Flesh: A Novel

7

THE HOTEL IS ABOUT HALFWAY up Park Lane. Roddy meets him in the lobby and István follows him along a gold-carpeted corridor toward the doors at the far end and the expanding sound of several hundred voices talking.

A wall of noise meets them. Numerous tables under only slightly less-numerous chandeliers is the impression that he has as Roddy leads him among them.

There are some familiar faces here and there, faces he knows from the TV news. It’s strange to see them in this setting, just having dinner like normal people.

They arrive at a table on the far side of the room and István waits while Roddy leans down and says something to the minister.

István knows him by sight, of course.

“Hey,” the minister says.

He’s a few years younger than István, and looks younger still.

István shakes his hand, envying his very thick hair.

“You sitting here?” the minister asks, indicating the empty place next to him.

“Yeah, I think so,” István says.

“Have a seat, then.”

As István sits Roddy is already moving away.

“Thanks for coming,” the minister says.

“Sure,” István says. “I’m happy to do what I can.”

“Well, we appreciate it.”

“And sorry I’m late.”

The minister shrugs tolerantly. The starters have already been served and he resumes eating while István makes momentary eye contact with Helen, who’s on the far side of the table.

Sorry, he mouths.

He isn’t sure if she sees it.

She’s speaking to the person next to her, and the line of sight is anyway partly obscured by a tall floral arrangement.

There are about a dozen people around the table, all experiencing the slight tension that comes from the presence of fame, or perhaps just power, since the minister is hardly a household name or even a particularly familiar face.

He’s eating his goat’s cheese whatever with the focused and almost hearty energy, the ultimately humorless determination, that he probably brings to most of the things he does in life. Like entertaining the other people at the table, which is obviously his job for the evening. He says to István, “So you’re doing this development in Rainham, is that right?”

Roddy or someone must have primed him about it.

“Yes. That’s right,” István says.

“Tell me about that.”

The minister listens, eating, while István, temporarily neglecting his own food, tells him about the Rainham project.

“Sounds ambitious,” the minister says.

“We didn’t see any point in messing about,” István says.

“No,” the minister agrees. “Sure.”

István takes out his phone and says, “Actually, I have some pictures.”

He scrolls past hundreds of thumbnails, mainly of Jacob.

“Who’s that young fella?” the minister asks.

“That’s my son,” István tells him.

“How old?”

“Seven next month.”

“Handsome like his dad.”

István laughs. “If you say so.”

He finds the pictures he’s looking for, and holding the phone where the minister can see it, starts to flick through the full-size images.

“So these are?” the minister asks, not quite understanding. The images are computer-generated but so realistic that it takes a moment to work that out. They show a group of very large buildings that seem to be set on a network of tree-lined canals. People stroll along the canalside paths and congregate on café terraces in the piazzas formed by the buildings’ sides.

“These are just visualizations,” István explains.

“Okay.”

“There’s nothing there at the moment.”

“Looks like quite a project,” the minister says.

“Yeah, it is.”

They talk for a few more minutes, and then they’re interrupted by the arrival of the main course, at which point the minister turns to the person on the other side of him and István finds himself having to engage with his own other neighbor, an elderly lady who wants something done about immigration.

She’s embarrassed when she understands, after a minute or two, that István is himself a foreigner.

“I don’t mean you, of course,” she says, putting a hand on his arm.

“No, of course not,” István says.

“We need people like you.”

“Well,” he says. “It’s nice of you to say so.”

“You’re not the problem.”

“I hope not.”

“So what do you do?” she asks him, perhaps feeling that she needs to show some interest in him now, to prove that she doesn’t wish he wasn’t there.

He tells her that he’s a property developer.

“What does that actually involve?” she asks.

He explains what he does and tells her about his latest project in Rainham.

“Which is where exactly?”

“It’s in London.”

She seems surprised. “Is it?”

“It’s sort of beyond Dagenham.”

“Beyond Dagenham?” she says. “Is that still London?”

She might be joking and he tries not to take the question too seriously—he’s learned the hard way how often that spells social disaster here.

She says, “So what is it exactly, this project of yours in…”

“Rainham.”

“Yes.”

He tells her and then with slightly disconcerting directness she asks him if it’s his own money that he uses to finance his developments.

He says it’s mostly loans.

“Loans?”

“Yes.”

When she asks who lends him such large amounts of money he’s vague and eventually excuses himself for a visit to the men’s room.

The next hour passes slowly. There’s some entertainment in the form of a well-known newsreader talking jokily for twenty minutes, and then there’s an auction involving various items of Tory memorabilia as well as the opportunity to play tennis with the foreign secretary or have lunch with Damian Green. Making sure that the minister notices, István puts in a few losing bids.

He and Helen leave at about eleven.

“Well, that was awful,” Helen says, as Samuel drives them home.

“You seemed to be having an okay time,” István says.

“I always seem to be having an okay time.”

“True.”

“I promise you,” she says, with a laugh, “I was not having an okay time.”

“I’m sorry,” István says.

“Did you get what you wanted?” she asks.

“I’m not sure,” he says.

“What did Roddy say?”

“He seemed to think it went okay.”

“All right.”

Samuel drops them in front of the Cheyne Walk house.

As they walk up the stairs he says, “Do you want to sleep alone?”

“Yes, I think so,” Helen says.

“Okay,” he says.

For the last few years they’ve had separate rooms.

After saying good night to her he doesn’t go directly to his own, though. He walks up to the floor above, where Jacob and the nanny have theirs. His mother also lives on that floor, and although it’s eleven thirty he knows that she will still be awake.

He knocks on her door.

“Yes,” her voice says.

She puts down her book. “So?” she asks.

He shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says.

“You talked to him?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

He tells her, in summary, what the minister said.

“So will he help you?” she asks.

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“I hope so.”

“He didn’t promise anything?”

“Not exactly. That’s not how things work here.”

