Page 73 of The Reluctant Billionaire
But I’ve seen another world.
A world that isn’t fair or just.
Where the relationship between hard work and success is not linear.
Where people slave away all day long in factories and hospitals and on building sites just to keep the fucking lights on.
Where the stakes are sky high and the margin of error paper-thin.
Where hardworking men get sick, and there’s no insurance or critical illness cover to allow for that.
Where hardworking women have almost no time for sleep between caring for their patients at work and at home.
I have a foot in both camps. I’ve been straddling that uneasy divide for a decade, and I still have no fucking clue where I belong in the world.
Any hope people might have that the UK is becoming a classless society is utter bullshit. There’s social mobility, yes. I’m proof that if you take a chance on someone, they can come good. But, while the money has made my life easier in many ways, it’s also made it more complicated.
It strikes me that, in the small microcosm of the world that forged me, there’s more shame in having too much than in having too little. Poverty can be born with quiet dignity, if you choose.
It’s wealth that destroys you. Money, rather than the lack of it, that people fear the most.
Nowthat’sfucked up.
Lotta is the kind of girl who’ll end up with a minted twat. Some guy with a hedge fund and a yacht. Obviously, I’m minted now, but it’s not who I am in my essence. Whatever she wantsto think, and however hard she’s worked to be where she is now, she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
She was always going to be okay.
I’ve soared in my professional life, but the tethers that bind me to my roots are far fucking stronger and more insidious than I’d like.
Twenty-year-old me took one look at Carlotta Montefiore-Charlton and knew she wasn’t an option for me. Knew that to touch her would be to play with fire.
I’ve come so far. Yet it seems my twenty-year-old self was wiser than the guy I am today in a lot of ways.
Unfortunately, knowing all this and acting on it are two very different things, because I cannot. Stay. Away.
CHAPTER 28
Lotta
Icould get used to waking in Aide’s arms.
To his kisses on my neck. His hard—and I do meanhard—body pressed up behind me.
To him bringing me a perfect espresso as I blow-dry my hair and apply some light makeup in a dressing room so vast it’s totally wasted on him.
To being tugged into his huge shower for a highly satisfying quickie before being served up more perfect espresso and scrambled eggs on the terrace by his very sweet, very smiley housekeeper, Maggie. She seems even happier than me that I spent the night, and that’s saying something.
I adore my ultra-feminine flat, and I love Notting Hill, but there’s something about waking up out here that’s pretty special. I know in an hour we’ll be surrounded by chain-link fences and overlooked by rundown blocks of council flats, but right in this moment I could easily imagine I’m on holiday.
The only sounds are birdsong and the chinking of cutlery against crockery. Given we’re just a couple of weeks past midsummer, the sun’s already high in the sky, casting short shadows over the gardens. All those gorgeous flowerbedsare throwing off their scent, aided by some early-morning sprinklers.
Peace.
Peace is what I feel here. Splendid isolation, like Aide and I are the only two people in the world. Like the trials and tribulations of the rest of humanity are faint. Muted.
I wonder if that’s why Aide based himself out here. It’s clear he’s a guy who, despite his grumpy facade, feels things deeply. Maybe he needs somewhere like this to create some proper distance between him and all the shit he has to deal with. The pressures and the conflicts, the critics and the freeloaders.
I’m really, really glad he has this place. All the stuff he was saying last night suggested he hasn’t really left the chains of his poverty-stricken upbringing behind. That his ‘emancipation’ is, in reality, far more complex and less complete than it may seem.