It would only be my second commission to date – the first had been for a friend’s baby shower. But I decided to overlook my misgivings. I assumed that the reason for his shiftiness was that this was clearly a bit of a pity project, whatever else he claimed. He earned enough money for the two of us put together, more than we needed, but I think he knew that my pride had been hurt by my own lack of success. So, to tell the honest truth, I didn’t look too closely into it. Not then. And it would be a useful showcase, I thought. It would be helpful simply to have another happy client under my belt: to share on my website, via my social media. You have to have a bit of a body of work to entice others. A bit chicken and egg, but there it is.
‘Should I send him a quote?’ I asked Julien. ‘Because I hope he knows I’m not going to work gratis.’ I didn’t want this guy to think that just because I was his mate’s wife I would do him a freebie. I might give mates’ rates, certainly, but I was a professional. My time was valuable. It had been a long time since I had felt really useful to anyone professionally, if ever, and I was going to savour the feeling. That was my biggest worry at the time. That I might be humiliated by working for free.
‘Don’t worry about the money,’ Julien said. ‘He’s already reassured me that he’ll pay you handsomely.’ He grinned. ‘Some in cash, some in a bank transfer – so you don’t have to declare it all to HMRC if you don’t want to.’ Well, that wasn’t exactly a concern. The company hadn’t made any money yet – it was unlikely it would be in profit by the end of the tax year. Surely Julien knew that?
Even then I didn’t feel any particular suspicion. Should I have done? He was my husband, for God’s sake.
It was only when a payment of ￡50,000 arrived in my bank account, and when Julien returned home from ‘watching rugby at the pub’, with the same amount in fifties, that I became suspicious. ‘Julien,’ I asked him, ‘what the fuck is going on?’ He grinned awkwardly, spread his hands wide. ‘This is just what he wants to pay you,’ he said. ‘He was so pleased with the work. He has absolutely pots of money, so this is just like loose change to him.’
I might even have believed him, if I hadn’t seen his eyes.
‘Julien,’ I said, sharply, so he knew there was no bullshitting me, ‘this money is in my account. So whatever else, I am now involved in whatever the fuck is happening here. And I am your wife. So I think you need to tell me everything, right now.’
‘It will be good for us, in the end,’ he said, blusteringly. ‘I … I suppose you could say I saw an opportunity.’
‘What sort of opportunity? Outside work?’
‘Well,’ he gripped the back of the chair in front of him, hard. ‘I suppose you could say it is connected to work. Loosely …’ He seemed to gather himself. ‘Look, it was just – sitting there, right in front of me. There was some information that I was aware of, and it would have been completely stupid not to use it.’
It was then, finally, that it struck me. ‘Oh my God, Julien. Oh my God. Do you mean insider trading? Is that what you’re saying to me? Is that where this money comes from?’
I knew the truth less from anything he said then than from the way his face drained immediately of all colour. ‘I wouldn’t call it anything as formal as that,’ he said. ‘No, it’s nothing like that. I’ve just given a couple of people a bit of a nudge. Friends. Nothing really big. This sort of thing happens all the time.’
I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. ‘I think what you mean, Julien, is that people get arrested all the time.’
Only the other week I had been reading about Ray Yorke, a partner at one of the big investment banks who was serving time for trading secrets with his golf buddy. As they made their way around the course he’d casually dropped in titbits of information – supposedly not realising that his mate was trading on the information, and making millions in the process. He claimed he didn’t realise even when he started accepting the gifts his friend pressed on him: a Rolex watch, jewellery for his wife, parcels of cash. When he was caught, his life had ended. He’d lost his job, he’d gone to prison, his wife had divorced him, he’d never work in finance again. CNN had shown an interview of him outside the courthouse practically weeping: offering himself up as a cautionary tale. And of course, in the process, he’d had to give it all back – and then some.
I’d had zero sympathy for the guy. Who, I had thought, could be that fucking stupid? It had seemed so obvious to me. Of course you get found out for something like that, in the end.
As it turned out, my husband could be exactly that fucking stupid. ‘What on earth is wrong with you, Julien?’ I said. ‘You’re like a gambler, always in for one more hand.’
‘I’m sorry, Manda, I don’t know what to—’ And then suddenly his face had changed, hardened. He stopped the expansive innocent guy routine, he called off the cringing, hand-wringing mea culpa. ‘Well, I suppose it’s easy for you to say, Miranda,’ he said. ‘But you seem to forget quite how much you enjoy this life. The holidays – Tulum, the Maldives, St Anton – they don’t come for free, you know. Half the time you seem to be sitting around reading some kind of brochure for holidays that cost more than some people earn in a year. Or the boxes that turn up from Net-a-Porter every season, or the five hundred pounds you pay every month to your fucking nutritionist. Yes, I earn a lot. But we have practically no savings. And now you’re talking talking talking about having children – do you know how much private school costs these days? Because of course the children of Miranda Adams couldn’t go anywhere so lowly as a free school, like I did. And university, now they’ve hiked the fees? And with only one of us working …’ He looked me straight in the eye. ‘My job isn’t as secure as you think it is, Miranda. The financial crisis wasn’t all that long ago. And then we’d have been screwed.’
I couldn’t believe it. ‘You can’t put this on me, Julien. This is your fuck-up.’
Perhaps I should have seen it coming. Because this is how he has always been. He didn’t grow up in a well-off household, like me, with a solid family unit. His mum was a single parent. It cost her everything to put him through university. Though you would never know it, from the way he acted there. He has a profound shame of the fact that he used to be – not even poor – from a lower income family. He has a fear of looking bad – which is what poor is, in his mind. It’s like he has always felt the deficit. Perhaps if it weren’t this, it would be something else. It would be an affair, for instance, or a gambling addiction. Maybe I should even be grateful that it isn’t something more, something worse: though it’s difficult to imagine what that would be, right now.
DOUG
It is dark, late. This is his favourite time. He has the whole place to himself – finally. Or at least he thought he did, until he came across that idiot guest, the one who had pestered him about the Wi-Fi, the one with the handsome, punchable face. Julien. When the torch beam passed over him he was walking along the track that led from the Lodge to the cottage where he and his wife were staying. But it was about an hour after all that awful noise from the Lodge had stopped – and after the lights had gone off.
The man had started in surprise when he caught him with the torch. He had looked like an animal, like one of the herd, fixed in the Land Rover’s beam. His face had worked, as though he were wrestling with himself as to whether he should explain what he was doing out so late. But in the end he had settled for a grimace and a nod, and continued on his way without turning back. He looked as guilty as a man could look. He had the hunched shoulders, the stiff, mincing walk, of someone who had been up to no good. Doug would bet that the man had not expected to see anyone else on his way. And in whatever he was doing, he had been caught out.
That, at least, had made up for the interruption to his peace. Thinking about it now, he smiles.