The Truth About Julia: A Chillingly Timely Psychological Novel (16 page)

He presented himself as part magician, part businessman and part prophet, as a self-made rags-to-riches man who could make everyone’s wildest financial dreams come true. He promised nothing less than the democratization of investment banking: Temple would be the people’s broker, their spiritual guide in the world of glitzy deals and lucrative trades (if only you would trust him with your money). As of now, his message went, the highly profitable world of hedge funds, bonds and portfolios was no longer the exclusive territory of the privileged few who were trained to trade – no, you, too, the viewer, could partake in this bonanza! If enough people participated, he, Adrian Temple, would create a super-national portfolio and turn everyone into a millionaire.

He seemed to be the ultimate clichéd representative of the much-maligned banker figure (he even wore shrill ties with knots as thick as fists, and slicked his hair back with so much gel that he looked like a wet rat). He was a poor man’s version of Gordon Gekko, but without the charisma and the wit. I thought this guy couldn’t be for real. But he was, and unfortunately not everybody was as appalled by his persona as I was. His scheme instantly proved to be a massive success.
Can you see nothing?
I wanted to shout.
Do you understand nothing?
Can you not see that this man is a Mephistophelian Pied Piper of the first order, just another poisonous spawn of the Charles Ponzi, Nick Leeson and Jordan Belfort tribe?

But I, like everybody else, underestimated him. As I later found out, everything about his campaign was meticulously calculated. He had created the persona he embodied in these ads (in real life, he wore his hair slightly ruffled, floppy and entirely gel-free); he knew which keywords to drop in and when; he knew when to look into the camera and when to look away; he knew exactly who his target group was, and how to manipulate it. He had designed his campaign scrupulously, with the best market researchers and smartest advertising psychologists available. He wasn’t an idiot at all. And, as I would find out, although he knew that his investors would sooner or later lose all their money, the whole thing was also legally watertight.

Yet the number of people who fell for this ‘dream’ scheme and who were prepared to hand over their savings probably surprised even him. It rose further when, in the first year, Temple’s ‘super-portfolio’ yielded a modest profit to its investors. But then, of course, things started to go wrong. A first loss here, another one there; a badly judged trade here and a crazy gamble there; a junk bond that dragged others down and a dead-cert insider trade that went belly up; problems in the Eurozone; a minor disturbance on the Asian markets; and puff – it all melted into air. After only eighteen months, Adrian Temple had gambled away the entire £15 billion that had been put into his care by the hopeful and the destitute. Just like that. His own fortune, however, amassed through a flat-rate trading fee of 5 per cent, which he conscientiously deducted from every payment into the
SmartInvestmentVenture
fund, was safely stowed away in his personal offshore account. It turned out that he never invested a single penny of his own money in his so-called ‘super-portfolio’. He knew all too well how risky it all was.

My favourite part is still that he never even apologized to the people whom he defrauded. ‘Shit happens,’ he said in a now notorious interview, in which he came across as so callously unrepentant that his attitude shocked even Jeremy Paxman. ‘Trading is a high-risk enterprise – sometimes it goes well, and sometimes it doesn’t.
C’est la vie
. The people who are moaning now should have read the small print.’

There were many out there who were keen to get him after that. The basic architecture of his scheme as such wasn’t illegal, but various lawyers and activists and I were hoping to find other, smaller, procedural errors on which to build a case against him. Anything, really. What I did uncover during my research – that everything was meticulously planned from start to finish, and that Temple never expected his super-portfolio to last for more than twelve months, and was only ever interested in his commission – did of course surpass all expectations. And everybody knew it was the truth. And yet, as I learned the painful way, even intentionally gambling away the money entrusted to him appears not to have been illegal. And now he would receive an award for outstanding achievements in the finance sector. It just beggared belief. What would be next? A knighthood? Thank God, not too much later, the doorbell rang and Amanda arrived. I could see the relief in her eyes when I opened the door. She was out of breath and must have feared the worst. She hugged me so hard that I thought she would break my back, and then, probably repelled by the smell of the not inconsiderable amount of whisky I had consumed in the meantime, she took my chin in her hands to look me in the eye. It was only at that point that I noticed I had difficulty keeping my balance.

