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‘You’re in shock,’ Rafael said. ‘I can see you are. Look, come and sit down. I need to talk to you.’
He ran himself a glass of water as well, and they both went through into the lounge.
Rafael threw himself onto his usual place on the sofa and looked at Celeste. ‘Please—sit down before you fall down.’
Carefully she lowered herself down at the other end of the sofa, her fingers curled around the cold water glass. She looked at Rafael. His face was shadowed, but not from the light outside. From the darkness within. Then, abruptly, he started to speak.
‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know all through our affair, our relationship.’ His voice hardened. ‘And I wish to God I’d never found out. Except,’ he said, and now his voice had the dryness of the desert in it, ‘that it was Madeline herself who told me.’
He stared ahead for a moment, seeing nothing but the past, then spoke again.
‘She’d been drinking, so maybe that made her rash—but then, Madeline always has had a reckless streak in her. It’s the one she uses, gambles with, to make her fortunes. And, of course...’ his voice changed again ‘...she doesn’t see it as rashness. To her, it’s simply no big deal.’
He turned to look at Celeste again.
‘It came out of a conversation we were having—just after-dinner chat at her flat, nothing more drastic than that. We were talking about economics and the conditions required for economic growth in general, such as a financial system that can create reliable and relatively low-cost credit, and so on. And, on an individual basis, we talked about capital formation. That,’ he explained, ‘is the formal name for accumulating sufficient surplus wealth, or capital, to use for investment. We started talking about how we’d both dealt with the problem ourselves. It’s a real problem for budding entrepreneurs without pre-existing assets to serve as security for a loan.’
He paused, then went on.
‘I said I’d built up my initial investment capital by working through university, living as frugally as I could. Then, when I graduated, I worked eighteen-hour days, non-stop, for over three years, doing the kind of work that paid a premium because it was so noxious or back-breaking or in godawful places...’ He paused again, and then went on. ‘When I’d finished telling her, Madeline laughed.’
He looked at Celeste.
‘She laughed and said that what I’d endured made her glad she was a woman in business. Because she possessed a natural asset that gave her an ROT—Return on Time—that was orders of magnitude greater than anything I’d had to do to accumulate my capital for investment.’ He took a breath. ‘In six months, she boasted, she’d made three times as much as I had in three years of slaving non-stop. And the work, she told me, had been the most enjoyable she’d ever had. She’d even, at one point, considered making it her main line of business. Brothels, as she pointed out, are never loss-makers...’
He took a gulp of water, and then another, and another, draining the glass as though it might wash him out. Then he looked back at Celeste. There was no expression on her face still.
He got to his feet.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘More sorry than I can say that you ever got touched by any of this! Let alone found out about Madeline!’ His face tightened. ‘I wish I’d had the damn self-control not to blurt it out in front of you, but it just came right out because she’s being so incredibly blind to the risk she’s running! What I warned her about is inevitable! When the electioneering starts, and the global TV coverage heats up, some former client or fellow call girl will recognise her—and will sell the story to the media!’
