Mark’s sympathetic dark eyes.
‘Yes, old chap, I saw and heard.’ Mark linked arms with Simon and guided him to a table in a corner. ‘Look, just you sit there and gather your thoughts. I’ll get us a coffee and you can tell me all about it.’
An hour and two coffees later, Simon was seeing things more clearly and he wasn’t sure if that was a good idea. Yes, he was sure, actually. It wasn’t a good idea at all. He remembered that he’d purposely downed those whiskies to obliterate reality – the vile, almost unbelievable, nightmare his life was turning into. Simon hugged himself and tried not to give in to the desire to rock back and forth. Wasn’t that what crazy people in movies did? He wasn’t crazy. Just sad, ashamed and… desperate. Yes, desperate was the main thing he was.
‘You’re looking a bit more like your old self now, my friend,’ Mark said, crossing his long legs and leaning his six-feet-five frame back in his chair. Not for the first time he reminded Simon of a hawk. In fact, Hawky had been his nickname back in the day. Dark eyes that missed nothing, aristocratic features, long, hooked nose, slicked-back tawny hair and a keen intelligence that was almost palpable. It was this that had led to his great success as a stockbroker. Mark was seriously loaded.
‘I wish I was my old self, Mark. I don’t care for this new one.’
‘You said you’d lost everything when we first sat down. Can you explain what you meant?’
‘I meant what I said. I have nothing… or won’t have once the bank has taken the house – keep defaulting on the mortgage, see? I lost the rest… everything.’
Mark narrowed his eyes and leaned forward. ‘Surely it can’t be that bad?’
‘It is.’ Simon swallowed hard. There was no way he’d add tears of disgrace to desperation. ‘Tonight was going to be the big win, but it didn’t happen. Should’ve listened to my lovely Holly. The only winners are the casino owners.’
‘We all lose sometimes, old friend. That’s the challenge, isn’t it? I think you might be seeing things a little gloomier than they actually are…’
‘You can afford to lose big, Mark. I can’t.’ Simon ran his tongue over dry lips and shoved his hand through his hair. ‘You know that little prick Giles Harwood we went to school with?’ Mark nodded. ‘He started it all off really. Yes, I was already on a losing streak but he tricked me. I thought he was pissed and risked a pile on that poker game. Lost it all.’
‘How much?’
‘Two hundred and fifty.’
Mark pulled back his neck and frowned. ‘Two hundred and fifty pounds is nothing, Simon. I…’
Simon shot Mark an incredulous look. ‘Of course not, Mark! Do you think I’d be worried about that? No, it was two hundred and fifty thousand!’
Mark stroked his chin. ‘Hmm. That was a tidy sum… I might be able to come up with some of it…’
Simon held his hand up. ‘But did I stop there? No. I carried on. And tonight I bet all of what I had left. My savings, my boat, my car… and the Cornish beach house.’ The enormity of what he was saying whipped up a wave of nausea in his gut. How could he do this to Holly? She’d be devastated.
‘So what are we talking here?’
Simon totted the amount up in his head, hoping he’d done it incorrectly earlier. He hadn’t. ‘Give or take, close on two million.’
‘Fucking hell, Simon… what were you thinking?’ Mark said in a low voice, though its gravity wasn’t diminished.
‘I wasn’t, was I? All I knew was that I needed a win.’ Simon’s gaze slid away from the mixture of pity and contempt in his friend’s eyes. To the table he said, ‘How am I going to survive now? I’m going to be a father soon. My work is suffering – had a warning from the main partner the other day. Holly will leave me, take the children with her. I would if I was her. But I can’t let her do that… oh, sweet Jesus, what am I going to do?’ Simon’s bottom lip began to tremble so he bit down on it.
Simon stuck his knuckles in his eyes and rubbed hard. Then there was a silence that lasted for too long – it made him want to scream.
‘Oh dear, you have made rather a mess of things, haven’t you?’ Mark said eventually, as he looked at his fingers, turning a plain wedding band round and round his finger.
Simon really didn’t need this; his stomach wanted to come up into his throat when he considered the impact of what had happened. He said through gritted teeth, ‘You could say that, Mark. My life is over.’
‘No. No, of course it isn’t. You’re not thinking straight, that’s all – and that’s perfectly understandable.’ Mark looked into the middle distance and did the chin-rubbing thing again. Then he stood and shrugged into his jacket. ‘Right, come on. I’ll get you into a taxi and we’ll talk about this tomorrow. It will all be okay.’
Simon shook his head. ‘How can it be?’ Then a glimmer of hope fought its way to the front of his mind. ‘Wait… do you mean you’re going to help me out?’
Mark helped Simon into his coat. ‘I might have an opportunity for you. We’ll talk tomorrow. I’ll ring you late morning, give you time to clear the hangover.’
*
Simon watched the rise and fall of his wife’s chest as she slept, a finger of moonlight caressing her beautiful face, and he prayed that Mark would come up with something before he lost everything. If he couldn’t fix it, then nobody could.
Even though I’m lying on the bed in my husband’s private practice, it still feels like a hospital. It doesn’t look like a hospital, with the plush home furnishings and soft music in the background; nor does it have that faint whiff of disinfectant in the air. Nevertheless, the screen of the ultrasound machine, the cold gel a nurse has just put on my bump, and the professional way Simon is moving around the room drags my unwilling memory to the last few days of my dad’s life as I sat by his hospital bed. He’d have been so excited to see his grandchildren. At only fifty-four he should have seen them, all things being equal. But they’re not, are they? Not always.
‘Okay, you ready?’ Simon asks, the transducer already in his hand and poised over my tummy. Is he in a rush? I’d expected him, now the nurse has left the room, to be more like my husband than a doctor. More intimate…
I look into his serious grey eyes and he looks away. He’s been acting very oddly the last few days and seems to have aged about ten years. Perhaps I’m imagining it.
‘Yes. You okay?’
‘Fine.’
No. I’m not imagining it. His tone is clipped, agitated even. A few nights last week, I’d woken in the early hours and he’d not been in bed beside me. When I questioned him in the morning, he said he’d gone out for a walk. Said he couldn’t relax. Why? Is he telling the truth? Is he having an affair? Then the lub-dub of a tiny heartbeat fills the room and I forget about all that as my heartbeat quickens too. I turn to the monitor. There they are, my beautiful babies!
Simon moves the transducer expertly over my abdomen and, after a few moments of silence, says, ‘All with our little girl is as it should be. Now for our boy.’ Well, at least he sounds a bit more human now. I give him a warm smile and try to relax.
A few moments later my heart lurches when the silence goes on a bit too long and I catch his expression. His jaw is tight and his forehead knitted in concentration. Simon’s hand moves more quickly over my stomach, almost frantically now.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ I say. I hear the mounting panic in my voice and try to calm my breathing.
Simon won’t look at me, just draws a hand down his face and moves