A hundred and fifty thousand pounds. A hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year. In the middle of the night, Dan lay in bed and watched Bea sleeping, and hated her. A hundred and fifty thousand. Her rounded cheek was resting on her open hand. She looked about twelve years old. Innocent. This didn’t need to have happened, this wasn’t where they had to be. He thought of their rain-soaked, stupid honeymoon in Yorkshire, his two cheap M&S suits, the slip-on shoes he hated. He thought of the smell of their old clothes, drying by the radiators, and the twisting in his stomach every time Bea sat down to do the sums for the month. He thought of how she pretended to worry about paying each bill, and made him feel guilty for every takeaway coffee, and sick with himself for going along with her lie. For three years he had hardly let himself think of it; her money, like coins that stacked and heaped and shuffled in an arcade coin-pusher, but never fell. Bea had the key. She could open up the back of the machine, at any time. They could be holding fistfuls of gold, and she knew it, but she kept pretending, fixing broken soles onto her shoes, and telling him how lucky she felt. Lucky. He had thrown away his dreams to spend his days showing strangers around stinking flats vacated by the corpses of threadbare old men; hoping for his reduced, only fair, non-exploitative 1 per cent commission to drag them into the next month, and the next mortgage payment, never having any choices, never doing anything they wanted with the one precious life they had. Because of her. Because of her, his future was in cold storage, and had dried up, and gone. She talked about believing in him, but all the time she held him back.
‘Bea, wake up.’ He pushed her shoulder. ‘Wake up.’
He pushed her again, and she jumped.
‘Where’s Alex?’ she said.
He switched on the light, and she screwed up her eyes in the glare.
‘What’s happened?’ She groped for her phone. It was three o’clock in the morning.
‘Nothing,’ said Dan. ‘Sorry, babe, I didn’t mean to scare you, but we need to talk.’
‘What about?’
It was wrong to discuss it in bed. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘You need to.’
‘What is it?’
He pulled on his jeans, and, stumbling, she followed him downstairs to the first, small, sitting room.
‘Dan?’
The moonlight coming through the window made squares on the floor. Dan felt his way along the wall, to a standard lamp, and switched it on. It was reflected, misshapen, in the black windows.
‘Sit down,’ he said.
She sat at one end of the sofa and tucked her feet up, pulling her T-shirt over her knees. He sat at the other end, in his jeans, but no shirt, his legs pulled up too, facing her, as he embarked on his bloodless revolution. He began with her father and Arun, and the offer of the company, the ownership of Paligny.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she said.
‘It’s not a confession, Bea.’
‘But why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I needed to think. And you’ve got enough on your mind. I didn’t want to get into it.’
‘Think about what?’ she asked.
‘Just wait. Give me a chance.’
The things he needed to say were pushed out by everything he mustn’t, three years of laws she’d laid down for him, without saying a word. Never mention her money. Never even acknowledge its existence. Riches hung above their heads like a golden sky he had to pretend not to see. She waited, her eyes steadily on his.
‘Go on,’ she prompted.
He couldn’t think straight. ‘He only offered, because he wants to help.’
She was studying him. He could see her thinking.
‘Bea, basically, he loves you. He might be doing it for tax reasons or whatever, but he loves you.’
‘It’s not love, it’s money.’
‘So what’s wrong with money?’
‘Not money. His money. He gets it from turning London into a shopfront.’
‘There’s no such thing as dirty money or clean money.’
‘No, fine then, it’s all dirty, but my mother lives off his, and that makes it untouchable.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘Yes. We’ve talked about this.’
‘Not really, babe.’
‘Dan, it’s so late, I’m –’
‘You talked about it, and you never told me how much he had. I mean, you haven’t been exactly straight with me. You made a decision about our future, about our security, without ever really discussing it.’
‘There’s nothing to discuss.’
‘Why not? He makes his money selling luxury flats as futures trading. It’s not people trafficking.’
‘Money he made in the sixties, keeping the Windrush generation in his slums –’
‘Yeah, don’t lecture me about my history –’
‘It’s my history, too.’
‘I’m not talking about that –’ he said.
She wasn’t listening. ‘He hardly pays tax! He has no scruples!’
‘Shut up!’ he shouted.
Now she was quiet, but her hollow-eyed silence was worse judgement than her lecturing.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.’
‘I don’t want his help,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I don’t want his little offshore company, or anything of his. I’m happy how we are. I love who we are. What’s wrong with it?’
‘You’ve got your career,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a vocation. It’s all right for you.’
‘We came away, didn’t we?’
‘So it’s my fault now?’
‘No, I was happy to come, I didn’t mean that. I just want you to find your path.’
‘So you say.’
‘I’m not the one stopping you, Dan. You could do your own work if you wanted to.’
‘You think I don’t want to?’
‘I think you don’t believe in yourself. I think that stops you.’
‘Oh, right, it’s not because I’m already working sixty hours a week to pay the fucking mortgage?’
‘Artists do have day jobs. People find a way.’
‘Do they?’
‘Most people don’t make a living out of their art.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘They work weekends,’ she said. ‘They do.’
‘Yeah? How many? How many of them don’t have any financial help? These “people”, Bea, are the entitled middle class – how many of these “people finding a way” are like me? How many are black? How many are working five, six days a week, in a fucking estate agent’s, and still – Jesus, what are you like? You’re a – how high are your standards? What do you expect from me?’
