The Piper

By David Boyle

A novel of love and money, adolescence and loss - a Pied Piper story for today - with all the excitement of growing up amidst a run on the bank. Clone Town Britain meets It's a Wonderful Life, with flashbacks to the London Blitz and the development of powered flight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781682229149

David Boyle

David Boyle is a Lecturer in the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial College London. He has more than 14 years experience developing IoT technologies across academia and industry. His research interests lie at the intersection of complex sensing, actuation, and control systems (Cyber-Physical Systems), IoT and sensor network applications, data analytics, and digital economy. David was awarded his PhD in Electronic and Computer Engineering from the University of imerick, Ireland, in 2009, following his B.Eng. (Hons) in Computer Engineering in 2005. His work has been recognized and awarded internationally and published in leading technical journals, including the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics (TIE) and Informatics (TII). He actively participates in a number of Technical Programs and Organizing Committees for the premier conferences in the field. Before joining the Dyson School of Design Engineering in 2018, David was a Research Fellow in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College London since 2012. Previously, he worked with theWireless Sensor Network and icroelectronics Applications Integration Groups in the Microsystems Centre at Tyndall National Institute, and the Embedded Systems Research Group, University College Cork, Ireland. Prior to this, he was with France Telecom R&D Orange Labs, France, and a Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar at the Higher Technical School of Telecommunications Engineering, Technical University of Madrid (ETSIT UPM), Spain

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I

1

Cattlebridge, Hampshire, July 1990

They held an emergency meeting on Tuesday evening. The whole town was expected, though in retrospect nobody was quite sure why. Who goes out on a balmy evening to hear the mayor speak, after all? Who is so committed to local politics that they cut short their supper or their drinking time to listen to local politicians? It takes a real crisis to do that.

And when the time came, it wasn’t so balmy either. A dark cloud loomed above Dragon Hill an hour or so before, casting the town in a strange twilight that felt more like the eruption of a volcano than an English market town on a summer evening. The great poplar trees began to shake and whisper, and a breeze scampered down the high street, scattering the old lettuce leaves and dust on the road. The larks fled and, for a brief moment, the ancient mortar that held the elderly houses together began to shiver a little as nature re-asserted itself on the Hampshire downs.

Chris Dare watched from his bedroom window, with his model Spitfires shaking slightly as the wind took advantage of a gap in the frame. He weighed up in his mind whether or not to go to the meeting. He knew it would be deeply dull, and probably wet. But he knew also that something was happening to the town of Cattlebridge, and his father seemed to be responsible both for the catastrophe and for coming up with any solution. He also hated to be kept in the dark. It would not normally have crossed his mind to go, but his mother had asked him if he wanted to come.

Similar considerations were being weighed up in the minds of people all over the town. Reg Whistler from the garage peered out at the lowering sky and banged his barometer. You could almost hear it slap down on the stone floor. Mrs. Butcher slammed the shutters closed in the high street – Chris had always wondered vaguely if the butcher’s shop she ran had been named after her, or vice versa. Mr. Collins fingered his dried flowers, and hoped beyond hope that he wouldn’t have to go out. He would, of course. He had been town clerk for nearly three decades, and wanted to remain so.

Then came the rain, hissing on the conservatory roofs like an Indian monsoon. Steam from the heat of the day rose on the terrace of the Dragon Arms. Those who remembered that there was an emergency meeting – and there were precious few of them – glanced at the Radio Times and decided to watch Catherine Zeta-Jones in ‘The Darling Buds of May’ instead. Those, very much fewer, who decided they would go nonetheless – through a sense of duty or the chance of a good public scrap – reached for their anoraks and umbrellas, stepped out of their front doors, and felt the water pummelling above their heads. All over Cattlebridge, from the manicured lawns of the high street to the piles of ice cream wrappers and old cans of lemonade by the bus stop next to the town boundary, the worms poked their heads above the earth for a drenching.

Chris was not an enthusiast for local government – very few fourteen-year-olds are – and he was also at an age where enthusiasms of any kind are personal and need to be kept private from one’s parents. Even intentions.You don’t want to go to the meeting, do you darling? said his mother.I’ll see you back in an hour or so. Why don’t you do some of that holiday work you’ve been set and get it out of the way?