‘You’re drunk,’ Amanda said. And then she added, much more gently: ‘Have you taken anything?’

I hadn’t. Amanda guided me to the kitchen table and made some coffee. And then – and I still feel bad about it – I subjected my poor, patient sister to a rant of epic proportions, an angry, slurred diatribe, until, in the early hours, when I had run out of steam, she gently guided me to my bed, helped me out of my clothes and tucked me in.

XI

All of a sudden I found myself in a dark place again. I really believed I had come to terms with my defeat. But I simply wasn’t prepared for this blow. After all the slow and difficult healing, just when I felt I’d reconnected with my old writing self, the plaster that I’d mistaken for new skin had been brutally ripped off, exposing a wound that was still as raw as when it was inflicted. The small, narrow row of too-neat and too-white teeth exposed by Adrian Temple’s victory grin in court once again haunted my dreams.

In the days following the announcement, I slept badly and drank too much. Amanda came round to check on me every evening, and every evening I repeated my frenzied ranting. I think she seriously feared I might snap, this time. I couldn’t stop talking about the cynical sickness of it all. But after a week or so, I calmed down a little. I had to. I had work to do, a deadline to meet, a promise to keep. I could see Amanda was beginning to lose patience with my seething sermons, and she implored me not to let Temple destroy my career a second time. Some of the other things she kept saying to me must have helped, too. In crises, Amanda’s instincts really are amazing.

I also thought of you, George, and that I simply couldn’t let you down. When you called me right after you heard the news, we both knew that I was lying when I told you I was fine. You listened patiently to my performance, and you didn’t interrupt my monologue on the degeneracy and shameless cynicism of our apolitical age and its perversely twisted values, where vulnerable so-called benefit ‘scroungers’ attract unprecedented degrees of hostility and stigmatization, but tax-dodging multimillionaires and fraudulent investors do not just walk free but are applauded. And so on. I continued in that vein. I made some tired jokes, at which you laughed politely. But after a while you gently interrupted me and said, ‘Call me any time you need me, Clare. I mean it. And next time, let me know how you really are.’ It was only after you’d hung up that I started to cry, no longer able to control my overwhelming sense of impotence and self-pity. But I kept up the pretence, even the next time you called. I didn’t want you to see me so weak. Although, had you not been there in court when the verdict was read out, right behind me in the gallery (even Lailah had left her bedroom that day to support me), and had your gaze not held mine when I turned around to look at you, who knows what I would have done.

Optimistic as always, Amanda had booked a table in our favourite restaurant in Mayfair that day – our parents used to take us there whenever one of us had something to celebrate. Like everyone else she thought we would be raising our glasses to toast victory that evening. Instead, the meal was the most sombre of affairs. I think we were all shell-shocked, and nothing could lessen the horror of the catastrophic facts with which I found myself confronted. I had no idea where to find the £150,000 I had been ordered to pay Temple in damages. In addition, I’d been sentenced to pay a proportion of the court costs, which my lawyer estimated would amount to another £150,000. In total I owed £318,894.32.

That night, Amanda suggested we sell our parents’ cottage, which I refused to do. The two of us had decided to pass it on to Laura a long time ago, and there was no way I would allow my mistakes to eat into my niece’s inheritance. It was so kind of you to offer me £50,000 from your daughter’s education fund – your generosity made me cry, but I obviously couldn’t accept that sum, either. Even Lailah offered to ask one of her wealthy relatives for an interest-free loan. It was a truly noble gesture on her part, considering she knew what had happened between us, both before and after your marriage. But that evening, I wasn’t in a position to appreciate these demonstrations of kindness. It wasn’t so much the prospect of financial misery that depressed me most. It was that my belief in institutional justice had been injured, possibly destroyed for ever. Until that day, I’d been a passionate believer in the theoretical and practical fairness of our legal system. I used to believe in the power of the word, and in the power of the truth: my work, my books, my journalism – I used to think of all of these things as forms of political engagement that could change the world for the better. But after the verdict, I was no longer so sure.

