Yolanda still stayed in her hotel, her gold-plated credit card working fine, although regular phone calls to Antigua were a requisite, and even a long weekend back there to ensure maintenance was carried out on the benefactor. The day she left, Ralph had driven her to the airport. He had felt a pang of sorrow that she was going to give herself to someone other than him in exchange for money. Not that he hadn’t been guilty in the past of such indiscretions, but with Yolanda he felt comfortable, as if somehow it was meant to be, and the years apart had been a mistake best forgotten. But then, he remembered as he bade her farewell, the two of them had been a lot younger, and the fire had burnt stronger then.
Ralph, conscious that he was in his fifties and not in peak physical condition, took to exercising, a few laps in a swimming pool each day as well as walking three times around a park across the road from the flat that he and Michael occupied. Yolanda kept fit walking around London with her credit card. Michael, sober and responsive, looked for work, one of the conditions in his grandfather’s will, not that the thought inspired him. He was, he knew, an inherently lazy person, although he could see a future in sales, given that his natural charm and his looks made him likeable, but he had no track record.
‘I’m in a spot of bother,’ Ralph said as he sat down with Caroline at a pub not far from her house. At any other time, Ralph would have appreciated the open fire, the bonhomie of the place, the horseshoes nailed to the timber beams of the sixteenth-century former coach house. But he could see the look on his sister’s face, the look that clearly said no.
‘It’s money, this loan shark that you got yourself involved with, isn’t it,’ Caroline said. She was keeping to mineral water, Ralph had a glass of red wine in his hand. Neither was smiling.
‘If I don’t pay him, it’s a broken leg, maybe worse.’
‘How much?’
‘It’s over one million pounds.’
‘Give him what I gave you and pay the remainder when you can.’
‘It’s not that easy. There’s the compound interest.’
‘You’re not going to be much use to Desmond and me, are you? If you can’t keep out of trouble, how are you going to keep Michael off drugs, and is he working? I’ve got some sway with Jill Dundas, but you’re going to destroy this, you know that?’
‘I’ll pay you back once the shopping centre sale goes through,’ Ralph said.
‘It’s still not enough, is it? And loan sharks don’t lend money at five per cent per annum, do they?’
‘That’s the problem. The deal in Spain was going well. We had the money, but my business associate took the lot.’
‘I saw promise in you, I really did. Now you are back with Yolanda, and Michael is making an attempt, but yet again you’re a loser.’
Ralph could see that the bond between him and his sister was not there. She had needed him, still did, but she was going to throw him to the wolves. The evening ended badly, and neither felt the need to wish the other a good night.
***
Back at the flat, Michael was occupied filling out another job application, the third in as many days. To one side of him on the sofa was Giles Helmsley. Ralph, alarmed at seeing the man on his return but remembering when they had been younger, initially felt the need to be polite, but soon realised that the eccentric former professor was not there for his son’s benefit; he was there for himself.
‘What are you doing here? This is my place, not yours,’ Ralph said. He sensed his temperature rising, the short temper that he had possessed since he was a young boy coming to the fore. It had not been a good day. His sister had rejected him, his son too now from what he could see, and Yolanda was in Antigua sleeping with another man. And then his phone rang.
Absentmindedly, without first checking, he brought the phone to his ear. ‘Ralph, I was expecting you to come and see me,’ Frost said. In sheer terror, Ralph pressed the off button on his phone and lurched forward at Helmsley, grabbing him by the collar, causing a cup of coffee on the small table in the centre of the room to tip over.
‘Lawrence, what do you think you’re doing?’ Helmsley said. He knew that if Ralph hit him, it would hurt, but it was good, better than he had hoped, the chance to begin bringing back Michael to him.
‘Giles is helping me to get a job. We are not talking anarchy or politics at all. He is here as a friend,’ Michael said, hoping to calm the situation.
Ralph, beside himself with anger and frustration and not sure what to do, took a seat to one side of the room. He looked across at the now-smiling face of Helmsley, wanting to punch him in the face, but realising that he was not the problem, it was his sister. She had more than enough money to pay off Frost.
‘My apologies,’ Ralph said. ‘Helmsley, I don’t trust you, you know that. I don’t even like you, never have, but you have a right to my son’s friendship.’ He didn’t know why he had said what he had. He did not believe it for one minute.
‘Michael needs our help, and you need mine,’ Helmsley said, going into charm mode.
Ralph left the flat and went downstairs and
