Sidney Sheldon’s After the Darkness. Тилли Бэгшоу

it if he hadn’t been desperate. But he was desperate, and Lenny knew it. It had started as a sort of stress relief. A few innocent bets here and there, on the horses or the blackjack tables. But as his losses crept up, so did the size of Jack’s positions. Gambling had unleashed a reckless side to Jack Warner that he had never before been aware of. It was exciting, exhilarating and addictive. Recently, his addiction had started to cost him dearly in financial terms. But the real risk was political. Jack had built his entire career on his reputation as an upstanding, Christian conservative. Compulsive gambling might not be illegal, but it would lose him the family values vote in a heartbeat.

      Fred Farrell gave it to him straight. ‘You have to stop this, Jack. Right now. Pay off your debts and wipe the slate clean.’

      As if it were that easy! Pay off my debts? With what? Honor’s inheritance had all been blown on the house and the children’s education. As a senator, Jack earned $140,000 a year, a fraction of what he used to make as an attorney, and an even smaller fraction of what he now owed – in some cases, to some deeply unsavory characters.

      There was no way around it. He would have to tap his brother-in-law. It would be embarrassing, sure. But once he explained the situation, Lenny would help him out. Lenny’s a long-term thinker. When they make me president, I’ll pay him back a thousandfold. He knows that.

      It turned out Lenny Brookstein did not know it. Instead of writing a check, he’d given Jack a lecture.

      ‘I’m sorry for you, Jack, truly I am. But I can’t help. My father was a gambler. Put my poor mother through hell. If it hadn’t been for the enablers, the friends who bailed him out time after time, the nightmare might have ended a lot sooner. As it was, he lost the money that could have paid for Ma’s medical treatment.’

      Jack tried to keep his cool. ‘With all due respect, Lenny, I don’t think I have much in common with your father. I’m a United States senator. I’m good for this money, you know that. It’s just a small cash-flow problem.’

      Lenny smiled amiably. ‘In which case I’m sure you’ll solve it on your own. Now, was there anything else?’

      Patronizing bastard! It wasn’t just a refusal. It was a dismissal. Jack Warner would not forget the slight as long as he lived. His first thought last night had been to tell Lenny Brookstein to stick his invitation to Nantucket where the ‘moon don’t shine.’ But on reflection, perhaps that was a mistake. The truth was, he was still in urgent need of a significant injection of cash. Honor and Grace were close. Maybe if Honor worked on her little sister, Grace could make her besotted husband see sense? Of course, such a policy would mean Jack coming clean to Honor about his gambling debts. Not an appealing prospect. But at the end of the day, what was she going to do? Leave me? I don’t think so.

      Turning to Ilse, he said, ‘We’ll leave for Nantucket first thing Monday morning. Please make sure the girls are packed and ready.’

      Bobby shot her au pair a look of purest triumph. ‘See. I told you we were going.’

      ‘Yes, sir. Is there anything…special…you’d like me to pack?’

      Ilse gave him a lascivious wink. Her meaning could not have been clearer.

      Neither could Jack’s.

      ‘No. You won’t be coming with us. As of Monday, you’re fired.’

      Grabbing the Alka-Seltzer from the kitchen cupboard, he went back upstairs to bed.

       Chapter Four

      Connie Gray stood in the playground, watching her sons on the monkey bars.

       Look at them. So innocent. They have no idea their world is crumbling around them.

      Cade was six and the spitting image of his father, Michael. Dark-haired and olive-skinned, he had the same open, happy, guileless face as Mike. Cooper had more of Connie in him. His coloring was fairer, his features more feminine. And he was altogether a more complex child. Sensitive. Anxious. Both the boys were highly intelligent. With parents like Connie and Michael, how could they not be? But four-year-old Cooper was the deeper thinker.

       I wonder what he’d think if he knew what his mommy has been up to? Perhaps one day, when he’s older, he’ll understand? How desperate times called for desperate measures?

      The eldest of the Knowles sisters, Connie had been a straight-A student since first grade. Her mother’s pride and joy, Connie had had to make do with her father’s respect and affection. Cooper Knowles’s heart was already spoken for. It belonged to his youngest daughter, Grace.

      Like Honor, Connie recognized early on that the baby of the family was ‘special,’ a uniquely compelling, lovely child. Unlike Honor, however, Connie had no intention of taking a backseat to little Grace, or of giving up the limelight. She played her role as the brains of the family brilliantly, graduating top of her class in high school and getting accepted into all the premier Ivy League colleges. Though she feigned a lack of interest in beauty and fashion, Connie knew she was attractive, albeit in a strong-featured, masculine sort of way. She did all she could to maintain her flawless alabaster complexion and the trim, long-legged figure that men so admired. She might not be able to compete with Grace in terms of looks, but at eight years older, she didn’t have to.

       By the time Grace is old enough to come out in society, I’ll be happily married. She’ll be Honor’s problem then.

      And of course, she was. Like all the Knowles sisters, Connie married for love. Michael Gray was a knockout in those days. He was still pretty gorgeous, but back then he still had his football player’s physique, as well as the chiseled, Armani-model features that made all the secretaries at Lehman Brothers swoon.

      Connie kept working as a lawyer until Cade was born. After that, there didn’t seem much point. Michael was a partner at Lehman, earning millions of dollars a year in bonuses. Of course, most of that came in the form of stock options. But back then, who cared about that? Bank stocks were only moving one way – up. If the Grays spent multiples of Mike’s basic salary every year, they were only doing what everybody else was doing. If you wanted something expensive, like a Hamptons beach house or a Bentley or a $100,000 necklace for your wife on her anniversary, you borrowed against your stock. It was a simple, tax-efficient system and one that no one questioned.

      Then Bear Stearns collapsed.

      In hindsight, the failure of that venerable old New York institution in March 2008 was the beginning of the end for Michael and Connie Gray, and for thousands like them. But of course, hindsight is 20/20. At the time, Connie remembered, it still felt as if something seismic and awful and unimaginable was happening to someone else. Those were the best kind of tragedies. The kinds that were close enough to give you a frisson of terror and excitement, without actually affecting your life.

      It was nine months now since the awful September day when Connie’s own world had collapsed. She still woke up some mornings feeling happy and content for a few blissful seconds…until she remembered.

      Lehman Brothers went bankrupt on September 16, 2008. Overnight, the Grays saw their net worth drop from somewhere around $20 million to about $1 million – the equity in their heavily mortgaged New York town house. Then the housing market dropped through the floor, and that million dollars fell to $500,000. By Christmas they’d sold everything but Connie’s jewelry and pulled the kids out of school. But the real problem was not so much the financial catastrophe itself, but Connie and Michael’s polar opposite responses to their predicament.

      Michael Gray was a good man. A trouper. And you couldn’t keep a good man down. ‘Just think how many millions of people are worse off than we are,’ he would tell Connie constantly. ‘We’re lucky. We have each other, two terrific little boys, good friends, and some savings. Plus we’re both young enough to get out there and start earning again.’