What is more – and I haven’t told this to anyone yet, George, not even to Laura – I had a run-in with Temple following the pronouncement of the verdict. After the judge dismissed us, we must both independently have headed to the loos to prepare ourselves to face the media who were waiting outside the Old Bailey. When I left the ladies’, Temple came out of the gents’.

‘Clare,’ he said and grinned. ‘Trying to repair your tear-smudged make-up before your long walk of shame?’

‘You wish,’ I said. ‘People like you don’t make me cry, they just make me angry. And sick.’

‘Of course. You’re not the crying kind, are you?’ And then Temple shoved me against the wall and whispered in my ear: ‘Frigid, bitter old bitches like you – you’re dead inside, too dried up even for tears. I bet you live alone, don’t you, Clare? Single and childless? Tell me I’m wrong. I bet your cunt is just as dry and cold and bitter as your prose. I’m right, aren’t I? I mean, where’s all that venom coming from, if not from sexual frustration?’ And then he laughed. ‘You pathetic old cow. Did you really think you could mess with
me
?’

I moved away from him. I could feel the impact of his words reverberating through my body; I could feel myself blushing against my will. I tried to steady my voice before I responded, but I fear it sounded squeaky when I said: ‘My private life is none of your business, Temple. And I’d also ask you to go and share your highly original thoughts on the private parts of older women with the media outside, if you dare.’

I got drunk that night, very drunk. You all just continued to fill my glass. It was the kindest thing you could do. The only thing you could do, really. I remember trying to articulate my despair at some point.

‘Why work, why write, why care? What use are any of the things we do? What’s left, now?’ I slurred.

You all chipped in with answers.

‘Relationships,’ Amanda said. ‘Meaningful interpersonal relationships. That’s all there is. And that’s all there ever was in any case. Working on your own happiness and the happiness of those you can reach around you. Move from the macro to the micro level, Clare. It’s the only one over which you can have any control. Don’t try to change the world. Focus on the small things. Everything else is an illusion.’

‘Pleasure and passion,’ Laura said. ‘And
fun
. Why’s that concept so taboo these days, almost as though it’s a dirty word or something? As long as you enjoy what you do, and it gives you pleasure and purpose, go for it. Have more humble aims – do what you love, and do it as well as you can. This desire for exceptionality, fame, impact – I think that’s just immodest. I know I’ll never be Nigella Lawson, or Jamie Oliver, or Michel Roux, but I don’t care. I adore what I do, and I aim to do it to the very best of my ability. I can put a smile on people’s faces when they eat my food, and you know what? That’s enough for me. Joyful moments, as many of them as possible, is all we can hope for.’

‘Faith.’ That was Lailah’s short, sharp answer, on which she didn’t elaborate. She didn’t have to. We all knew she’d lost hers (and not just theologically speaking), and that she mourned for it as one mourns for a dead child.

‘Thought.’ That was yours. ‘Art. Literature. Truth. Beauty. They don’t have to serve a purpose, or cause a revolution, or impact on our socio-economic environment in any measurable way. They have every reason to exist in their own right. They can reach people’s hearts and souls. They’re what gives our lives meaning and makes us feel less frightened and alone. They allow us to step into another’s shoes, and open up worlds that would otherwise remain for ever hidden. That’s enough.’

‘But,’ I began, ‘but... ’ I was too drunk to finish my sentence, and I poured the final drops of wine into my glass instead. What I’d wanted to say was that all these solutions struck me as profoundly apolitical and ultimately as defeatist. This unambitious retreat into the pursuit of personal pleasure and insight, it really jarred with me. I’d always wanted so much more than that.

Ultimately, Temple’s legal team was quite simply cleverer than mine. Nobody queried the accuracy of the facts pertaining to his business practices as I had presented them in my book. Nobody questioned the gross immorality of his financial transactions and the callously premeditated greed that drove them. The judge even admitted that Temple’s ‘utterly shameless’ scheme constituted an ‘abuse of trust on an unprecedented scale’ and had wreaked ‘incalculable devastation’ on his victims. But unfortunately nothing he had done was technically illegal.