Chapter 4: My Family

9.51AM. Text message from Mum to Nick: Horror. Your sister has won tickets to Euro Disney from the back of a rice krispies packet. I have to go with her and kids. HELP!

9.59AM Text message from Nick to Mum:
have fun and say hi to Mickey frm me

Mum was in France with my sister Julia for the holidays. My sister had moved there four years ago to be with her French boyfriend, Roman. She lived in the countryside while he gambled on the internet. He had a PHD from Cambridge and was slightly autistic. Julia used to be a nursery worker, suffered from bouts of depression, and now took in pupils to teach them English. They had two young children, Rene, 4, and Willow, 6. I had visited them twice and they came home for Christmas each year to my mum’s place in Clapham. That meant that I had seen them slightly more often that I had seen my dad, who lived in Spain. My father made very little effort to stay in contact with me. He seemed to think I was somehow responsible for his exile following his separation from my mum when I was 12. It was all very strange, but he bore a grudge from hell for no good reason other than I was not prepared to move to Spain with him. Neither was my sister, who being younger than me, took my lead on the question. He had a Spanish wife now, who liked to drink a great deal of Cava, and was very nice to me when I visited. I think with his new wife he had found someone generous by nature, who did not mind housework, which was exactly the kind of woman he needed for his golden years. That is, a woman quite unlike my mother.
My mother was possibly the most sarcastic person I had ever met. I did not realise this when I was growing up. I thought it was normal to call your son ‘four eyes’ and to tell your daughter that she looked frumpy and should put on some more makeup. The ‘four eyes’ thing meant that even though I was slightly short sighted I almost never wore glasses, although I had reluctantly started using contact lenses, which I kept secret as best as I could. My mother did not feel guilty for not being especially maternal. It was just not really her thing. She loved us all the same, it’s just that she felt everyone was a bit daft and should be put in their place whenever appropriate, and that went for her children too. I suppose I got used to it, until I went to university and realised that this was not how all people were, and that being considerate and thoughtful was actually considered a good thing. Eventually I took some therapy to explore these issues, as they appeared to come between me and every woman I had ever been out with. I had two therapists, but they both disappointed me in some way, for they were all too human themselves. Then again, that was probably the point. They were not there to ‘cure’ me, only to help me realise where my problems lay so that I could begin to resolve them myself. This was a long process, however, and was likely to take many years. At one time I thought the right woman or a glorious career would make my melancholia disappear. I had no such illusions now.
Now I had work to do. I had to file about five stories today, and some analyst calls to chase up. I had a nagging feeling that I had forgotten something important, but I could not place it. I should check my diary, but for some reason, I chose not to. It was probably nothing.

10.04AM Email from Emma Townsend, PA to John Squires:
Hi Nick, Just a reminder about our 12 noon profile interview with John. Please come to the Cucumber building and ask for me at reception and I will come and get you. Let me know if you need anything else.

10.06AM Email to Ms Townsend:
Hi Emma, thanks for getting in touch. All set for the interview and looking forward to it. Did the photographer get in touch? We will need a few shots of John.

10.06AM Email E Townsend to Nick:
Hi Nick, no he didn’t. We do have some photos of John if you would like me to send them over.

10.14AM Nick to Emma: Yes please do.

10.15AM Mental email from Nick to self:
How the fuck did you forget that interview? It must be in your diary….it is, but you have not looked at your diary for over a week. You are lucky as the billionaire and your editor would be mightily pissed off if you’d missed that one.
I had been to the restaurant at the top of the Cucumber once before. It was the setting for my interview with a well-known investment banker. The views were spectacular, the food less so, and the thrill of being high above London under a glass and steel dome seriously undermined by the loud, self-important money men who frequented it. My interviewee had made his first fortune shorting shares in dotcom companies before the end of the first internet boom. He was explaining to me how he did it. There is a lot of jargon around this kind of trade – the put option, the call option, selling a call, a covered call, a naked call, the break even point, the premium, the strike price - and I was doing my feeble best to keep up, scribbling notes and occasionally losing track completely.
At the time we were still in the throws of the big housing bubble, but this precociously rich and balding Nostradamus was telling me that the whole pack of cards was about to collapse. “Nick, do yourself a favour and put your flat on the market today. Don’t wait another minute. It’s a pyramid and only suckers are buying now. The big market players are a step ahead, and they are betting on the Big One.
“What do you mean?” I asked the bald banker.
“Are we off the record? If I read any of this, I’ll deny, deny, deny, say you made it up.” I nodded. “I’m talking about the Big Short. There’s some really cute atom bombs in the collateralized debt market that are all set to go off. It won’t be pretty. Most people are ignoring it, except the really smart players. They’re not talking about it, but they are betting on the collapse of civilisation and they are going to make a lot of money, Nick, more money than you could possibly imagine. Don’t wait Nick. Call the estate agent. Don’t wait another minute.”
It was probably the most important financial tip I had been given and yet, I ignored it. I remember losing my concentration at times, as if I was experiencing something out of body, looking at myself trying to engage with this man who earned in a week what I earned in a year, and thinking, you may be rich, and you are obviously very intelligent but your eyes bulge oddly and you eat with your mouth open. What am I doing here giving you my time and attention? Is this what my life was leading up to? Instead of these soul-searching thoughts, I should have just listened to the priceless advice he was giving me.