He’s standing at the window looking down at the silent deserted street and the dark trees of Embankment Gardens on the other side of it. The air is heavy with moisture. The streetlamps have faint halos.

“Was everything okay here?” he asks.

“Of course,” his mother says.

“He went down okay?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, “that I wasn’t here.”

“I said you had important things to do. He understands that. He understands that you have important things to do.”

“Yeah,” István says. “I’m going to look in on him.”

“Okay.”

The night-light is on in Jacob’s room, filling it with strange shadows.

Stepping in, István wonders if it might be too warm in there, and indeed his son has thrown off the duvet.

He moves to the radiator and turns it down a little. He must have a word with the nanny about that, he thinks. She always puts it up too high.

At nine the next morning he walks to the office. It isn’t far from the house. It’s near the south end of Albert Bridge, quite high up in a modern building with views of the river in two directions. He stands in the lobby waiting for the elevator.

When he was putting together his first project, he took a single suite of rooms in the building. Then, as the business expanded, he added space until now he has a whole floor, the second from the top. There are about forty of them working there these days, and they’re negotiating to add the floor above, which they’ll need when they hire the new people to handle the Rainham project.

The Rainham project will be transformative, and for the last year or so he has devoted himself to it—acquiring the land, doing the designs, doing them again, sorting out the planning permissions, looking into various transport improvements, lining up the outside investors who will be needed—Roddy, an experienced project finance lawyer, was hired mainly to help with that—and dealing with all the other things that are necessary for an undertaking on this scale.

The elevator arrives at the eleventh floor.

“Morning,” he says to Rachel.

“Morning,” she says.

“How are you?” he asks her as he walks past. He has a takeout coffee in his hand.

She nods.

His own office is at the end of the corridor.

The most notable item in it is a large model of the Rainham project. He likes to look at it when he has a few minutes to spare.

He takes off his coat and lifts the lid from his coffee.

Noor will be in soon to go through his diary with him. He looks at his watch and decides he has time for a cigarette.

Sliding open the glass door he steps onto the terrace.

From up there, London shimmers into the distance. More immediately, the river takes the quiet autumn light and the gray trees of Battersea Park look like something from the model on the table inside. There’s a tranquil murmur of traffic. He lights his cigarette and has a sip of his coffee, thinking of his interaction with the minister last night. It was to do with the planning application for the Rainham project. Someone had messed that up by including some out-of-date numbers—in itself a trivial thing. The problem was that it meant the whole application would have to be put in again, which meant in turn that it would miss the deadline for escaping the new taxes, which would in turn mean additional millions in tax liabilities, enough to potentially put the entire project’s viability in question. For a few terrible days last month it seemed like the whole thing might actually fail. It was Roddy’s idea to try to speed up the planning process by speaking to the minister, to see if that sort of intervention from on high might push it through in time, and also to make a simultaneous donation to the minister’s party, to “help him look favorably on the matter,” as Roddy put it himself.

For Jacob’s seventh birthday Helen organizes a party and invites some of his friends from school. They had hoped to have it at least partly in the garden. The weather prevents that so it mainly happens in the second-floor drawing room, with most of the furniture pushed to the sides.

There are professional performers—singers and magicians—and a treasure hunt that takes in much of the lower part of the house.

Thomas is in London for the weekend and makes a short appearance. István didn’t even know he was around until he sees him at the food table—out of place among the excitedly lit-up children and increasingly tipsy parents (there’s champagne alongside the kids’ drinks, for those who want it, which is, in the end, almost everyone).

“Hello, Thomas,” István says.

“Hello,” Thomas says.

“You okay?”

Thomas nods.

“How’s Oxford?” István asks him.

“It’s okay,” Thomas says.

These days they don’t see each other very often. Even during the university vacations Thomas doesn’t spend much time in London, and when he does, he tends to keep to his own room on the fifth floor and is rarely seen in the other parts of the house.

After their encounter at the food table he soon disappears again and István finds himself talking to one of the mothers there, the attractive one he noticed earlier.

They eat cake together, standing near the open double doors that separate one half of the space from the other.

“I hope you haven’t got anything too valuable in here,” she laughs, as whooping seven-year-olds swoop and jostle around them.

“We took the most vulnerable stuff out,” István tells her.

“Very wise,” she says.

In the aftermath, István and Jacob wind down with some Lego—the large fire station set that was a present from one of his friends. Mostly it’s István doing it. “I want you to help,” he says. “I don’t want to end up doing it on my own.”

“Okay,” Jacob says.

“You said you wanted to do this.”

“I do want to.”

“Well, let’s do it, then.”

As per the instructions, they’re making the fire engine first.

István shows Jacob a red plastic piece and asks him to find two more like it, and Jacob starts to search.

He soon loses interest though.

After an initial phase of eagerly hunting for the pieces that they need, he silently detaches himself from the process until István, pausing for a moment, sees him sitting on a sofa and looking at something else entirely.

“Hey,” István says.

Jacob looks up.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m looking at this.”

“I thought we were doing this.”

Jacob puts down the thing he was looking at and half-heartedly joins István on the floor again, where the Lego pieces are scattered.

That’s the situation when Helen puts her head around the door. “Tommy and I are popping out for something to eat,” she says.

“Okay,” István says, without looking up from what he’s doing.

“Probably just Byron on King’s Road,” Helen says.

“I thought he was vegan,” István says.

“They have plant-based options.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want anything?”

“No, thanks.”

“We won’t be long.”

“Okay,” István says again.

She seems to be about to leave, and then she says, “It’s seven o’clock.”

“I know,” István says.

She means it’s time for Jacob to have his bath.

Saturday is the nanny’s day off, otherwise she would already have appeared to do that.

Sort of engrossed in the Lego now, István persists with it for a while longer and then, after a surprised look at his watch, takes Jacob upstairs.

While the tub is filling he asks him if he enjoyed his party.

“Yes,” Jacob says.

“Was fun, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Jacob says again.

“What was your favorite part?”

