Meltdown Read Free Page B

she knew what a difference fifty thousand pounds could make too. She was a fundraiser for Asylum Action, a charity that attempted to bring aid and support to the crowds of desperate refugees who, having fled the violence and misery of their war-ravaged homelands, found themselves caught up in the violence and misery of a massive transit camp on the French Channel coast. Those people needed medical care, legal advice and access to interpreters. Fifty grand could help a lot.
    ‘You can’t do it,’ she insisted. ‘You can’t bet that amount. It’s bloody stupid.’
    ‘Why is it stupid? We got the money speculating.’
    ‘You got the money cheating, Jim.’
    ‘Don’t be such a square, babe! Life is a speculation, let’s speculate a bit more. It’ll be fun. We’ll make a party out of it. Next year’s Grand National! Or maybe the Alabama Derby! I’ve always wanted to see that race and if we give the gang enough notice we could all go over together. I’ll put the money in gilts with my bookie and when the book opens he can put it on the longest shot on the slate.’
    ‘Jimmy!’ Monica tried once more to protest but Jimmy headed her off.
    ‘It’s a brilliant idea!’ He stuck his fist into a box of Toby’s Frosties and drew out a handful. ‘If we go in at, say, twenty to one we could be looking at over a million for Asylum Action. The committee will go crazy!’
    ‘Or nineteen chances of nothing at all.’
    ‘Can’t accumulate if you don’t speculate, babes. Gotta be in it to win it.’ Jimmy punched up the cappuccino machine. ‘It is after all well known,’ he added, ‘that charity is the new Rock ’n’ Roll.’

But what do you actually do?
    It wasn’t as if Jimmy had ever expected to be insanely rich. He was the son of a bank manager. Provenance more solid and comfortable than a Sunday-night television drama serial. DNA-wise, Jimmy’s kids should have been called Pipe and Slippers, not Toby and Cressida and the recently added Lillie.
    Of course he hadn’t expected it (the money, that is, not Lillie, who had been very much wanted), how could he have? As Jimmy was fond of saying about the size of his bonus, ‘You couldn’t make it up.’ The sums would have seemed like pure fantasy to any previous generation working in the City.
    When Jimmy was a kid, nobody except rock stars had made the sort of money he had ended up making. Then suddenly Jimmy was a rock star. Well, he’d certainly bought his London house from a rock star and he’d paid an extra million for the kudos. He didn’t care what it cost. He wanted a big house in Notting Hill and he got one. ‘A house is worth what you pay for it,’ he used to say. Now he was discovering that in fact a house was worth what you could sell it for.
    Of course, he hadn’t planned to be as rich as he had become. That would have been like planning on winning the lottery or being plucked from the dance troupe to marry Madonna. It had been fate, that was all. Right place, right time. Jimmy had just got lucky. The same thing as being in on the beginning of a gold rush. Yee-ha! California, 1848. First wagon over the Rockies. ‘There’s GOLD in them thar hills!’ You just grabbed a shovel and ran for it.
    Nobody resented them . Nobody resented Klondike Pete and his best gal Sal the way people had suddenly come to resent Jimmy and his pals. Nobody called Klondike Pete a greedy, irresponsible bastard because he bent down and picked up lumps of gold when he found them lying around on the ground. As any fool would.
    Despite what people might now claim.
    No, Pete and Sal had been pioneers . Gritty chancers who created the wealth on which a great nation could be built. When their mines failed or the bottom dropped out of the price of gold, nobody said they deserved it. Nobody said, ‘Oh, they should have been more prudent, those pioneers. They should have asked themselves how long they could all keep digging up gold before the price went down. They should have