It was worth it wasn’t it? The Lamborghini 350GT, the two mercs, the houses and farms, the fashion, oh my, the fashion, Prada, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, those dresses and jewels. First class to Paris, dinner at Arpège, the Orient Express to Venice, the charter boats from Mykonos to Santorini, these are there to be enjoyed, yes?
I told my clients: they are not long, your days of wine and roses. Live them! I gave them returns of 20, 30%. Hooked, they fed the stream. Superfunds, trust funds, slush funds, bequests, market windfalls: we were awash with money. Newcomers funded the returns, I skimmed off the dream.
Carrara marble benchtops white as marshmallow, Villaroy and Bosch (in both the loo and kitchen, lol). Gaggenau, 1,000 count Egyptian cotton. Whiteleys on the walls. Grange from 51 to now. These are made to be enjoyed, no?
Then someone got the jitters, couldn’t handle the life. Diddums. So the regulator sniffed around, cast accusations, that I robbed incoming clients. Fools. This was not a Ponzi scheme, this was a philosophy. Live rich, live large. Light your soul like a flame and burn. Then be doused in the torrent of what was done.
I’ve planned it, you know. I will be stunning to the last. I’ve selected a simple ‘Morocain’ dress by Miu Miu, in eggshell tones with subtle puffed sleeves and open laced back, a pair of brushed leather slingback pumps by Prada, and a matching calfskin clutch with strap, by Hermes, to hold the pills and the coins I will shortly need.
I will stroll to the end of the breakwater looking absolutely gorgeous, like life itself and how it should be. I can face it that way. I will open my clutch, take the pills. I will stand at the breakwater, splendid and sepulchral, while the pills take their effect.
Then I will surrender to the waters.
I will not mourn. I had my time, with fine wine and perfumed roses. Better the fire and the drowning than styleless prison walls. Better the flame and its extinction than the cement of cold endurance. I will have lived, my life has come to this, as I always knew it would. I smile. I imagine the gasping for breath, the slow sinking, the dress elegantly tossed about my winsome corpse, niggled by sea creatures. Who knows, I may even get carried away, again.
Only one thing left to do. A phone call. Not on the mobile though, that is traceable. A public phone booth. I know, it’s so retro, but so, apropos, don’t you agree? I’d planned the spot years ago when we moored the cruiser here on vacation. I have just the right cash for the phone.
It will go to voice mail, to the voice of my sweet husband, who has fathered my three marvellous children. He never knew; he, like all my clients, trusted me. I will not be elaborate, style is understatement anyway. I will simply say,
“I’m sorry.”