Taking the question very seriously, Jacob thinks for a few seconds and then says it was probably the treasure hunt.

“Yeah, I liked that too,” István tells him, testing the water with his hand.

While Jacob is in the bath, István tidies his room, picking toys up from the floor and putting them away, and arranging the stuffed animals on the pillows.

Jacob is just putting on his pajamas when István’s mother arrives with the warm milk.

That happens every night.

Jacob doesn’t like the warm milk.

István’s mother insists on it though.

“Does it have to be warm?” he asks her.

“Yes, it does,” she says.

“Why?”

“It just does. Now drink it.”

She’s stricter with him than István is.

“Will you tell me a story?” Jacob asks. The question isn’t addressed to her. It’s addressed to his father.

“A story?” István says.

“Yes,” Jacob says.

“What sort of story?”

“About when you were a soldier.”

“When I was a soldier?” István says, seating himself next to the bed.

His mother is still there, waiting for the empty glass.

Since Jacob found out that István was once a soldier he has been keen to hear more about it.

Slightly unwillingly at first, István told him a few things.

“What about it?” he says now.

“Just anything.”

“Drink the milk,” István’s mother says.

Jacob looks at his father, who nods.

“I don’t like it,” Jacob says.

“If you finish it,” István offers, “I’ll tell you a story about when I was a soldier.”

“A proper story?” Jacob wants to know.

István smiles. “What do you mean, a proper story?” he asks.

“At least five minutes.”

“Okay.”

“And new material.”

“New material?”

“Yes.”

“You mean something you haven’t heard before?”

Jacob nods.

“Okay,” István agrees, and while Jacob takes the milk in two or three unenthusiastic swallows he tries to think of something to tell him.

He ends up describing the day they went to Al-Suwaira, the day they took water to the Ukrainians there.

“Was anyone hurt?” Jacob asks.

“A few people,” István tells him.

“Was anyone killed?”

István shakes his head.

“Were you hurt?” Jacob wants to know.

“No,” István says. “I wasn’t hurt. I was fine.”

“And then what happened?”

“We fought them off, and went on.”

“To deliver the water?”

“That’s right. Only some of the tankers had holes in them,” István says.

“Bullet holes?”

“Yes.”

Jacob laughs at that for some reason.

“Why is it funny?” István asks him, smiling.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“That was more than five minutes.”

“Can I be a soldier when I grow up?” Jacob asks.

“If you want,” István says. “I don’t think you should be, though.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t.”

“What should I be, then?”

“I don’t know. What do you want to be?”

Jacob takes a few moments to think about it. “A fireman,” he says.

The Lego set, obviously. István smiles. “Yeah?”

With his head on the pillow, Jacob nods.

“Okay,” István says, still smiling at him, and enjoying the fact that he knows very well that his son will not be a fireman, that he’ll be something altogether more exalted than that. When he himself was Jacob’s age, of course, it would have seemed like an appropriate ambition for him, something that might actually happen, and part of the enjoyment he experiences now is to do with the feeling of progress involved in knowing that jobs like fireman have dropped out of the field of possibility for his family. Already he sometimes idly wonders what his son will actually be, what position he will actually occupy in the world. There seems to be no limit to what is possible there. And whose achievement is that, he thinks, turning off the light and slipping quietly out of the room, if not his own?

Sometimes he picks Jacob up from school himself. The school isn’t far from his office. It’s a five-minute walk along the river. Jacob is always happy to see him when he appears there at the end of the day, when he surprises him by not being the nanny, or Samuel in the Mercedes.

Sometimes, when the weather is nice, they walk in Battersea Park for a while, and sometimes they just make their way home across the bridge.

Arriving on the Chelsea side Jacob often wants to stop and look at the statue of the boy and the dolphin that’s there, on a promontory of paving stones at the end of Oakley Street.

He seems fascinated by that.

Once he asked István why the boy was naked.

“I don’t know,” István said.

Occasionally, if they feel like walking some more, they’ll stroll up to the King’s Road and do some shopping.

One afternoon, when the two of them are walking in Battersea Park, Jacob says, “Can we get a dog?”

“You want a dog?” István says.

“Yes.”

“We can think about it, I suppose. What sort of dog do you want?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about that one?” István points to a brown Labrador with a stick in its mouth, walking toward them. “Do you like that one?”

Jacob nods and asks the owner of the Labrador if he can pat it.

The owner, an older lady, says unsmilingly that he can.

She and István exchange nods.

Jacob pats the dog’s head.

“Say thank you,” István says.

“Thank you,” Jacob says to the lady, and then they move on, progressing slowly along one of the main axes of the park, an asphalt path lined at intervals with the massive bulbous trunks of plane trees.

Seeing someone stoop to pick up dogshit István says, “You have to do that, you know. If you have a dog.”

Jacob makes a face.

“You have to,” István tells him.

“Why?”

“Otherwise the whole park would be… you know.”

“What?”

“There’d be dog poo everywhere.”

“No there wouldn’t,” Jacob says.

“Yes there would.”

“The rain would wash it away.”

“Well yeah, maybe eventually,” István says. “But before that the whole place would be… It would be horrible. So you have to pick it up.”

“I don’t want to do that,” Jacob says.

“If you have a dog you have to,” István tells him.

“Then I don’t want a dog.”

The way he says it makes István laugh. “Seriously?”

At that moment his phone rings.

“Yeah?” he says, answering it.

It’s Roddy, who says they may have a problem.

“What sort of problem?” István asks him.

“Have you seen the Times website?”

“No.”

Sounding very tense, Roddy tells him that there’s a story on there about István and the minister—about how István sat next to the minister at a party fundraiser, made a substantial donation to the party, and less than two months after that received expedited planning permission for a major property development in Rainham that had been discussed at the fundraising dinner. The expedited planning permission would potentially save the development millions of pounds in tax liabilities.

“Is that a problem?” István asks.

“Yes, it is,” Roddy says.

“Why?”

“Why?”

“Yes,” István says.