Only once she was safely out of the house did he creep downstairs, feeling a little disobedient, reach for his anorak and step out into the downpour. He carried with him a penknife and a book called Aircraft Camouflage of the Second World War, in case he got bored. Then he slipped in through the back where the kitchen door to the Cattlebridge town hall opens onto the rubbish bins in the car park, with a strong smell of old beer and cabbage. He ignored the small queue that was pompously standing at the chipped, green painted front doors. He could have gone in the front like everyone else, except of course, that he would then have had to sit with his mother – an unendurable indignity. There was no actual bar on fourteen-year-olds, though you would have seen strong disapproval on the face of the town clerk for anybody there under the age of 55. But when your father is the mayor, even in a small town as backward as Cattlebridge – so backward that they still had a local sweet shop – you attract more notice than is entirely comfortable.

So from the relative safety of the beige walls of the kitchen passage – they had once been white – and the photographs of the cast of She Stoops to Conquer, the Cattlebridge town play 1924 and the winning cricket team of 1935, he listened to the squeaking chairs of the few elderly busybodies and their sulky husbands easing themselves into place in the auditorium like the docking of the QE2.

Why did he want to come anyway? He had been to meetings at the town hall before and to say they were boring was a terrifying understatement. They were like listening to the Financial World Tonight while being strapped down and forced to endure a period of double French. At least that’s how he would have described the last meeting. But there was something about the events of the past few days that had attracted his attention. It isn’t every day that a town’s financial resources disappear into thin air overnight. It hardly seemed possible. Somebody must have done something, and Chris was intrigued. He felt poised at that moment when strange footsteps were heard on the stairs of 221b Baker Street, and Mrs. Hudson came in with the tea things.

Chris noticed there was something strange about his father since hearing the news, which both fascinated and unnerved him. Some heightened energy, some homeopathic dose of the frenetic, something you could not quite pin down. Their home, down a drive off the high street just outside the town, was enlivened by a subtle nervousness. He noticed his father was scratching. He knew he was supposed to have eczema, in theory. I’m bloody well retired, his father said before leaving the house for the meeting, itching his forearm. I can do without this.

Whatever this strangeness was, Chris noticed but barely acknowledged it. Yet there he was at the meeting. He didn’t really want his father to know he was interested, let alone concerned. He certainly didn’t want the embarrassment of anyone thinking he was trying to be supportive. So he lurked in the back passage, leaning against a keg of beer, tapping out ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ – which summed up his dilemma – and watching the condensation running down the municipal window panes like the saliva of a great nervous bear that had suddenly appeared in their lives.

But you don’t have sugar in your coffee, Chris’s mother had said pleadingly to her husband a few days before.

I just did, he snapped. It was unlike him. He snapped often enough, but Chris could see that his mother was unnerved by watching his father heap three teaspoonfuls of sugar into his mug. Looking back on this many years later, Chris would feel sure that his father’s decline had begun, not with the disappearance of the money, but with something that happened even before that.

The sugar incident had taken place before Mr. Collins had come round with the news. Whatever anybody said afterwards, that Chris’s father’s behaviour was caused by the arrival of Nick in the town, and everything that happened later – that was all nonsense. Later on, Chris would think back to the passage outside the auditorium, with its mop and bucket and long forgotten photographs, and remembered this: Nick Browning didn’t send his father mad; it was something else.

*

OK, can we make a start? Chris’s father was standing up behind the table at the front of the stage. He looked tired and was embarrassing to his son. Why did he have to wear a kilt, for goodness sake? It wasn’t as if he was Scottish. There were only about 20 people on the hundred or so uncomfortable wooden chairs – chairs which had done service in the local school for generations before being inflicted on Blitz refugees and American servicemen dancing in the hall. The buzz of voices died down.

At the back was Mrs. Rigby, the self-appointed reporter for a local newspaper called Cattlebridge Times. She was knitting, with a small ball of pink wool at her feet like a pet pig.

Come on Dan. What are we waiting for? That was Mr. Reliant, the grocer. Chris could see he was clearly expecting an evening’s entertainment and was guffawing with his friends. The mayor’s name was David Dare, but since he had grown up in the 1950s, he was always inevitably known as Dan. Don’t wait around too long or the Mekons will get you! someone in the crowd heckled. The audience that evening seemed to me more familiar than usual with the characters from Dan Dare and 1950s science fiction adventure. More guffaws. Chris looked anxiously towards his father.

There was Mrs. Rigby at the front with her checklist. She had her pen in her hand and was clearly expecting to tick points off. Her umbrella was making little rivulets of water on the parquet.