‘I don’t have the answers, Dan. All I know is that whatever we do, or whatever money we make, it must be just ours. It’s good, how we live. It’s good. It’s ours and it’s clean. I need that, don’t you?’
‘That’s right, hit me with that.’
‘With what?’ she said.
‘Morality. Knockout punch.’
‘It’s not a fight.’
‘Oh yeah? You got me. I’m down.’
‘I don’t want to bring you down.’
‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘You’re totally uncompromising.’
She was surprised. It was almost funny to him how surprised she was. ‘Am I?’
‘I can’t speak to you,’ he said.
‘You can’t speak to me?’
‘No.’
She shook her head and rubbed her face. ‘You got me out of bed at three in the morning,’ she said. ‘You’d better try.’
‘Then stop staring at me. Come on. You mess up my head. I can’t think with you looking at me like that.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’ He shook his head.
‘I don’t want to be uncompromising,’ she said. She thought for a moment. ‘What about if I cover my face?’
‘What?’ said Dan.
‘Like this.’ She put her hands over her eyes. ‘Better?’
He could only see her nose and mouth.
His anger went away. He had dragged her out of bed to fight with her and she was still trying to help him. And she looked so vulnerable, waiting, blind and hopeful, for him to say his piece. He looked at her mouth, beneath her hands.
‘That’s kind of hot,’ he said.
‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘Maybe you can say it now, how you feel.’
She was right – wasn’t she always? – it was easier not to see her eyes. He took a breath and said it. ‘When your parents die, you’ll inherit their money.’
He looked for a reaction but could not see one. It was perfect. He was released.
‘Griff’s in his seventies,’ he said. ‘When he goes, you’ll get something like – I don’t know, millions, right?’
He noticed she was breathing more quickly. Her lips were parted.
‘I’ve heard about this stuff. I bet he’s got money in trust for you already. Is there money I don’t know about?’
She nodded.
‘OK. So am I meant to not think about it? How can I?’
She didn’t say anything, or move.
‘When we were first together,’ he said, ‘you told me about your family, you were like, They’re pretty well off – yeah, I think well-off was the word you used. You didn’t say My dad has a few hundred million in the bank –’
She trapped her lips between her teeth to stop herself correcting him. It made him smile.
‘Just stay blind a little longer, babe.’
Free from her gaze, he moved towards her. She waited, silently, for what he would do next, what he would say, breathing through her nose, her T-shirt rising and falling with her breath. Blind and dumb, she had made herself voiceless, just for him. It shouldn’t have excited him, but it did.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Listen. Every day, every time I, like, get a text I’ve gone overdrawn, or when I don’t hit my target at work, there’s this thing I get – in my head – I think, Bea’s dad has money. Then I feel guilty. And I stop myself. But I wonder, What is it, really, that’s stopping us getting some help? You didn’t kick up about my dad’s money for us, not at all. And he wasn’t even a father to me. I met the guy, like, five times in my life, and I don’t even remember. You know how that’s messed me up, but you were happy to take that twenty-five grand of adulterer’s cash, we even laughed about it.’
‘Maybe I should do blindfolded sessions,’ she said, behind her hands. ‘It works.’
Holding up her arms had raised her T-shirt from her legs. He touched her knee and she jumped.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘I didn’t see you coming.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Before. About my parents dying.’
‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘I’m going to touch you,’ he said, to warn her.
He put his hands on her shoulders, and pushed her backwards, slowly, until he was kneeling between her legs. He lowered himself onto her, his face tucked between her cheek and the sofa. Her hair touched his lips.
‘When they’re dead, you’ll have it anyway,’ he said in her ear. ‘So can you tell me – what are we doing?’
Her voice was constrained by his weight. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I fucking hate it. Pretending we don’t have a choice.’
‘I won’t take their money, now or when they’re dead,’ she said. ‘I’m not pretending.’
‘What for? Why?’ he said into her neck. ‘It’s bullshit.’
She wriggled, grinding herself back, into the cushions, to get away. She got her hands between them, and pushed him off. Now he could see her.
‘What is? What’s bullshit?’ she said through tears. ‘Us?’
‘No. No –’ He looked down at his hands. ‘Don’t cry.’
‘I’m not crying.’
‘I can’t do it any more, Bea.’
She untangled herself from him and pulled the T-shirt down over her knees again. ‘What can’t you do?’
Head down, he stared at his clenched fists pressed together, knuckles straining. ‘I can’t pretend I see only what you want me to see. It’s not about loving you or not loving you. D’you not get it?’ He looked up at her.
‘I thought we were happy,’ she said.
‘I hadn’t realised how much it was fucking up my head,’ he said. ‘But I guess it was. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ she said.
There was silence. They stood outside their marriage, looking in. She got up from the sofa.
‘I’m going to bed. I’m tired.’
‘Yes. We can talk about it tomorrow.’
She didn’t turn. ‘Yup.’
‘I’m sorry it came up like this.’
He switched off the light, and followed her. In their room, she went to the bathroom and did her teeth again, and avoided herself in the mirror. She got into bed in the dark. They were two new people; the ugly rich girl, and her good-looking husband.
‘Goodnight,’ she whispered.
‘Night, babe.’
She had always known she wasn’t strong enough to fight wealth. It was bigger and more beautiful, and it was fierce. Bea wasn’t beautiful or fierce. She was easily overshadowed. She felt his body move behind her, and he stretched. The birds began to sing. The sun would soon be up. She closed her eyes.