Jacob is shouting for his attention.

István waves at him distractedly and listens while Roddy tells him how terrible it looks for him to be associated with a political scandal at this point, just when they’re trying to get the outside investors to formally sign up. The idea is that István will put in half of the initial investment, and that the other half will come from various outside investors. “I’ve already heard from a few of them,” Roddy says.

“And?”

“They’re upset. They don’t want to be associated with something like that. Particularly the Qataris. They’re very sensitive about that sort of thing.”

Jacob, two plane trees away now, seems to be asking someone else if he can pat their dog.

István walks toward him while Roddy explains that the outside investors were already waiting impatiently for István’s promised share of the investment funds to appear, “And now this,” he says.

“Yeah,” István says. He smiles tensely at the dog’s owner and indicates to Jacob that it’s okay if he pats it.

“There are two things we need to do immediately,” Roddy is saying now.

“Okay.”

“We need those funds, and we need them this week,” Roddy says. “Otherwise we may start losing people.”

“I understand,” István says.

“And I think we also need some positive PR,” Roddy says.

“What do you mean?”

“To push back against all the negative shit of this political scandal story.”

“I see.”

“We need some positive stuff out there at this point.”

“Okay. Like what?”

“Just some positive PR. Some puff pieces. A Sunday newspaper interview. Something like that.”

“With me?”

“Yes. Who else?”

“Seriously?”

“Why not?”

Slightly perplexed, István hollers at Jacob to slow down.

Jacob turns and waits for him.

“Okay,” István says.

Roddy tells him that he’s already spoken to some PR people.

“I think all that will help,” he ends by saying.

“Sure,” István agrees.

“The most important thing, though,” Roddy emphasizes, “is the money.”

“Yes.”

“We need to see that soon.”

“Yes.”

“People are starting to lose faith.”

“I understand.”

Pocketing his phone, István sits down on one of the curvaceous dark green benches that line the allée. Only Jacob’s presence prevents him from lighting a cigarette.

That evening he and Helen have dinner at 34 Mayfair and he tells her what Roddy said about the money.

“We need it,” he tells her. “We need it now.”

She says she’ll talk to Heath again.

Heath is the lawyer who oversees the Nyman trust fund.

Helen has been talking to him about the possibility of the fund making another loan to István, to finance the Rainham project.

Heath has to decide if this new “investment” is in line with the terms of the trust. István assumed that that was a formality. In the past Heath has always signed off on loans for István’s other projects, all of which were financed in that way, with soft loans from the Nyman fund.

The loan they’re asking for now is very much larger than any of the previous ones however.

“Is he being difficult?” István asks, sawing agitatedly at his steak. He’s having the A5 Wagyu with matchstick potatoes.

Helen has the char-grilled sea bass with nori butter, brown shrimp, and herbs. “Slightly,” she admits.

“What’s he saying?”

“He seems worried about how it will look.”

“How it will look?”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it’s a lot of money,” she says.

“So will he do it?” István asks.

“Honestly?” Helen says. “I’m not sure.”

István stares at her for a second. It hadn’t occurred to him until now that Heath might actually say no. “Does he want something?” he asks. In the past Heath has been offered various inducements, financial and otherwise.

“I think he wants not to be struck off,” Helen says. “He’s worried, and I understand why.”

“You understand why?”

“Yes.”

“So whose side are you on?”

“I want this to work out,” she says.

“Why’s he worried about how it will look now?” István asks. “Why wasn’t he worried about that before?”

“When the amounts were small it didn’t matter so much. Now we’re asking for a lot. I’ll talk to him again.”

“Whatever he wants,” István says, “agree to it.”

She laughs at that.

“You know what I mean,” he says. “This is important.”

“I know,” she says.

“This is for us, and for Jacob.”

“I know,” she says.

When they arrive home she asks him if he wants to sleep in her room and he says yes, hoping that sex might make him feel less stressed out about it all.

For a while it does.

The idea that having separate rooms would mean the end of all that has proved entirely wrong. The sex, since then, has had an intensity that it hadn’t had for years.

He falls asleep with all the stuff about the minister and the loan and the other investors far from his thoughts.

When he wakes later though, it’s all there again.

Helen is snoring. Trying not to disturb her he slips out of her bed and pulls on his dressing gown.

He walks down the hall.

It’s already starting to get light. A faint gray is appearing at the windows.

In his own room he opens one and smokes a cigarette, leaning out. The window overlooks the garden, which is vast for London—maybe fifty meters long and twenty wide. It’s light enough now to see to the end of it, and quiet enough to hear a solitary bird moving in the leaf litter somewhere.

He shuts the window and pulls the curtains.

Knowing that he won’t be able to sleep again without one, he steps into his bathroom and takes a Xanax, and then lies down on his bed.

Helen has her meeting with Heath and somehow persuades him to sign off on the new loan. When she tells István he laughs with satisfaction.

“There is one thing though,” she says.

“What?”

“He said he’ll have to tell Thomas.”

István takes a moment to absorb that. He’s on the terrace at the office. The city looks totally gray today—there’s just this grayness out there, this miserable grayness, this midafternoon gloom. They’re talking on the phone. “Why?” he asks.

“He said he should have told him when he turned eighteen.”

“Told him what?”

“Told him everything.”

“Everything?”

“Yes.”

“Everything about the loans?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t he?”

“I persuaded him not to. Now he’s saying he has to. He won’t agree to sign off on this one otherwise.”

Still trying to work out what this might mean, István says, “Thomas doesn’t need to agree to it?”

“No,” she says.

“He can’t stop it?”

“No.”

“You’re the trustee.”

“Yes.”

“So it doesn’t actually make any difference if he knows?”

“No,” she says. “Not exactly. Not practically.”

She says that she wants to tell Thomas about it herself, and arranges to have lunch with him in Oxford on Saturday to do that.

Thomas is in his second year at Oxford, doing History of Art at Magdalen. He works moderately hard. He smokes too much weed. And a few times a week he volunteers to help out at a homeless shelter in Iffley.