Thank you for venturing out on a night like this. Especially when Zeta-Jones is on the telly, Mayor Dare said. Chris watched his father roll up his sleeve and scratch his arm. He thought he saw a flash of blood. But he wasn’t listening. Someone else in the room had distracted him and his father’s words echoed around his head undigested and unremembered.

So you see, his father was saying.This is an unprecedented crisis for the town. The particular way we organize things in Cattlebridge – the reason it is different from every other town in England, the reason I wanted to live here and the reason I wanted to be your mayor – all that must now be considered under threat. We have enough money to meet the immediate needs of the hall and to pay out various precepts to the local education authority, but beyond that…

On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, Mrs. Rigby had her pen poised, will you be offering your own resignation? There was an embarrassed silence.I felt it was right to ask, she continued.

Mr. Collins took off his glasses. There was a growling noise from the right. Of course he should resign, said Mr. Darling, the greengrocer. It’s only right, isn’t it. They’ve got to resign. David Mellor, whole damn lot of them.

I don’t think Mr. Dare is accused of sex on the Chelsea strip, said Mrs. Rigby. I just felt it was right to ask.

The mayor stayed silent. ‘Course he should go. Consequences of failure. Goo-on. Keeping us all waiting, said Mr. Darling.

Are there any other views on this subject? asked Dan. When a bank collapses unexpectedly, it is not usual to blame its customers. Mr. Darling raised his eyebrows just a little and turned away in his seat. Nonetheless, it was my responsibility that the town’s money was in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International when the Bank of England foreclosed. I accept that responsibility. But we are in the middle of a crisis, perhaps unprecedented in this town’s unique history. So I ask that you give me your trust for a little longer and judge me on how we emerge. With your help, we will get through. As you must understand, our way of life is on the line.

Watching from the back passage, Chris was impressed. His father even seemed to have gathered a little of the wartime spirit around him. Mr. Reliant leaned over to his next door neighbour, Mr. Darling, grocer to greengrocer. Next, he’ll be offering us bloody toil, tears and sweat.

Mr. Darling growled again. What yer mean? We’re still here ain’t we? Haven’t exactly called in their debts, have they?

The mayor replied. I’m glad you asked that question, Mr. Darling. We are still here, but let me remind you of the history of Cattlebridge. We are still a county borough. We’re the only town in the UK, apart from the City of London, still untouched by the Great Reform Act. We don’t have district councils and what have you. But we survive independently because the Corporation owns all the land. We earn large sums from that, and over the year we plough it into the town. We buy up food from the local farmers, we fund the Cattlebridge band, the theatre, this hall, the school trips. We keep the high street trading. That’s why we’ve still got small shops. Some might not like this timelessness; they can live in Basingstoke if they want to. But some of us would rather die than live anywhere else than here.

That’s right, Dan. You tell them! a voice rose from the crowd.

Thank you, Mr. Reliant. Whose side was the man on?The problem is that all that money we have set aside for the next year, and all our reserves, have now gone. We will earn more, but not yet. And in the meantime, everything we hold dear in Cattlebridge is under threat. So we’re going to have to be very clever if we’re not to succumb finally after a thousand years to the wiles of the Department for the Environment.

Mrs. Rigby wrote quickly, anticipating the outcome. A thundering vote of confidence was given to Cattlebridge’s mayor David Dare at an emergency meeting to discuss the BCCI crisis, she scribbled.

As she finished the sentence, the mayor called for a show of hands to give him support to find a temporary solution to the crisis and save the town from bankruptcy or a fate worse than death – incorporation into the British local government structure. Watching him shake Mr. Collins’ hand, with barely a hint of reluctance, Chris caught a glimpse of his father’s right forearm. It was scratched completely raw.

After the meeting was over Elizabeth Dare, Chris’s mother, in a yellow dress and wild blonde hair, walked up to the table below the stage as soon as the meeting was over, and whispered in his father’s ear. You should have been in politics.

"I am in politics now. Can you believe that, old trout? If I resign, this place is completely sunk."

Outside, the rain had stopped and some final fitful rays of sunshine were forcing their way through the clouds. There was a strong smell of damp grass. The birds were singing again. Chris stood there, unsure where to go next. He couldn’t join the men as they exchanged glances and headed for the Dragon Arms. He was hardly going to stay with the women as Mrs. Darling set out for the town hall kitchen, where the ancient urn was boiling water for tea, belching like James Watt’s first steam engine. He leaned against the old fence at the back of the car park and gazed across the water meadows with the sun on his face. Then he sneaked inside.

