Ant Middleton

The Fear Bubble


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had to make a decision, one way or the other. I had to commit. Up? Or down?

      Up.

      I pushed myself back into a climbing position. The instant my body followed my mind’s instruction, something incredible happened. The entire mountain changed. It wasn’t trying to shake me off any more – it was pulling me towards it. Every rock had been put there, not to trick me, but to help me. When they worked loose from the mountainside and gave way, that wasn’t the mountain trying to kill me, that was the mountain telling me where not to put my feet. These icy gullies weren’t death slides, they were ladders. Look how beautiful it was up there. I’d never seen anything like it. I’d never felt anything like I was feeling, right then. I would achieve this. I would fight the fear. I would use it like fuel. I would make it up there, to the top of the world, to the seat of the gods. I would conquer heaven.

       TAMING THE GHOST OF ME

      Twenty Years Later

      ‘Cheers, buddy.’

      I took a few rapid, light puffs of my cigar and heard it crackle into life between my fingers. The smoke that licked the back of my throat was rich and smooth, almost spicy. I took a deeper draw and peered at its glowing end. You could taste that it was expensive. But was this really £400 worth of cigar? That would make it, what, five quid a puff? I settled more deeply into the leather club chair and drew again, this time luxuriating in the experience, allowing the smoke to slide out through my lips gradually and wreathe about my face in silky ribbons. Before it dissipated, I took a sip of the rare single malt whisky my new barrister friend Ivan had also bought me, this time at the bargain price of £60 a shot.

      ‘So, how are you enjoying your new life?’ he asked me, his accent as cut-glass as the tumbler in my hand.

      And here I was being wined and dined by a top barrister in one of the most exclusive and secretive private members’ clubs in the world. If you’ve not heard of 5 Hertford Street, it’s because the owners like it that way. If you walked past it, you wouldn’t know it was there. It’s set in a warren of closely packed streets in Shepherd Market, Mayfair, a corner of the capital that used to bristle with high-class vice and scandal but now, aside from a red light bulb or two that shines out of an upstairs window, is polished and prim and postcard perfect. Downstairs, I could hear the faint bass throb of music coming from Loulou’s, its nightclub. Next door, the beautiful faces of London high society ate Sicilian prawns or duck with broccoli in the restaurant, their scrubbed and trimmed dogs at their side. This was where billionaires, moguls and the aristocracy of both Hollywood and Britain’s most gilded families went for their Friday-night drinks. And tonight I was among them.

      ‘What’s that?’ I said.

      ‘Is everything all right, Ant? You’re miles away.’

      ‘Oh, sorry, bud,’ I smiled. ‘Yeah, it’s not bad. It’s OK. I’m bedding in.’

      Ivan was one of the elite. He fitted right in to this place, gliding over the sumptuously patterned carpets and past the heavy, gilt-framed paintings with graceful ease. The fact was, with his blue pinstriped Turnbull & Asser suit, his wide pale yellow tie rakishly unknotted and his long fringe swept back, he’d have fitted right in anywhere in the monied world – London, Singapore, Frankfurt or Dubai.

      ‘Well, yes, I can quite imagine,’ he said. ‘It must be a rather different experience being entertained here than it was back in the mess.’

      ‘The mess?’

      ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’ He swirled the golden liquid in his glass and absent-mindedly watched the lights dance across its surface. ‘In the military. Where you ate. The mess. That is what you call it? I’ve always thought that rather odd.’

      ‘Why odd?’

      ‘Well, it’s a joke, I take it. Irony. Military humour.’ His eyes flicked up. ‘I mean, you know, are they messy places? One would rather imagine not.’

      ‘It’s French,’ I told him. ‘From the word “mets”, meaning a dish or a portion of food. It’s not because it’s …’

      ‘Oh, is that so!’ he said, laughing. ‘Of course. Yes, I should have known. Yes, yes, how silly of me. The French.’ He kind of half-winked in my direction. ‘That was an impressive stab at a French accent there, by the way, Ant. It felt, just for a moment, as if I’d been whisked away to the harbour at St Tropez.’

      Yeah, that ashtray had to weigh a good three or four kilos. Maybe more. You could do some proper damage with that. Put a door in. In fact, you could put someone’s head in with that thing. Easily. I’d use the bottom edge. Curl my fingers into the bowl, get some proper purchase on it and wear it like a knuckle-duster. Wallop.

      ‘I grew up in France, as it happens,’ I told him.

      ‘In France? Well, I never. Whereabouts?’

      ‘So I’m fluent in French.’

      ‘Ivan, mate, I’m thirty-seven,’ I said.

      ‘Of course you are. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to imply … Of course you could still pass Selection. You’d fly through it. You’ve only got to see your television programmes …’ He was beginning to bluster.

      ‘Ivan, mate, it’s totally fine,’ I said, laughing. ‘Forget it. Fucking forties! What are you like?’

      As he relaxed once again, he began telling me about his own fitness regime. No carbs after 6 p.m., forty-five minutes in his home gym three times a week, a personal trainer called Samson. As I listened, enjoying my cigar, I found myself beginning to wonder, what would happen if it all kicked off in a place like this? What if Isis came through the door? A lone shooter or a guy in a bomb vest? What would Ivan do? How would that waiter over there respond? Rugby tackle him? Go for his legs? Or shit himself and dive under the table? I scanned the people around me. They’d go into a flat panic. Every single one of them.