One evening when he arrives there’s a strange atmosphere.

There are quite a few people standing in the entrance hall, in silence, looking up the stairs.

Lucy is one of them. She’s another student who volunteers.

Thomas asks her what’s happening.

“Steve died,” she says, sort of hugging her skateboard.

“What?”

She nods.

“Steve?” Thomas says.

“That’s what they said.”

“Fuck.”

Steve was in his forties.

“How did he die?” Thomas asks.

“Don’t know,” Lucy says.

The ambulance men are bringing something down the stairs—a stretcher with a dark gray blanket over the person on it, even their face.

The people in the hall watch in silence.

There’s just the sound of the ambulance men’s bulky green work clothes rustling as they move.

The manager of the shelter is with them, and also someone else who might be a doctor.

Everyone watches as the men carry the stretcher out through the hall.

Thomas, just because he’s standing nearest to it, helps with the door, holding it open for them.

“Thanks,” one of the ambulance men says to him.

“That’s okay,” Thomas says.

After that the evening passes off more or less as normal, except that at first there’s an unusually hushed atmosphere.

Of course there’s a lot of talk about Steve and what he was like, and what people knew about him.

Very little, it seems.

There was nothing very special or memorable about him.

People speculate about how he died.

Nobody seems to know for sure.

They ask the manager of the shelter and she says she isn’t supposed to tell them.

“Was it suicide?” someone wants to know.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Do you think he killed himself?” Lucy asks Thomas.

“I don’t know,” he says.

When they’re leaving she asks him if he wants to get a drink. “After what happened,” she says, “maybe we need one.”

They go to the Bricklayers Arms.

Although it’s not a very nice pub it’s nearby, at the end of the street. People look at them when they walk in. They’re obviously students, and it’s not the sort of place where students normally go. Thomas feels slightly intimidated. He’s pleased that Lucy is there with him.

She asks him what he wants.

“Just a pint,” Thomas says.

She has a pint as well.

“Have you ever seen a dead body before?” she asks.

“Yes,” Thomas says.

“When?”

“When my father died.”

“Oh yeah,” she says. She already knows that his father is dead. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“It’s all right,” Thomas says.

“I’ve never seen a dead body,” she says.

She has dyed hair, a nose stud, a round badge with FCK NZS on it pinned to the lapel of her jacket.

Her definition of NZS sometimes seems to include everyone who isn’t actually a Marxist. Thomas has never told her much about his family.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she says.

“Sorry,” he says, lowering his eyes.

“I have a boyfriend,” she says.

“Yeah, I know,” he says.

“So don’t look at me like that.”

“Sorry.”

“I like you,” she says.

He shrugs, embarrassed.

“You’re sweet.”

Outside on the pavement, next to some rough wooden tables, they part.

“See you on Wednesday,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says.

And then she’s off on her skateboard, shoving herself along with her foot.

It takes him half an hour to walk back to Merton Street.

Normally he would take a taxi but today he walks.

The others aren’t in.

Upstairs in his room he lifts a small wooden box down from a shelf that otherwise mostly holds expensive-looking art books. He knows he should smoke less weed. He never seems to arrive home these days without taking the fragrant little box down from the shelf, even in the middle of the afternoon. Even in the morning sometimes.

His mother phones.

She says she wants to talk to him and suggests that they have lunch at the Randolph on Saturday.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asks her.

“I’ll tell you on Saturday.”

“Is it important?”

“Not very,” she says.

“Tell me now,” he says.

“No,” she says. “On Saturday.”

When he arrives at the Randolph she’s already there.

He sees her sitting in the lounge looking at something on her phone, and he remembers how it was here that she told him that she and István were going to get married.

He was still at school at the time.

When she told him, he didn’t know what to say.

“Why?” he asked, as if that was the most obvious question.

“We’re in love,” she said.

He thinks he might have laughed at that point, out of shock and embarrassment.

“Why do you laugh?” his mother asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Is it funny?”

“No.”

“I know it must come as a surprise to you.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Are you upset?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Why would I be?”

The maitre d’ asks him if he wants a table and he points to his mother on the far side of the room.

She smiles when she sees him.

“Hi, darling,” she says.

There’s an embrace, the smell of her perfume.

“How are you?” she asks.

“I’m okay,” he says.

“Should we go in?” she suggests.

They’re taken to their table.

He thinks it might actually be the same one they sat at the day she told him that she and István were going to get married. He tries to put that out of his mind. “How are you?” he asks her.

“I’m fine,” she says, smiling at him. “I’m well.”

“Okay.”

She asks him about his studies.

He tells her that at the moment they’re doing court art in early modern Europe.

“That sounds interesting,” she says.

“It’s okay.”

“Tell me about it.”

He says that, for instance, they’re looking at the way political and economic elites used art as a means of justifying and legitimizing their authority.

“That’s very interesting,” she says.

“It’s okay,” he says again.

“And are you still doing the volunteer work?”

“Yes.”

“I think it’s so wonderful that you do that,” she says.

He shrugs.

“It makes me very proud, I have to say.”

“That’s not why I do it.”

“I know it isn’t. Of course not.”

She reaches across the table and puts her hand over his. She withdraws it a moment later when the waiter arrives and asks them if they’re ready to order.

They say they need another minute and turn their attention to the menu.

When the waiter appears again Helen asks for the grilled chicken with chanterelles and vin jaune while Thomas opts for the artichoke tagliatelle. The waiter inquires about drinks. Helen says she’ll have a glass of white.

The waiter turns to Thomas. “And for you, sir?”

“Just a Coke Zero.”

The waiter nods.

“Thanks,” Thomas says. “So what did you want to talk to me about?” he asks.

His mother looks nervous, he thinks.

He hopes that she’s going to tell him that she and István are getting divorced.

There would be a nice symmetry to that, with them sitting at this table next to the window with an oblique view, through the gray veil of the lace curtains, of Magdalen Street and the Martyrs’ monument.