I should be helping with the tea, Elizabeth was saying. Chris’ stomach sagged a little at the thought of that greasy tin on the top shelf – with a picture of the 1937 coronation on it – with ancient iced biscuits in yellow, pink and dull brown.

God, let the others do it, said Dan.

An intense-looking woman with a dirty orange cardigan and round glasses approached them. Dan and Elizabeth, so good to see you, she said. Dan moved away slightly but it was too late.

Hello, Gabby. Thanks for turning out.

Chris knew that his father tried to avoid Gabby Charlton if he could. She had enthusiasms. Her money-raising enthusiasms he could deal with, but the campaign for compassion in farming – and the demonstration at Fox Farm – had been a serious embarrassment.

Hello, Chris. Now, Elizabeth, may I introduce you to someone? This is Gerald. Gabby indicated a sallow looking young man next to her. He is working for the Christian Institute for Defence Studies, and is working in Cattlebridge undercover. Very hush hush. Very important too, of course.

Chris watched the man give Elizabeth’s hand a slightly damp squeeze. Dan had gone. Defence studies? From a Christian point of view, you mean?

The defence of Christianity. He said it as if the concept was obvious. Against some of the forces striving to destroy it.

*

Chris escaped back out to the car park in what remained of the early evening. The tarmac had remembered the temperature before the downpour and was belatedly giving back the heat from the day. In the distance, he could see – when he looked up from the pictures of Spitfires in his book – a succession of black Labradors dashing across the meadow by the river. It was one of those evenings where people seemed to glide along in the distance without actually touching the ground. The kind where dreams begin to blur a little with reality.

Two by two, or sometimes in different groupings, he watched people leave from the town hall. Miss Timothy with her balls of wool; Mr. Reliant with a light in his eyes that looked like the Dragon Arms. He saw his mother deep in conversation with Gabby, who never seemed to say hello to him. Actually she never spoke to anyone except Elizabeth: when she phoned up, his father used to pretend to be someone else, On principle, he said.

Then there were two people he didn’t remember seeing before. Chris looked back at them with more attention. One of them was actually a girl about his own age, and she looked familiar. Something painful seemed to emanate from her. It was a feeling he had never experienced before: a poignant feeling of loss. There was something compelling about this girl, but he knew he would never grasp it, would probably never have the nerve to speak to her. It was a surge of elation and defeat all rolled into one and it made him feel like an outcast among men and a failure among women.

It was a shocking and yet somehow familiar experience, and he stood up to look more closely. She was dressed almost identically to her mother. She had long brown hair, carried a Walkman, and wore long striped socks and a red knitted hat. But there was something about her chin, just a little bit too pronounced, and something about her eyelashes, and the curve of her back. Yes, and the way she stepped forwards, as if she was ever so slightly over-balanced. What was it? Chris had no idea, but it sent a shaft of warm sunlight down to his groin.

For a second, the Labradors stopped barking and the traffic stopped rumbling through the town. Chris stared. There really was no contest. He would have to go home and wall himself up.

Then he wondered what on earth the girl had been doing at this meeting of old fogeys. Hadn’t she had anything better to do? In the distance, she brushed the hair out of her eyes like a queen. She had been to the meeting without fear of boredom, striding through like a grown-up alongside her mother, while he had skulked outside, reading goodness knows what kind of train spotter books, peering in through the door. Her very existence seemed to be an accusation, the living proof that he was not what he was meant to be.

*

Chris’s mother was stuck in a slightly disturbing conversation with the man from the Christian Institute.

Fascinating, she was saying, rather unconvincingly, Chris thought. Threats like what?

Pornography. Permissiveness. Satanism.

In this stage of the twentieth century?

Oh, Elizabeth, said Gabby with enthusiasm. You have no idea. And the threat to children at the moment. It’s very, very dangerous. You should be concerned yourself.

Elizabeth had known Gabby since they shared a flat in Notting Hill Gate in the early 1970s: Elizabeth had been working in a small design shop; Gabby had worked at Shelter. They had shared a whole generation of reading the Guardian together, of agonising about the energy crisis, reading The Female Eunuch, holding weekly women’s get-togethers, which still continued, even in conservative Cattlebridge. They had shared an approach to the world, even on one occasion shared boyfriends, though Gabby disapproved of the mayor as a speculator and had divorced her own husband through sheer frustration at his slide into alcoholism. In fact, she had come to live in Cattlebridge after the divorce to be near her oldest friend, and Cattlebridge was still reeling from the shock.

