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‘Wow, then you must have a shit-hot cleaner.’
‘I’ll tell Maria you said that,’ he says with a grin.
I grin back foolishly.
‘Come on. I’ll show you the balcony,’ he says and we cross the vast open-plan space. Our footsteps echo in the ultra-modern emptiness of the place. He opens the tall glass doors and I step outside.
‘This is amazing,’ I exclaim looking at the city bathed in the glow of the evening sun.
‘Yeah, it is, isn’t it? When you live somewhere for some time you start forgetting how beautiful you once thought it was.’
‘You’re very lucky,’ I say sincerely.
His face closes over. ‘It’s still too early to say,’ he says cryptically.
‘No, you’re already luckier than all the children who live in rubbish dumps in the Philippines and all the slave workers in China and India and all the homeless people in London.’
He looks down at me, and for a long time he doesn’t say anything. Then he raises his finger and pushes away a skein of hair that the wind has undone from my face. His fingers feel hard and warm against my skin. I have to resist the impulse to rub my face against his hand like some needy puppy. Thank God, he takes his hand away before I do something I’ll forever regret.
‘Sometimes you can be happier on a rubbish dump than in a palace,’ he says.
‘Do you really believe that?’
‘I don’t believe it, I know it. Growing up my family was dirt poor and yet we were happy. Fiercely happy.’
I stare up at him. In the sunlight his eyes are like blue crystals with silver flares, the pupils seeming too large for a man.
‘People don’t understand what wealth does. Wealth makes you more dissatisfied. You buy a house, you fill it with the best, then you buy another, you fill that with the best; you buy a yacht, then a plane; you buy a vineyard and then you buy a bigger yacht, and a bigger plane. Then you start a luxury car collection. And you never ever come to a place where you think, “That’s enough now. Why earn any more? I couldn’t spend it all in my lifetime even if I tried. I’ll just stop working and relax, enjoy all I have.” No, you just keep on pushing yourself, constantly expanding the business. It’s why billionaires in their eighties put in eighteen hour days.’
I think of my parents. They’re poor, yes, but they’re happy in their small world outside the rat race. And except for my resentment of the people who don’t pay their taxes, I love my little matchbox flat and my little life.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asks suddenly, jerking me away from my thoughts.
‘Ravenous,’ I admit.
And he laughs. ‘Good. There’s plenty of food.’
I hear his laugh inside my chest. ‘What’re we having? A takeaway?’
‘Sort of.’
His idea of a sort of takeaway and mine are worlds apart. Mine is a small pepperoni pizza with garlic bread, or chicken biryani and poppadoms, or a quarter crispy duck and special fried noodles from one of the takeaway joints inside the five-mile free delivery radius. His is a three-course meal from one of his restaurants.
The food—well, the raw ingredients—is brought by a man in a chef’s uniform whom Dom introduces as Franco. Franco then proceeds to cook and serve us as we sit at the dining table. I take a careful sip from my glass of wine. I woke up with a massive hangover this morning and I don’t want to repeat the experience tomorrow.
‘So, you can’t cook,’ I say, cutting into my perfectly baked leg of milk-fed lamb.
‘Nope.’ Holding his food at the side of his mouth, he says, ‘My brother Shane can, though.’
‘He’s the youngest, isn’t he?’
‘No, my sister Layla is. He’s the second youngest.’
I pick up a dab of artichoke and pearl barley mash at the end of my knife. ‘Ah, yes. I forgot. He’s the youngest boy. Being a stay-at-home mother, your sister didn’t quite make it on to our radar. But she’s married to a rather … um … interesting character, isn’t she?’
He leans back and looks at me expressionlessly. ‘He may be a rather … um … interesting character, but outside of my brothers I’d rather have BJ guard my back than I would any other man on earth. He’s a totally straight and loyal guy. Maybe one day you’ll meet him.’ He smiles. ‘He might not like you too much, though. As you’ve probably figured out, us gypsies have no love for tax collectors.’
‘And yet here I am.’