It’s not that though.

“It’s to do with the family trust,” she says, sort of pulling at the edge of the tablecloth.

“What about it?”

“There’s something I need to tell you about it.”

“Yes?”

She tells him that the trust has, over the past few years, made a series of loans to István, effectively, and that all of the various property developments that István has done in that time have been financed by those loans.

Thomas is obviously shocked. “What do you mean?” he says. “How much are you talking about?”

“Not that much.”

“How much?”

“Until this year, about… about eighty million pounds,” she says.

“Eighty?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not that much?”

“Not in terms of the size of the fund.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“I don’t tell you about every little transaction.”

“Every little transaction?”

“These were fairly minor transactions.”

At that moment their drinks arrive.

After having a decent swallow of her wine, his mother tells him that Mr. Heath, the lawyer, has passed all the loans as being in line with the terms of the trust.

What she needs to tell him now, she explains, is that there’s going to be a new loan.

“A new loan?”

“Yes.”

“To him?”

“To István, yes.”

“How much? How much?” he says again when she doesn’t immediately answer.

Samuel drives her back to London.

“Did you tell him?” István asks her when she arrives at Cheyne Walk.

“Yes, I did,” she says.

“And? What did he say?”

“He wasn’t happy.”

In the kitchen with its marble-topped island and huge window overlooking the garden, István is making tea. He asks her if she wants one. She says she does.

“What do you mean not happy?” he asks, putting out a second mug.

“He wasn’t happy,” Helen says again.

“Why not?”

“Why do you think? He said he wants to talk to Heath about it.”

István pours water from the kettle into the two mugs. “Can he do that?”

“Yes.”

“What would be the point though?” István asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Heath has already signed off on it.”

“I know,” she says. “I told him that.”

“So?”

Outside it’s raining steadily, although it’s nearly too dark to see that now.

“Does he think he can stop it?” István asks.

“I told him he couldn’t.”

He lifts the tea bags out of the mugs and asks her if she wants oat milk.

She nods.

“The whole thing wasn’t very nice,” she says. “He was very angry and upset.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He said some horrible things. About you too.”

“I’m sure. Like what?” István asks after a short silence, wanting to know despite himself.

“He said you exemplify a primitive form of masculinity. He said he was surprised that I ever found that attractive.”

“He said that?”

“Yes, he did.”

István snorts with a show of derisive amusement. It hurts though. He’s surprised how much it hurts.

“What else did he say?” he asks.

“About you?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know.”

Seeing that she doesn’t want to talk about it he leaves it there.

For a while, a few weeks, Thomas doesn’t do anything.

That he knows what’s happening now and still does nothing about it makes him feel disgusted with himself.

To escape from those feelings, he smokes more weed than ever.

One day, nervously, he phones Heath.

Heath tells him that everything that’s happening is perfectly legal.

When Thomas doesn’t seem satisfied with that, Heath suggests that he speak to István about it himself.

Thomas says that he intends to.

Weeks pass, however, without him doing so.

His mother wants him at Cheyne Walk for Christmas. Her siblings and nieces and nephews will all be there, she says. She wants him there too.

At first he says no.

He says he’s planning to spend Christmas with Mathilde.

It’s only later that it occurs to him that Christmas would provide an opportunity for him to talk to István. One of the things he likes about the idea is that Christmas is still a few weeks away, and until then he will have an answer when he asks himself why he isn’t doing anything.

He sends his mother a WhatsApp telling her that he will be there after all.

Thank you x, she sends back.

When he returns to London at the end of term he stays at Mathilde’s house. She isn’t there. He has a key though, and the housekeeper is expecting him.

On Christmas Eve he meets some Oxford friends for lunch in London. Afterward they go to a pub in Knightsbridge with an open fire. It’s one of those winter afternoon drinking sessions that merge into evening in a way that’s almost imperceptible as it’s happening. It’s just suddenly nine o’clock. The last thing he remembers is trying to order an Uber on the pavement outside the pub and having to throw up.

He wakes up the next morning with a hangover and makes a spliff to smoke with his coffee.

He’s not supposed to smoke in Mathilde’s house—particularly not weed—and he smokes it out the window. The lunch at Cheyne Walk isn’t until two so he thinks he should be all right.

He has another spliff at twelve, though, and is still slightly feeling it as he sits in the taxi two and a half hours later.

He tells the taxi to stop on the Kings Road and walks the rest of the way.

He feels he needs some fresh air.

He arrives at the house, at the leafless wisteria entwined in the iron railings, and has the usual feeling, the feeling he has had for some years now, of this being his home and not his home at the same time.

Entering the hall he hears that they’re still in the drawing room.

The lunch hasn’t even started yet.

He wonders whether to slip out again and come back in half an hour.

He’s been seen though.

His mother’s sister Sarah has seen him from the stairs.

“Hello,” she says.

He waves.

“How are you?”

“Yeah, okay.”

She’s hugging him now.

“Your mum was worried you weren’t going to show up.”

“Well.”

She leads him up the stairs.

Helen meets him on the landing outside the drawing room.

“Here you are,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?” she asks, sort of frowning.

“Why?”

“You don’t look… Are you ill or something?”

“I was out last night,” he says.

“You’re sure that’s all it is?”

“Yes.”

In the drawing room there’s a massive Christmas tree, presents lying around.

Some servant Thomas doesn’t know—she looks like she’s from the Philippines or something—is circulating with a champagne bottle.

“Do you have a glass?” she asks him.

“No,” he says.

“Should I get you one?” she asks.

“No,” he says. “Thank you.”

She smiles and moves on.

Not long after that, lunch is served.

In the seating plan, his mother has placed him and István as far apart as possible, at opposite ends of the table.

There’s a moment, toward the end of lunch, when he thinks that maybe he won’t say anything to István after all. And then he understands that if he doesn’t say anything, if he just attends this lunch and doesn’t say anything to him, it will have almost the opposite effect of what he wanted to achieve—it will seem to be almost a sort of acceptance on his part of what is happening.

