Meltdown Read Free

pretty stupid not to, what with Rupert telling me they’d gone tits up. Nice of him to think of me really. I suppose he was feeling guilty because he’d suggested I buy in the first place.’
    Jimmy returned to his fruit salad, searching about among the mango and star fruit for the last strawberry. He was avoiding Monica’s eye.
    ‘Jimmy . . .’ She did not sound happy.
    ‘Mmm?’ Jimmy affected an innocent look. The same doe-eyed, open-hearted expression that prior to Monica’s entry into his life had persuaded so many girls that when he said, ‘You know, just for a last coffee,’ he actually meant it.
    ‘Don’t look at me that way, Jim,’ Monica said. ‘Are you seriously telling me you acted on a tip-off? You sold shares on the basis of a tip-off?’
    ‘Oh come on, Monica!’ Jim smiled. ‘What was I supposed to do? Sit there and watch us lose a hundred grand? That would be insane.’
    ‘Rupert should never have told you.’
    ‘But he did tell me. That’s not my fault, is it? But once he had told me, I was stuck, wasn’t I?’
    Jimmy crossed over and took his wife’s empty mug from her hand, fishing out the dead tea bag and flicking an expert slamdunk into the waste-disposal unit installed in the third of the three massive stainless-steel sinks.
    ‘Jimmy, you shouldn’t have done it.’
    ‘Oh come on, why not?’
    ‘Well, for a start it’s hardly fair, is it?’
    Jimmy frowned slightly and sprinkled grated chocolate on to his coffee while he thought for a moment.
    ‘I don’t really think fair ’s got anything to do with it,’ he said finally. ‘I mean money’s a yo-yo, isn’t it? Everybody’s trying to guess the bounce.’
    ‘Yes, but not everybody has access to government information, do they? Jimmy, I really think it’s . . . it’s . . .’
    Monica glanced at the illuminated stairway as if wondering whether somebody might be at the top of it, listening to their conversation.
    ‘Is the baby listener on?’ she asked.
    ‘Monica, it’s not a walkie-talkie, it doesn’t work both ways, besides which there’s nobody upstairs.’
    ‘Turn it off anyway.’
    Jimmy sighed and did as he was told.
    ‘There’s no one but me, you and Cressie in the bloody house,’ he assured her. ‘What’s on your mind?’
    ‘I really think,’ she said with a face that was suddenly very serious, ‘that you selling those shares after Rupert told you what he told you could be construed as insider trading.’
    Jimmy was quite taken aback, not least because it was so unlike Monica to show an interest in that sort of thing. They always divided the Sunday paper with perfect equanimity. She took the review section and he took the business bit and they never swapped back.
    ‘God, Mon,’ Jimmy said, ‘what do you know about insider trading?’
    ‘I know that it’s against the law.’
    Jimmy tried to shrug in a nonchalant manner, but in truth he was slightly thrown.
    ‘Well, I don’t think it’s insider trading,’ he said finally. ‘I mean, surely Rupert wouldn’t have suggested it if . . . I mean, it’s just like gossip, isn’t it? A tip at the races or something like that. A bloke gets wind of something, he tells a mate. You take your luck where you find it.’
    ‘That American friend of Lizzie’s went to prison, didn’t she? Martha Stewart. She just took a tip-off.’
    ‘Gossip, Mon. Not a tip-off as such.’
    ‘Jimmy, Rupert wasn’t passing on gossip so much as facts . He’s a government adviser. He’s actually in the loop.’
    ‘Well yes, but . . . I mean insider trading is like when you run a company and you know everything about it and then you make trades using information, privileged information that isn’t available to the public. That’s why it’s illegal.’
    ‘Exactly . . . and?’
    ‘Well, Rupert doesn’t own or run Caledonian Granite and nor do I. Neither of us has any association with it at all, so how can we be insiders? . . . It’s fine. I know