‘Hey, sexy,’ he drawls.

‘There’s a parking attendant walking toward us with a very determined expression on his face,’ I say as nonchalantly as I can.

He replies by opening the passenger door with a flourish. I walk toward him with a smile.

He grabs my arm. ‘You’re one incredibly beautiful woman, you know,’ he says.

The compliment goes straight to my head and makes my skin burn. I have to pretend to look down at my shoes to hide my flustered face. He lets go of my arm and I slip into the seat. I turn my head to watch his fine ass go around the back of the car. He gets into the driver’s seat and closes the door.

‘Thanks for the dress. It’s beautiful,’ I say quickly, ‘but I can’t accept it. It’s too expensive.’

He frowns down at me. ‘It’s just a replacement. I ripped your skirt yesterday.’

‘Well, it’s too expensive.’

‘Well, I was very sorry,’ he says with a glint in his eyes.

‘It could be deemed a bribe.’

‘Let me tell you how tonight and every night that we spend together is going to go down. We are never discussing my tax situation, or my finances, or any of that shit we talked about last night. You want that kind of information, you’ll have to talk to Nigel. We are just going to eat, talk, fuck and have fun.’

‘Rob and I have an appointment to see your accountant next week,’ I inform him quickly. ‘I’m saying this up front so there’s no misunderstanding about the investigation. We are going ahead with it.’

‘Good,’ he says casually.

‘You don’t sound worried.’

‘That’s probably because I’m not.’

I look at him curiously. ‘Why not? Most people in your shoes would be.’

‘Why should I be? I haven’t done anything wrong, and Nigel will finally get to do what he’s paid a shitload to do.’

‘Look, we won’t ever talk about your tax situation again, but I have to warn you that you really pissed Rob off the other day when you refused to shake his hand. He took it as a personal insult, and I think he’s going for maximum damage.’

A soft look comes into his eyes. ‘Thank you for the warning. It means something to me.’ Then he grins. ‘But it’s totally unnecessary. I meant to piss that asshole off. He’s like a little bully on a power trip. In school he would have been one of those boys who joined a gang to terrorize all those smaller and weaker than them.’

It’s startling how you can spend weeks and months with someone and be totally blind to their true personality. In one sentence Dom has described Rob’s entire MO. Something I’d shut my mind to because I truly believed we were doing it for the greater good. But now I’m not so sure anymore.

Are Rob and I bullies? We threaten ordinary, hardworking people who’ve salted away something for their old age, so they don’t have to depend on their children to buy them the necessaries the way my poor parents do, with prison sentences and force them to pay up. When possible, we even go into their bank accounts and help ourselves to their hard-earned money. We do it all because we can. And yet the multinationals, the super rich, the old money families who already have everything tied up in untouchable trust funds, we allow to get away with paying laughable amounts of tax or no tax at all.

Yeah. I guess the hard truth is, we are shameless bullies.

The idea disturbs me greatly, but I don’t share my thoughts with Dom. Instead, I shrug slightly and say, ‘Just ask Nigel to be careful. Rob can be really vindictive.’

‘You know those hotshot accountants the multinationals use?’

My ears prick up. ‘Yeah …’

‘We stole Nigel from them. Let Rob pit himself against Nigel. It’ll be interesting to see if my accountant is actually worth his huge salary.’

I don’t get to answer him because the parking attendant is standing outside the car next to me. To my surprise, he doesn’t berate Dom the way he does other drivers with lesser cars. Instead, he asks in a totally awed voice, ‘How fast can this beauty go?’

‘I never took her over a hundred and fifty mph,’ Dom says.

The man shakes his head admiringly and lets his eyes caress the smooth lines of the car. ‘She’s a beauty, man. I’d exchange my wife for a car like this.’

Dom laughs, kisses the pad of his thumb, and guns the car. The attendant watches us take off with a wistful expression.

‘Where are we going?’ I scream over the noise.

‘My place,’ he says.

We park in an underground car park beneath a posh building in Chelsea and get into a lift smelling of disinfectant. Both of us face the gleaming doors as we’re silently and quickly whisked up to the top floor. His apartment is one of two on the top floor. As soon as he opens the front door, I say, ‘Wow!’ Most of the walls are made of glass and the view is breathtaking.

‘Oh my God! You can see across the river for miles out.’

He chucks his keys onto a metal container shaped like a leaf on the sideboard while I look around in amazement. The way homes in designer magazines look. Spotless, not a scratch or mark anywhere, fabulous furniture, everything color-coordinated with one or two bold splashes here and there, the floors shining with polish, and a bowl of fruit on a statement coffee table.

‘Does anyone actually live here?’

He looks at me strangely. ‘I live here.’

‘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.