With darkness already falling outside, István quietly withdraws to his study.

He’s in there smoking a cigar when there’s a timid knock on the door.

“Yeah,” he says, thinking that it’s probably Helen wanting him to join them downstairs again, or to tell him that some members of her family are leaving.

In fact it’s Thomas.

“Thomas,” István says, surprised.

Since he arrived at the house two hours ago Thomas has avoided even looking at him, and has hardly said a word to anyone else.

“I need to talk to you,” he says now, still half-hidden by the door.

“Sure,” István says.

Thomas steps into the room.

He looks terrified.

His lips are stained with wine.

“What is it?” István asks him.

There’s a long pause and then Thomas says, “I know what you’re doing.”

“What am I doing?”

“Stealing from me.”

István laughs. He shakes his head. “What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“I’m not stealing from you.”

“Yes, you are.”

For a few seconds they stare at each other across the desk. It used to be Thomas’s father’s desk.

“I don’t need to talk to you about this Thomas,” István says.

There’s another silence, a longer one.

For a moment Thomas looks as if he might be about to say something else.

He doesn’t though.

“I think you should leave now,” István says quietly, looking down at his cigar.

And then, when Thomas doesn’t move from where he is, István looks at him again with an expression that definitely encourages him to get the fuck out of there, which after a few more seconds he does.

Later Jacob asks István why Thomas was so upset.

“I don’t know,” István says.

“Is he angry with you?” Jacob asks.

“He seems to be,” István says.

“Why?”

“I don’t know, darling,” István says.

“Mummy said—” Jacob stops and looks worried.

“What did she say?”

Jacob shakes his head. “Nothing.”

“What did she say?”

Even though he presses him for a few minutes, Jacob won’t tell him what Helen said.

István finds Helen and asks her.

“I told him that Tommy has never liked you,” she says.

“You told him that?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

“He sees it. It’s obvious. I wanted him to know that Tommy has never liked you, that it wasn’t actually about anything that you’d done.”

She’s half-drunk and upset.

It seems there was some sort of scene after Thomas left his study.

“Where is he now?” István asks.

“He’s left,” she says.

“Yeah?”

She nods.

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know. Mathilde’s place?”

“I’m sorry,” István says.

“Why are you sorry?”

“I know you wanted him to be here.”

There’s quite a long silence and then she says, “Actually I feel terrible because I don’t.”

After Christmas they do a fortnight’s skiing in Verbier. The snow is disappointingly thin and patchy when they arrive. Then more falls on the second day. The mountains are hidden in gray fog through which the tiny swirling flakes fall. They sting your face as you go down, and accumulate on your goggles, obscuring the view. Jacob complains of that, and also of being cold. He has a private instructor who spends the day with him on the artificial snow of the nursery slopes while István and Helen and Helen’s sister Sarah and her husband tackle more difficult trails. István makes an effort and is mostly able to keep up, even though he only started skiing in his mid-thirties, whereas the others all learned to do it on school trips and family vacations when they were Jacob’s age.

Jacob himself doesn’t seem to be a natural. He keeps falling over, and snow gets into his boots and the sleeves of his suit. On the morning of the third day he even says, after breakfast, that he doesn’t want to go out at all, and while the others are getting their stuff together, István sits him down and asks why.

“I just want to stay here,” Jacob says.

“And do what?” István asks him.

“I don’t know.”

“There’s nothing to do here.”

“There is.”

“Like what?”

“Play Minecraft.”

“We’re not here to play Minecraft,” István tells him. “We’re here to ski.”

“I don’t like skiing.”

“Why not? It’s fun.”

“No it isn’t.”

They have a chalet that sleeps ten.

As darkness falls outside István and Jacob play Monopoly in front of the fire. Helen and her sister and Mike are already on the wine. Sarah and Mike’s kids, teenagers, are looking at their phones somewhere.

The chalet is fully staffed. There’s even a professional photographer who pops in to take photos for them to use on Instagram.

There’s also an excellent chef. István and Helen have developed a shared interest in food—unlike his interest in tennis, or hers in art, eating well is something that they are able to enjoy together.

About a week after they get back to London, Helen’s friend the artist has a private view. It’s her first show for some years and apparently a major event on the London art scene. That’s what Helen says on the way there anyway. Then she looks at the time on her phone and says, “We’re going to be late.”

“Is that a problem?” István asks.

“I promised I wouldn’t be.”

She tells him that even now that she’s internationally famous her friend gets very nervous before openings and private views. “I promised I’d be one of the first to arrive,” she says.

“Her wife will be there, won’t she?” István says. It still feels strange to say that.

“Yes,” Helen says. “She will.”

“So?”

“She wants me to get there early,” Helen says. “I said I would.”

“Okay,” István says. Forcing it out of its foil sleeve with his thumbnail, he extracts a pellet of chewing gum and transfers it to his mouth. Then he wordlessly offers the pack to Helen, who just shakes her head and turns to the window on her side.

A minute later he says, “Will Thomas be there?”

“I don’t know,” Helen says. And then, “She will have invited him. I don’t know if he’ll be there.”

She hasn’t spoken to Thomas since Christmas.

“Probably not,” she says.

For a moment they’re in Berkeley Square, and a minute after that they arrive at the Gagosian Grosvenor Hill.

While Helen finds her friend to apologize for being late, István accepts a glass of champagne and has an initial stroll through the place.

For him this is an important evening too. With the agreement of Helen’s friend, he has invited some of the potential investors in the Rainham project—it’s the sort of prestige event, not open to the public, milling with members of the political and financial elite, that he hopes will impress them.

He hopes, anyway, that his personal connection to an event like this will persuade them that he’s someone they can have confidence in.

Spotting an American banker who works for the Canadian pension fund that Roddy is negotiating with, István approaches him.

“Hey,” he says, patting the man on the shoulder.