Still, there were enough like-minded women in the town at least to carry on meeting once a week, and – if Gabby’s colourful fashion sense had barely moved since 1973 – her political antennae were changing all the time. She had latched onto the child abuse issue in 1988, as soon as the first scandals erupted, but – for Elizabeth at least – the addition of religion seemed to add an unnecessary ingredient into the potent mix.

They walked together out into the pale evening sunshine, puddles still under their feet from the rain. Elizabeth looked up at Gabby’s new friend – at his combination of frayed collar and expensive suit – and found herself instinctively trying to avoid his shadow.

*

Looking back afterwards, it was his father’s eczema that loomed largest in Chris’s memory of the time, and gave him the first chill feeling that something was seriously wrong. He was sure he could remember noticing it three days before the public meeting, before the doorbell rang to admit Mr. Collins, the town clerk, on the fateful morning of the bank crash. He was sure – almost sure – he had seen his Dad scratching his arm the day before, even maybe the week before. But nobody listened when he said this. For them, and for Chris really, as well, it was Mr. Collins’ finger on the bell that changed everything.

It was breakfast time. He was late for school. Elizabeth was still upstairs, and Dan was in his dressing gown, a very rare occurrence on a weekday, fiddling with the coffee machine. Johnnie the dachshund was comatose in his basket. Dan reached up to the cereal and Chris suddenly saw a flash of red rawness on his arm.

What’s that on your arm, Dad? Chris asked.

It’s just a little bit of eczema, dammit, he said. For God’s sake, Chris, you’ve put back an empty box of Alpen again! What is the point of doing that? It’s difficult enough finding anything in this house without you pretending there’s cereal left when there isn’t!

I thought there was…

Well, you thought wrong, didn’t you, he said, banging the box of Alpen on the table, so that bits of old nuts and fruit fell out on the Formica. You know, when I was in Canada… But he never finished the sentence because the front door bell rang.

You answer the door, can you, Chris? His father sank into a chair at the breakfast table. When Chris opened the door, there in front of him was a figure that looked like an old crow. It was Mr. Collins, and he was jiggling up and down as if he was either very nervous or needed to go to the loo. Dan had often joked that Mr. Collins had no bodily functions, and the thought of this flashed into Chris’s mind. Mr. Collins must actually be nervous. He had never even attributed feelings to him before.

Ah, er, is your… um? said Mr. Collins, peering past Chris over his half-rimmed spectacles.

Come along in to the kitchen, Dan shouted. I’m afraid I’m not even dressed.

The early morning mist was still on the hill as Chris shut the door behind him. Mr. Collins handed him his raincoat without looking up, and Chris hung it dutifully under his father’s golfing cups and the photo of his Territorial Army camp from twenty years before. Mr. Collins had barely got into the hall before he started talking. Er, mayor, I fear I must report what can only be described…

I’ve told you before, please don’t call me ‘mayor’. Certainly not at this hour in the morning. Mr. Collins held his umbrella in his hands – though it hadn’t rained all week – and was wringing it as though it was wet.

Come in here, Monkton. Chris, can you make some tea for Mr. Collins, before you go to school?

You see, I fear we have made a – um – grave error about the disposition of the money, said Mr. Collins, who unravelled into a chair.

The Cattlebridge money? The No. 1 account?

I fear so. You see there has been what I might call a calamitous event in the City of London last night. I had carried out your instructions as you know, but happened to notice that there was a precedent for local authorities to place funds overnight at a still higher rate of interest. Chris glanced at his father and saw that his face had gone red and that he was scratching his forearm again.

You don’t mean to tell me that you deposited the money in BCCI? Chris poured the hot water into the teapot and hoped nobody would notice him listening.

In the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, I fear so, yes. I’ve just heard about it on the news. They have gone, as you might say, belly up. A number of local authorities have been hit, apparently. Mr. Collins fell silent, looking sadly at his umbrella, as if it was somehow at fault.

How much? said Dan. He stood very still. How much have we lost?

Well, a little over £17 million, though I gather there is some chance of enforcing some kind of settlement.

Fat chance, fat chance, said Dan, sitting down suddenly. You absolute idiot! He said it calmly and Mr. Collins seemed to shrivel a bit in the chair.

