan said. ‘Do we go up the tower? I expect the view is something else, especially today.’
‘We wouldn’t fit.’ Daniel stopped short of the crowd. He’d already spotted several people he knew and did not want to be forced into introductions. ‘Megan, what are you doing here?’
Her excited face fell, like that of a reprimanded child. ‘I needed to talk to you,’ she replied. ‘Saturday was a bit awkward.’
‘What did you expect?’
She opened her mouth to respond as the clock chimed the hour. Beyond the walls, the chatter of the crowd settled into a buzz of excitement and more than one shout rang out. In the quad, every head turned upwards and Daniel was glad to do the same. At 144 feet, Magdalen Tower was the tallest building in Oxford. On its platform, beyond the high balustrade, Daniel could see robed figures between the gaps in the stonework.
The clock chimed four, five and six times. There followed a split second when the city held its breath and then the choir began to sing the ‘Hymnus Eucharisticus’.
‘Te Deum Patrem colimus, Te laudibus prosequimur . . .’
Amplified, soaring into the sky, the centuries-old hymn was magnificent, and Daniel could never hear its opening verse without tears springing into his eyes. Normally, he joined in quietly – it was a piece he loved – but he couldn’t bring himself to do so in front of Megan.
‘Can you understand it?’ she whispered.
He had a doctorate in classics – of course he could understand it.
‘We adore you, O Jesus, you, the only begotten Son,’ he translated from the Latin for her as the choir reached the second verse.
The hymn came to an end. A deafening cheer rang out from the high street and Daniel saw a helium balloon, blue as the sky, float up over the tower. Airplanes had started to fly, and vapour trails cut across the blue like mathematical drawings. Up on the tower, the rector of the college began to read the opening verse of Genesis, about how God made the world and, especially, the light.