Throughout the history of their famous bank there had always been a male Fairbrother at the helm. Indeed, rather the way the British royal family had historically been obliged to always produce an heir and a spare in order to ensure the continuation of the line of succession, so Fairbrother men had always been obliged to continue their line in order to maintain control of the family bank. Only the Fairbrother traditions remained rather more archaic than that of the royals. England had a proud history of great queens, and, since changes to the law in 2013, even the order of succession to the throne was no longer gender dependent. The Fairbrothers, on the other hand, had never allowed a woman chairman, nor had Bella’s father ever seemed able to grasp the concept of her becoming the first, regardless of her ultimately showing herself more than capable — in stark contrast to her low-achieving brother.
Bella sighed. After just a few seconds more, she shook herself out of her reverie, climbed back into her car, switched on the engine and proceeded on the last short leg of her journey to view close up the devastation of her family home. It had to be done. Bella Fairbrother considered it her responsibility to evaluate the damage, then take whatever action might be required. And Bella never shirked responsibility.
However, it was starkly apparent that virtually nothing could possibly remain of the treasures she had taken for granted as a child. The Chippendale furniture, the collection of nineteenth-century watercolours, the family portraits and, of course, above all, the Gainsborough. Tough and disciplined as she undoubtedly was, Bella found herself that morning almost overwhelmed by an immense sense of loss. The home she had known as a child, and the father she had known and loved throughout her growing up there, could never be retrieved.
A huge part of her life was over. All she could do was move on to the next stage. And she knew what her mission was now. She had no doubt at all. She must save the bank. At all costs. The bank could not, and would not, be lost. The financial stability of Fairbrother International must be restored. Nothing else really mattered.
Meanwhile, as Bella had assured Vogel, Freddie Fairbrother was on his way to the UK. He had booked himself onto a British Airways flight to London Heathrow, straight after presenting himself at an Australian police station.
Freddie settled into his first-class pod and accepted the glass of champagne and dish of nibbles offered promptly by attentive cabin crew. He was determined to enjoy the journey, whatever difficulties he might have to face upon arrival.
Freddie still had a considerable cash flow problem. His allowance from the family business certainly wouldn’t stretch to first-class air travel. But that was all going to change soon. He’d raked up every dollar he had to make this trip, and paid for the first-class fair on a credit card taken right up to the limit. But he wasn’t worried about any of that. Why should he be?
He had begun to feel a certain resentment that he couldn’t afford to travel whenever, and in whatever style, he desired, drive a better motor car, and maybe, just maybe, live in a house that wasn’t made of wood. Now all that was going to change.
Those feelings had developed within him gradually. Had that fateful telephone call making a series of quite extraordinary suggestions come to him ten, or maybe even six or seven years ago, instead of six months, Freddie would just have laughed. He genuinely wouldn’t have considered it to be anything other than a joke. It was, in fact, only relatively recently that Freddie had started giving anything at all much attention. Of course, through almost all of his late teens and his twenties, and into his thirties, he had existed in a foggy cloud comprised more or less equally of marijuana smoke and alcohol fumes.
It was only as he entered his forties that Freddie had, albeit only occasionally, started to ponder not only his future but also the futility of his present.
Clearly there could be no going back, and Freddie hadn’t been able to see any way of moving forward which might offer the kind of change he wanted. If he wanted it. Indeed, he’d had no idea really what he wanted. That had always been Freddie’s biggest problem. So, he’d stayed just how he was. An ageing beach bum idling and drinking his days away. He’d rarely been actively unhappy. But he had come to wonder, just occasionally, what might have been.
Then the call had come, bringing with it his destiny. Or that’s how Freddie saw it. A whole new future lay before him. He’d seen at once what it could be, and for perhaps the first time in his life found that he knew what he wanted. He’d been given a quite unexpected, and rather extraordinary, second chance to regain the life he had been born for. All he had to do was reach out and grab it. And that was exactly what Freddie had done. He was going to be a Fairbrother again.
The aircraft took off and a male flight attendant, almost certainly gay, refilled his glass and treated him to a beaming smile. Freddie smiled back, his charming smile, the lazy one which started merely as a twitch of the lips and grew wider, narrowing the dimples at either side of his mouth until they were just creases.
Freddie had once woken from a drink and drug-induced stupor to find himself in bed with two men. It had always annoyed him that he could remember virtually nothing of what had actually happened. He wasn’t gay, of course. A little bit, maybe, because there had been one or two other men. Maybe more. Freddie supposed it would seem stupid to most people if he told them that by the time it got to going to bed time, he had sometimes barely known the difference. In any case, there had been many occasions when he had chosen a chunk of good Colombian black and a decent bottle of brandy over either sex.
But those days were well behind him now. Freddie had changed, just as, ironically under the circumstances, his father had told him he would.
‘It happens to us all,’ Sir John had said, despairingly sending him off on his travels. ‘You’ll want what everyone else has, eventually. Maybe even a wife and family.’
Freddie had laughed in his face. Particularly in view of the conduct of Sir John’s own dissolute second wife. He had despised his father in those days. Many young men and women, in their teens and maybe early twenties, turn against the values of their parents. For Freddie, it had been far more than that. Sir John Fairbrother ran one of the world’s most important private banks. As had his father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him. The young Freddie had loathed everything Sir John stood for, and everything Fairbrother’s represented. The gulf between father and son was about as great as it could be. Freddie was embarrassed by Sir John. Sir John was embarrassed by Freddie. And appalled by his wanton behaviour.
Freddie could hardly remember, now, whether he walked out on his father to live his hippy lifestyle, or whether his father insisted that he go. In any case the past didn’t matter anymore. Only the future.
He ate a delicious steak washed down with a fine claret, and contemplated, as airline travellers unused to regular first-class travel are inclined to, on the extraordinary difference between first and pig class. There couldn’t be many greater contrasts in life, Freddie thought. Heaven and hell were contained within one improbable piece of human engineering hurtling through the skies at 600 miles an hour.