Chris, thank you, just give Mr. Collins his tea and then you can see if there’s any post. Then Mr. Dare stood up and slapped Mr. Collins on the back. Forgive me, Monkton. I was forgetting myself for a moment. This must be a shock to you as well, and it was good of you to come to me so promptly. When did you hear? Would you like some milk and sugar? Off you go, Chris.

Chris slipped through the front door in a daze. He had never heard anyone – least of all his father – speak to the venerable Mr. Collins in such a way. In fact, he had never heard an adult speak like that to another adult, except on the television, of course, where they hardly used any other tone of voice. He replayed the conversation in his mind all the way down the drive to the letterbox.

Parcel for you! said the postman as he hurried by. Chris heard, but barely registered. He collected up the small pile of manila envelopes and headed back to the house. He would just have to be late for school this time. No way was he going to miss whatever drama had brought Mr. Collins to their front door so early in the morning.

"Well, I always turn on the Today programme at 6.45 when I make the tea, Mr. Collins explained in a little voice, just before I replenish the nuts on the bird table. As soon as I heard the news, I checked through the paperwork, and decided not to wait until I could contact the bank first thing this morning, to make sure the transaction did go through on Tuesday. I came straight here."

Dan stirred his second cup of coffee. Do you have a best estimate for what the loss means for us? he asked. It’s basically most of our spending money for the year ahead, isn’t it? Can we keep the staff on? And what will happen if we don’t spend it?

I fear we will be completely powerless for at least a year to keep Cattlebridge as it is meant to be. I had only intended to lodge the money there overnight. Mr. Collins sounded even more funereal than usual.

Yup, well now it’s well and truly lodged, isn’t it, said Dan, only half to himself. Ah, here’s the post. The ghost of Monkton Collins seemed to crumble a little further. There was silence for a few minutes.

Dan steered the huddled grey form of Mr. Collins towards a standing position. We’ll have to call in the solicitors, though I don’t for a moment believe they’ll be able to do anything. We’ll have to prepare some kind of statement in case the press get hold of the story – though they don’t usually show much interest in Cattlebridge, thank God. In the meantime, well, do you have any suggestions perhaps?

Mr. Collins stared blankly at a bowl of ripe plums catching the sunlight in the window. Gravity seemed to be weighing heavily on him. It was clear that he hadn’t had anything else to suggest.

The question of what would happen to Cattlebridge if the money wasn’t spent seemed to floor Mr. Collins, and it was left hanging in the air unanswered in the silence after he had gone.

What are you doing here still? You should be in school. Chris had never seen his father look dazed before. He was always so in control, sometimes devastatingly so. Mr. Collins and his umbrella had slunk away, and as they sat together in the kitchen, Dan began a monologue directed at nobody in particular. Go and find the whisky bottle before you go, could you Chris? You know where it is. Chris went into the sunny sitting room, the dust picked out in the morning sunshine, and searched through the dwindling bottles of obscure liqueurs.

The point is, said his father when he got back – using a strange tone of voice that wasn’t really his own – that Cattlebridge isn’t like other places and the Cattlebridge Corporation isn’t like other councils. For one thing, it owned all the land, thanks to an almost feudal relationship with an early Victorian landowner. Every building, every paddock, every farm in the area – which extended barely outside the edge of the town – was theirs. That meant a steady income in rents streamed into the council coffers. That was where the £17 million came from in the first place.

"You see, Chris – and I’m still discovering most of this myself – we really use that money. We make it work for the town."

Chris’s mind wandered to the likely punishment he would get for being late. It really was unheard of for his father to be so lax about it.

I don’t much like Cattlebridge as it is, said Elizabeth, arriving downstairs with brisk efficiency. Stodgy, smug, old-world place – ignorant of the modern world. Living here is like getting an intravenous injection of Kentucky. We demand change, she said, pretending to be a picket.

God, Elizabeth – Collins has been round here and he’s lost all the council money in BCCI. Chris’s mother looked less impressed than both Chris and his father expected.

Does that mean you can resign – please?

Dan ignored her. "What pisses me off the most is that Collins used the word ‘we’. As if WE decided to put the council’s money into that dodgy bank overnight. As if it was somehow MY decision as well, for God’s sake. And because of that idiot, the town could be ruined within weeks – and just within a year of me taking over as mayor too. As if I told him to play the markets with the money