Billie draws a deep breath.  ‘What does he imagine I am doing for the other four days?’

‘Spending the night at your girlfriend’s place.’

‘Jesus, I’m a shit mother, aren’t I?’

‘Do you mind terribly?’

‘I don’t give a monkey’s what he thinks of me, but are you OK with being apart from Sorab three days a week?’

My little heart is breaking at the thought but I put on a brave face.  ‘Well, it is only for 42 days and I was thinking that three weeks of that time I could say you are on holiday and Sorab is too young to go with you.’

‘And you think he’ll believe that?’

‘Quite frankly, I don’t think he cares enough to ponder the matter too deeply.’

‘I don’t want to take the philosophical upper hand here, but if it’ll all be over in 42 days, isn’t this all a bit…unnecessary?’

I trace my fingernail along the wood grain of our kitchen table.  We bought it in a charity shop for twenty pounds.  It has two cigarette burn marks on the surface, but I rather like it.  It has character, a story to tell.

‘I know you think I am being foolish, but have you never had someone touch you and you go up in flames?  Or that odd sensation as if your bones are melting and your ears ring like bells in your head?’

‘No,’ she says flatly. ‘And judging from what it has reduced you to… No thanks.  I enjoy my self-control.  My ability to say no and walk away from a situation that screams danger or abuse ahead.’

‘Don’t you miss Leticia, Billie?’

‘Yes, I do, but…  ’She looks at me meaningfully…  ‘Unlike you I have never had to crawl around the floor with missing her.’

I lower my eyes.  Once many months ago when I first left the country I was reduced to crawling on the floor, but that intense pain passed.  His reappearance, though, has awakened new realms of need and craving.

‘I can say no, but I still miss him, Bill.  I miss him like crazy.  Even if there is no hope, I still want whatever I can have.  I want him on any terms.  I actually find it impossible to resist him.’

She sighs elaborately.  ‘OK, it is your life.  When does this charade start then?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘I guess we won’t need a babysitter for Friday night, will we?’

I make an apologetic face.  ‘Sorry.  Can you babysit tomorrow?’

‘While you bang Banker Boy?  Sure, why not.  I hope that kid remembers what I have done for him when he grows up.’

I smile gratefully.

She fills two glasses with vodka and pushes one towards me.  ‘Here’s to Sorab.’  I don’t want a drink.  I am all churned up, but we clink and down.  The alcohol burns the back of my throat.  This is no celebration.  Not for me and not for Billie.  When our eyes meet again, hers are unsmiling; they warn me I am making a dreadful mistake.

Five

By nine o’clock the next morning, Sorab is fed and bathed and I am nervously checking my mobile to see if the battery is low, but it is fully charged and the reception is good.  Blake’s secretary’s brisk, efficient voice comes through at 9:05.

‘Good morning, Miss Bloom.’

‘Hi, Mrs. Arnold.’

‘Is this a good time to talk?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good,’ she says briskly, and then falters for a second. ‘I…uh… How have you been?’

‘Fine, thank you.’

‘That’s good.  Are you still on contraceptives?’

‘No.’

‘Oh!’ It is clear she cannot understand why I have come off them.

Again the lies trip off my tongue so easily they surprise me.  ‘I have been in Iran.  There was no need for them.  Besides they are difficult to buy over there.’

‘I will schedule an appointment with the nurse for a repeat prescription.’

‘OK.’

‘Next you will meet with the lawyer and then Fleur will take you shopping, and afterwards you have an appointment with the hairdresser, followed by appointments at the nail and wax bar.’

Suddenly I am swamped with a sense of déjà vu.  I’ve done this before.  Definitely.  First time I was naïve.  Stupid. That first kiss, it had blown me away, but now I know… I am the ‘unnecessary, unwanted thirst’.  The man who thirsts for me also despises me.

But then I thought it was all a fantastic adventure.  A romantic dream.  How I had jumped in with both feet.  All I knew about him and his family was what Bill had read out to me from the Internet.  Now I have done my research, sitting alone and pregnant by a window in Iran and I know a lot, a lot more about the great Barrington clan.

I know for example that there are no fewer than a hundred and fifty-three species or subspecies of insect which bear the name Barrington, fifty-eight birds, eighteen mammals and fourteen plants including a rare slipper orchid, three fish, two spiders and two reptiles.  Numerous streets around the world and dishes have been named after them too.  The only dish I still remember is the one with prawns, cognac, and Gruyère on toast.

They are the twenty-first-century Medicis, offering patronage to artists, writers, and architects.  I learned about the houses they have donated to the people and the staggering amounts of money they have expanded into beneficiaries ranging from universities, hospitals, pubic libraries, charities, non profit institutions and archaeological digs.  But Blake had already explained how the very rich play the philanthropic game to me.  Steal from millions over a long period and give a small portion back as a taxable gift.

Over the weeks I came to realize that Blake’s words were true.  If you see it in Wikipedia or a mainstream news outlet then we have planted it.  That everything I read and saw about the Barrington family and history was part of a picture, a false picture.  They wanted the world to believe the bogus biographies that they themselves had commissioned, all of which declared their family as a once great dynasty that had since lost most of its wealth and influence.  It was the picture of a benign, powerless house that jealously guarded its privacy.

Then I came across a Youtube video of Blake’s father.  There he was not the cold-eyed man who wanted to arbitrarily dismiss me to the toilet so he could talk to his son.  Dressed in an expensive cashmere coat and metal rimmed glasses he worried about the world economy in a mild mannered way.  His opinion: more austerity measures should be implemented worldwide before any recovery could be achieved.  His silver hair made him look like someone’s grandfather, but as I watched him I felt a cold shiver go up my spine.

At his transformation.

At the benevolent role he had so easily and effectively slipped into.  If I had not seen the frosty arrogance with which, the blue stones had snubbed me I would never have believed these two men were the same person, but it gives chilling credence to Blake’s warning that nothing in his world is as it seems to those in mine.  That was when I began to search through the conspiracy sites.  And they were rife with ‘information’.

The Barringtons were blamed for everything from secretly starting the American Civil War in order to capture the monetary system, precipitating the American bank panic of 1907, to duping Congress into approving The Fed in 1913, to funding the Bolsheviks and Hitler.  They were even accused of having a hand in the assassination of Kennedy.  I gave up after a while.

There was one thing they got right, though.

They refused to believe the fairy tale that the Barringtons were a declining dynasty, whose members could not even make the Forbes rich list.  As far as they were concerned the Barringtons were one of thirteen old families.  Through complicated structures of off-shores companies they owned all the debt of all the countries.  They were trillionaires and the true rulers behind governments and world organizations.  To be a Barrington is to be a modern Croesus, a twentieth-century Midas.