“I’m not. I just want a few answers. Why are you borrowing all that money, Jake? What’s it for? When will you pay it back? What exactly have you told Mum?”
“For God’s sake!” Jake almost shouts, as though I’ve scalded him. “Why are you so obsessed? The business will be ours one day. What’s the difference?”
“Mum might want to sell it! That’s her retirement fund! We have to keep it safe!” I swivel to Nicole. “Did you know Jake was taking so much money out of the business?”
“No,” says Nicole with a shrug. “I mean, like, that’s really …”
“As I say, it’s a business-to-business loan,” says Jake tightly, and takes another swig of his drink. “It’s perfectly standard.”
“But why can’t you go to the bank?” I persist. “Why do you need to keep raiding Farrs? I mean, once I get, but three times?”
For a moment Jake looks as though he wants to hit me, almost. But he reins it in and even manages a taut smile, though his eyes are incandescent with fury.
“You really don’t understand anything, do you?” he says. “Poor na?ve little Fixie. Have a drink. Calm down.”
“No, thanks.” I meet his gaze evenly. “I’m not drinking overpriced cocktails on Mum’s expense. And I’m not ‘Little Fixie.’ If you won’t talk about it properly, I’ll leave. But I haven’t finished,” I add, looking from face to face. “This isn’t over.”
Bam. Kapow. Crunch.
As I stride out of the restaurant, adrenaline is rushing through me, and I’m breathing hard. I don’t quite know what to think. Did I achieve anything just now, except offend Uncle Ned and make a fool of myself? Was that a success or a fail?
I stand on the pavement for a while, the icy wind in my face, trying to sort out my jumbled thoughts and make a plan for what to do next. Go back to Seb’s is the obvious one. Have some food. Relax. I’ve said my piece; what more can I do right now?
But for some reason I don’t move. And gradually I become aware that my fingers are drumming in the way they do. My feet have started pacing: forward-across-back, forward-across-back.
Something’s bugging me. What’s bugging me?
It’s Jake, I suddenly realize. His strained face. That vein throbbing at his temple. His raw anger. The way he batted me away, again and again.
I’m used to Jake being impatient and sarcastic. But I’m not used to him looking like a cornered tiger. He looked evasive. He looked on the edge. Amid the flashes of anger, I realize, I saw flashes of fear.
A bad feeling is coming over me. I think for a few moments, then pull out my phone and dial a number.
“Oh, hi,” I say when it’s answered. “Is that you, Leila?”
—
As Leila opens the front door, my heart drops. She looks shrunken and there are shadows under her eyes too.
“Hi, Leila!” I clasp her warmly, and I swear she’s lost half a stone. “It’s been ages! I just fancied a manicure.”
“I thought you were having dinner with Jakey?” she says, looking anxiously past me as though expecting to see Jake too.
“I left them to it,” I say easily. “You know what they’re like. Six bottles of wine each.”
“I’ve told Jake to stop drinking,” says Leila, and her face becomes even more drawn and I feel a swell of panic, because none of this feels good. I follow Leila into the living room and stop dead at the sight of the big empty wall in front of me, wires trailing from four points.
“What’s happened to the telly?” I blurt out before I can stop myself. “Are you getting a new one?”
The words are out before I have a horrible, sinking suspicion.
“It went,” says Leila, after a pause. She picks up a plastic bowl from the coffee table and gestures to the sofa. “Sit down. I’ll get some warm water.”
“It ‘went’?”
“They took it away.” She flashes me a smile, which I don’t believe in for a moment. “It’s fine, I watch all the soaps on my laptop.”
I sit down warily, looking around at Jake’s flash pad, full of leather and glass and glossy magazines. It always seemed like the pinnacle of achievement, this flat. Now it all seems kind of … perilous.
As Leila sits down and instructs me to put my hands in the bowl of water, I eye her closely. She looks on edge. Frail, almost. I don’t want to freak her out by firing questions at her, but I have to know. I have to know.
“Leila,” I say, in my quietest voice. “Is Jake in trouble?”
For a long time, Leila doesn’t answer. She’s washing my hands, rhythmically, her gaze distant. Then she raises her head.