The American is looking at one of the artworks.

“What do you think?” he asks.

“Interesting,” István says, after a pause.

“I’m not sure I understand it,” the American tells him.

“No,” István agrees.

Still looking at the work in front of them the man says, “Did you see her show last year in New York?”

István admits that he didn’t. “Was it the same stuff or?”

The man looks around, as if to see what’s there. “Sort of,” he says. He has a sip of his drink. “How are you?” he asks.

István nods. “Yeah, well,” he says. “You?”

The American at first offers only a weary shrug. “You know,” he says. “Surviving.”

István laughs in friendly solidarity. “Yeah,” he says.

“No, I’m fine,” the man says. “Good to see you again.”

“You too.”

They talk some more, mostly avoiding direct discussion of the Rainham project, and then István excuses himself and sets to working the room. As Roddy told him to, he makes an effort to spend a few minutes in small talk with each of the potential investors who have showed up.

Then he looks for Helen.

He finds her with her friend, who does in fact seem very nervous.

“What do you think?” she asks him.

“I like it,” István says.

“Honestly?”

“Yes,” he says.

They shake their heads at some finger food and then Helen introduces him to someone else who’s standing there with them, so far silently, a much younger woman with a slightly weird haircut. Not very weird. Just slightly weird, as if she cut it herself and tried to make it look normal and just didn’t quite succeed.

She turns out to be Danish and her accent sounds almost Australian when she says, in answer to a question of István’s about what she does, “I make aaht.”

“So you’re an artist?” he says.

“I don’t like to say that,” she says.

“Why not?” he asks.

“I just don’t,” she says.

He asks her if she knows many of the people there.

She shakes her head.

“No?”

“They’re not my kind of people,” she says.

“Aren’t they?”

She shakes her head again.

“What kind of people are they?” he asks her.

“Money people and socialites,” she says.

He laughs at that. He’s enjoying talking to her.

It’s just the two of them now—Helen and her friend have been drawn away into some other loitering knot of people.

“Money people and socialites,” he says. “You think so?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe.”

“Which one are you?” she asks him.

“Me?” István says.

She nods.

“Which do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe I’m not either,” he says.

Her eyebrows, which are fashionably untrimmed, do something that indicates skepticism.

“I’m not a socialite anyway.” He smiles at her.

“Okay,” she says, as if that leaves only one possibility.

There are also some other kinds of people there, he says. For instance, there are some well-known politicians and journalists.

He points some of them out to her and she asks him whether that is in fact the foreign secretary that she sees over there.

István looks. “Yes, it is,” he says. “Have you met him?”

“Of course not,” she says.

Definitely showing off now, he offers to introduce her.

The foreign secretary probably has only a vague memory of István—they met at a drinks party for donors a few months earlier.

He’s very friendly, though, when István approaches him and introduces the young artist.

The foreign secretary’s wife—who’s not much older than the artist—is with him and the four of them talk about Helen’s friend’s work.

“I think there’s something interestingly interactive about it,” the foreign secretary’s wife says.

“How d’you mean?” István asks her.

“I think it sort of invites the viewer to investigate it,” she says. “To find their own meaning in it.”

While she’s saying that, there’s some sort of disturbance near the entrance, a disturbance involving the security staff, and for a moment they all look in that direction. It’s hard to see what’s happening at first but when he does, István experiences a small shock of irritation. The disturbance involves Thomas, who it seems is making an appearance after all.

Still taking that in, István is only half-aware that the foreign secretary’s wife is saying something to him.

“Sorry?” he says to her.

She asks him again what he thinks of the work.

“Uh,” he says. “I like it.”

She waits for him to say something more.

Her husband and the young artist are waiting too.

It’s hard for István to formulate his thoughts though, as he hears Thomas shouting, “I do have an invitation. I just don’t have it with me.”

“Someone’s had too much to drink,” the foreign secretary says, with a smile.

“Yeah,” István agrees, trying to smile as well.

He hears Helen’s voice now as she intervenes to smooth things over with the security staff. She sounds tense and upset.

The foreign secretary’s wife is still talking about the work.

She’s about to say something else when Thomas screams, “Don’t touch me!”

He screams it so loudly that everyone turns to look.

Helen had apparently tried to take him by the arm.

“Don’t touch me,” he says again.

“What do you want?” Helen asks him.

“I want to talk to you,” he says.

“Let’s go and talk, then,” she says, indicating the door.

“No,” Thomas says, obviously drunk and very upset. “I want to talk to you here.”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I want them to hear.”

“To hear what?”

“How you’ve been stealing from me.”

Helen laughs. “What?”

The feeling of something like foreboding that István had when he first saw that Thomas was there is suddenly much worse.

Thomas’s voice trembles slightly as he says, “Yes. You’ve been stealing from me. You, and him.”

He points, and István is aware of the people he is with, the foreign secretary and his wife and the young artist, and in fact everyone else in the place, taking a new sort of interest in him.

He is not that aware of it though.

He is not that aware of anyone else at all as he stares at Thomas, who is now saying to his mother, “Should I tell them? Should I tell them what you’ve been doing?”

“You’re drunk,” Helen says.

“I know,” Thomas says.

“I think you should leave,” she says.

“I don’t want to leave.”

“I think you—”

“No!” Thomas screams, with such violence that she visibly flinches.

A moment later there are tears shining in her eyes.

“I know you want me to leave,” he shouts at her. “I know you wish I wasn’t here.”

Someone, a middle-aged man in a dark suit, approaches Thomas and whispers something to him and seems to try to take him aside. Without even looking at him, Thomas shakes the man off. Still speaking to his mother he says, “You’ve made that very obvious. You’ve made it very obvious that you wish I wasn’t here.”

István watches him say that with a strange feeling of detachment, a feeling that only deepens as Thomas starts to tell everyone there that István and Helen have been stealing from him for years, that all of István’s apparent successes were only thanks to that stolen money, and that in the end the two of them are nothing more than thieves.