Page 80 of Love and Loathing

This, he suspected, as he reached out to touch her, palms filled with the small, perfect breasts, Evie leaning down to kiss him—this, would be one of those moments that stayed in his memory forever, an echo of perfection to remember when life was hard and work was gruelling and exhaustion gripped him. If they argued, fought. If they did, one day, have children, and the house was a mess and a baby was crying and everything seemed like hell… Then he’d remember this, the perfection of Evie being his, loving him, of making love here on this sofa, slowly now, the sex not being about release or need, but just a closer way of being together.

This was the dream made real.

Aubrey wasn’t due at Roscoe’s office the next day and was looking forward to a lazy morning in bed with Evie. But when he woke, she was already moving around the room, pulling on clothes, hair wet from the shower.

“It’s barely eight,” he protested.

“I know. I’m sorry. But I’ve got to get to the garden. I promised the others I’d be there to open up at nine.”

He groaned, muttered into his pillow, “I regret ever buying it.”

She laughed, sat down on the bed, and kissed his cheek.

“If you give me a minute,” he said. “I’ll drive you.”

“No. Have a lie in. I’m getting the tube. I’ll see you later—come down, if you like?”

The mud and the labour and the suspicious side-eye from her scruffy friends? Would he? Probably. If Evie was there.

“Bye,” she said, pausing at the door. Almost shyly: “Love you.”

He smiled. “I love you, too.”

He gave up on sleep ten minutes after she left, but the ringing of his phone stopped him on the way to the kitchen.

“Roscoe,” he said. “I swear I’m not meant to be there today.”

But Roscoe said, “Aubrey… Have you heard…?” And the deadly seriousness of his voice made Aubrey stop, suddenly cold everywhere.Evie,was his first thought. An accident. Evie hit by a car, Evie fallen onto the tracks, Evie attacked, hurt, another terrorist attack…

“What? Tell me.”

“BlacktonGold is in the news. And…so are you.”

Aubrey’s iron grip on his phone relaxed. He could breathe again. But his heart rate was still picking up as Roscoe’s words settled properly into his mind.

“I’m in the news?”

“Turn on your laptop. FT or BBC… It’s on most of them.”

Aubrey did so, opening his laptop where it sat on top of the sideboard in the living room. Roscoe waited silently on the line.

It wasn’t headline news. It was several items down, but seeing the words in black and white made his breath snag, his gut lurch.

Leaked emails reveal scale of tax evasion at BlacktonGold

BlacktonGold, the UK’s largest wealth management firm, was today rocked by accusations of tax fraud. Emails leaked from the account of BlacktonGold’s former head of tax strategy, Aubrey Ford, reveal a complicated system of aggressive tax avoidance strategies, the legality of which is now being investigated by industry regulators. It appears that Ford himself, formerly a portfolio manager at the firm, was responsible for the leak. Insiders speculate this may be in retaliation for Ford’s recent forced departure from the company after internal disagreements—

“I see,” Aubrey said quietly, still scanning the article despite all the words blurring, unreadable.

“Do you know anything about it?” Roscoe asked.

“No. I’m not the whistleblower.”

“And the allegations? Will the regulators…?”

“Find enough to arrest anyone? Not at my hands. Perhaps after I left.”

“So you’re in the clear?”

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