“Oh, Fixie,” she says in a trembling voice, and the look in her huge eyes makes me suddenly fearful. “Of course he is. But he won’t admit it. He won’t talk about it. I only hear bits and pieces. I’ve said to him, ‘Jakey, what’s going on?’ But he gets so angry.…” She adds, more calmly, “If you could place your right hand on the towel?”
As she starts on my cuticles, I say, “He’s been taking money from Farrs.”
“Taking money?” Leila’s eyes widen. “Stealing?”
“No, not stealing,” I hastily assure her. “Just loans. But what I don’t get is, why does he need them?”
“He can’t get finance.” Leila’s hands quiver as she dunks my fingers back in the bowl. “That’s all he talks about, getting finance. If you could please place your other hand on the towel?”
“But I thought everything was going well? I thought he was doing something with manufactured diamonds?”
At once Leila starts. Her hands quiver even more and her eyelids flutter.
“Would you like me to clip or file?” she says, her voice jumpy.
“Er … don’t mind. You choose.”
I wait while she gets out her manicure implements and lays them carefully on the towel, side by side, as though trying to impose order on the world. Then finally she meets my eye.
“He doesn’t know I know this,” she practically whispers. “But the diamonds were a scam.”
“A scam?”
Leila nods, and for a moment we stare at each other. My mind is processing what a scam might mean. How damaging it might have been. How humiliating.
“Did he lose …” I can’t even say it.
“Loads,” she says, her voice not working properly. “He’s in big trouble. But he won’t see it, he won’t stop spending money, taking people out for lunch, trying to be flash …” Her eyes fill with tears and I stare at her, aghast. “Oh. We haven’t chosen you a color yet. I’ve got a lovely new amber shade. I think it would really suit you.”
She pulls her case of nail polishes onto her knee and a tear drips down onto it.
“Oh, Leila …” I put a hand on her arm, but she shoots me a bright smile.
“Or lilac,” she says, opening the lid. “With your lovely dark eyes. Or classic red?”
“Leila …” I squeeze her. “He’s so lucky to have you.”
“Oh, I don’t do anything,” says Leila, patting at her eyes. “I just do my nails and keep my head down. That’s it. Nails. That’s my life. But I understand nails,” she adds, looking up with a sudden passion. “I understand how I’m earning my wage. I give you a manicure; you pay me. That makes sense. Whereas what Jakey does …”
“What does he do?” I ask, because it’s something I’ve often wondered. “I mean, his MBA course, obviously …”
“Oh, he dropped out of that months ago,” says Leila. “He said the tutors were all useless.”
I should feel shocked, but somehow I don’t. Not now.
“He talks as though he’s still doing it,” I say. “Mum thinks he’s still doing it. Everyone does.”
“I know.” Leila bites her lip. “I’ve said to him, ‘Jakey, you should tell your family.’ ”
He dropped out of his MBA but he didn’t volunteer to do any more work at the shop, I silently register. Yet he’s taken all these loans from it.
“So what does he do all day?” I persist. “How does he make all his money?”
“He made a lot out of those nude knickers,” says Leila, her brows winged anxiously. “That was a good deal. They were a good product. I wear them myself!” she adds, with a brief show of brightness. “But ever since then …” She trails into silence.
“But that was two years ago.” I stare at her. “Hasn’t he done any more deals since then? I thought …”
Jake talks as though he’s made a million deals, each more profitable than the last. He drops constant references to “export” and “my latest venture” and deals which are “on the horizon.” We’ve never questioned him, we’ve only listened, awed.
Leila still hasn’t replied. She’s busying herself with bottles of topcoat.
“Leila?” I say more urgently. “Has he?”
“I don’t think so,” she whispers at last. “He just has lunch with people. That’s what I don’t get. How does having lunch earn you money?” she says in sudden bewilderment. “I like a job I can see.” She pats her manicure case. “I like work. So, if you give me your right hand again …” she adds, in her manicurist’s voice.
I watch silently as she starts filing my nails. The rhythmic action of her file is kind of mesmerizing and soothing. It’s reassuring. For both of us, I suspect.
“I knew he was stressed out,” I say after a while. “But I had no idea …”