‘Nice to see you again, Sir Howard,’ says the receptionist. He squints at her name-badge. ‘Tanya’, it reads, in sans serif font above two miniature flags – one of them is Spanish; the other he can’t make out. Eastern European, he shouldn’t wonder. Probably one of the former Soviet states. They were getting everywhere these thin, ambitious girls with their black hair and sharp little faces. He wasn’t sure it was a good thing. The last time he’d rung Le Caprice for a reservation, the girl at the end of the line had asked in a thick, guttural accent how to spell his name. He’d been going there for years.
Nevertheless, he is not one to pre-judge. He admires chutzpah, in the right place. He’s fond, too, of romanticising the immigrant experience, of reminding himself that, if it weren’t for the British, his forebears would have been gassed by the Nazis. The Finks, as they were then, would have been rounded up by jack-booted monsters if they hadn’t managed to get to England in 1933. And now look at them, he wants to say. And now …
He has never been to the death camps – can’t face the idea of them, let alone the reality – but his personal history remains a matter of considerable pride. On the one and only occasion he had been asked by the BBC to take part in a current affairs discussion programme, he had supported the relaxing of border controls and received one of the biggest cheers of the night. Looking back, he wasn’t even sure why he’d said it. He voted Tory, for God’s sake.
He smiles at Tanya, dazzling her with his expensive teeth (veneers and whitening done by a dentist recommended to him by a minor Royal. He isn’t one to name names).
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re in your normal suite, Sir Howard.’
For a brief moment, he wants to weep with gratitude at this kindness, this foresight, this human generosity shown to him by a global corporation. He’s always been sentimental: easily moved to tears by charity television adverts with soulful-eyed children in hospital beds. But Tanya remembering his name has demonstrated – in a small, but significant gesture – that he is who he thinks he is; that his importance as a businessman is an acknowledged fact. He is reminded, by Tanya giving him his normal suite, by intuiting his needs, that he has made his way, that he has his own part to play in it all: in the oiling of cogs, in the handshakes that lead to the lunches that lead to the buying and selling that lead to the acquisition of influence, to the stake in governance that results in the eventual spinning of the world on its axis. He can make things work. At this, he is undoubtedly a success.
Here he is, then, Howard Pink (formerly Fink), a man with complete awareness of his status in life, confident in his opinions, blessedly certain of the rightness of his decisions. A man of fortune, yes, but also of distinction.
The financial press will insist on putting ‘self-made millionaire’ after the comma. Howard used to wear this as a badge of pride. These days, however, he can’t help but feel there is something patronising in the phrase, a sense among the blue-shirted City bigwigs that he is not quite of their sort. He has always found it magnificently ironic that men (and it is, by and large, still men) who revere money for the power it gives them dismiss the ownership of it unless it has been inherited.
Because, Howard thinks, as he turns towards the lift, isn’t it more impressive to have generated £150 million from nothing than to have been handed it on a plate by a doddery great-uncle with a baronetcy and a mouldy pile of National Trust stones? Isn’t it better, somehow, to have made one’s own way by selling clothes on an East London market stall, clothes sewn by his mother, God rest her soul, bent double over her Singer machine with pins in her mouth (he was for ever telling her not to put pins in her mouth. Did she listen? Did she bollocks), clothes that he took and marked up and pushed onto the unsuspecting hordes of Petticoat Lane Market? Wasn’t that more admirable? To have made a profit, to have ploughed it back into better stock, to have sold more, of better quality and at a higher price, and to have done this over and over again, with one canny eye always on the bottom line, until he owned Fash Attack, the fastest-growing chain of clothing shops on the British high street?
Wasn’t that worthy of some respect?
Because, after all, you only sold product by knowing first how to sell yourself.
As a young boy, Howard had once seen the Petticoat Lane crockery-seller assemble an entire place-setting, one plate on top of the other, and then throw the whole lot into the air. The trader had caught it on the way down with a giant clatter of noise and not one single plate had shattered. The housewives couldn’t open their purses quick enough after that.
That was how you shifted stuff. It was a question of performance. It was a matter of confidence.
He feels a moistness under the armpits. The collar on his shirt is too tight, even though he has spent an arm and a leg on it – forgive the pun. The shirt is made by a company called Eton. They normally sold shirts for tall, thin men but he’d insisted they custom-make them to accommodate his ever so slightly more corpulent form. Initially the name amused him – the conjunction of the country’s most famous public school with the rag-trade he knew like the back of his hand – but the joke didn’t last for long. Now, in the mornings, it depresses him to catch sight of the label.
He presses the button for the lift. Behind him, there is a squall of high-pitched laughter. He winces, then glances across. There are four people sitting in high-backed armchairs to one side of the lobby, being served silver trays of miniature scones, sandwiches and cupcakes. Two of them are older, their features bled of colour, their eyes faintly wrinkled. They look as though they are trying to enjoy themselves but would rather be at home, listening to Gardeners’ Question Time.
He guesses they are parents who have come into the city at the behest of their children to celebrate some family anniversary. Their offspring sit opposite them now – two young women, shrieking with hilarity, wearing skinny jeans and dark-coloured jackets, their hair slicked with the shine of urbanity, their lips stretched with the complacency of youth. A mobile phone, encased in pink diamanté, lies on the table in front of them. One of the girls sees him looking and stops laughing abruptly.
He thinks of her, then, as he had known he would. He thinks of the person he tries daily to forget without actually wanting to do so. He allows himself one brief flash of recall: her hair in bunches, a gap where her front tooth should have been. She is wearing a tartan dress and crushing rose petals in a mixing bowl to make what she calls perfume.
His daughter. Ada. Named after his mum.
The lift pings. He walks in, forces himself to smile at the reflection in the mirror. On the fourth floor, the doors part and he turns left down the corridor, glancing at the cardboard key holder to remind himself of the number. Room 423. A corner room.
He slips the plastic key into the slot. The door handle light winks green. He enters. His luggage is already there, on the rack by the television. The inner curtains are half-drawn, the white net giving the room a drowsy, shadowed feel. The flat-screen television is set to a personalised welcome message. Two glass bottles of mineral water stand on the capacious desk. The mirrors are all discreetly tilted and lit in a way that makes him look at least ten pounds lighter. He knows, without having to open it, that the minibar will contain a half-bottle of fine Chablis and a bar of Toblerone.
Safety, he thinks, inhaling the familiarity of the surroundings. There is a particular security, for Howard, derived only from an ease that has been painstakingly thought out by other people for his benefit. He admires the competence and does not mind paying over the odds for it. It allows him, for a few hours, to be entirely outside himself.
He removes his jacket, places it on the back of a chair, slips his BlackBerry out of the inner pocket and turns it off. He unlaces his shoes. And then, in spite of the fact that it is three in the afternoon, in spite of the fact that Tanya the receptionist would be surprised at what he is about to do, in spite of the fact that Sir Howard Pink has appointments to make, places to be, people to meet, companies to manage, emails to answer and balance sheets to read, he pads into the bathroom, turns on the tap and