The Walls Came Down

Chapter 2 – Matty, London

2010

CHAPTER 2 – MATTY

LONDONMatty looked out at the grey haze of rain pounding down on the heads of commuters as they spilled out hurriedly from the brightly lit mouth of City Thameslink Station. Fools. They weren’t privy to his secret of travelling into work an hour early. That way you avoided the worst of the awful, clammy crowds. Either that or they weren’t mad enough to get up at 4.45am every morning.

But being an insomniac, 4.45am and 6.45am made no difference to Matty – it was the silver lining to a sleep free existence. And now he sat in the corner of the Chipston Capital Funds office, with full view of the open plan trading floor that was still quiet but would, at any moment, begin filling up with the swarm of worker bees.

Matty treasured this time. He used it to check the news while sipping on his triple shot espresso. Sometimes, he halfheartedly tried to get ahead on some work – currently he was in the process of getting a volatility analysis finished for Jason Lyons, his boss’ boss. He had recently mastered the art of ‘managing your manager’ and now told Jason exactly what he was going to send him and when, just before his emails pinged in, signalling his own planned work deadlines.

But today was one of those days when Matty’s mind particularly wandered, perhaps because it was the first full week back after the Easter bank holiday weekend and he realised that he had at least forty-five hours to put in before Saturday. He minimised the window with the report on his PC, in favour of the BBC News site. He scanned the headlines. More footballers tell of s****l a***e – 96 dead in Smolensk air disaster – Security tightened at Hatton Garden – Substance a***e blamed for prison ‘rage’ – Reaction: Everton 1 – Man Utd 2.

The mention of Hatton Garden put Matty in a bad mood. Because Hatton Garden meant jewellery, and jewellery meant rings, specifically engagement and wedding rings. It was something that he just didn’t have the brain space for right now. He’d suspected for a while that Ellie was expecting a proposal any day. They had recently both turned twenty-six and the last summer had brought with it the first flurry of weddings and the relentless queries of When you gonna pop the question, mate?

The truth was that the thought of marriage filled him with a cold, wet dread. It wasn’t anything to do with Ellie – it was just the whole finality of it, the sense that he would have to root himself down. And that was something that Matty hated more than anything. He lived for the thought that he could take flight whenever he wanted, and go wherever he wanted.

Today, gazing out of the window at the drab greyness that filled the world outside Chipston Capital, he visualised himself on a beach in Italy, preferably somewhere in the south. It would already be warm at this time of year. He would lie down and soak up the sun, his cold beer half buried in the sand.

But quite honestly he wouldn’t mind being anywhere rather than here. He could settle for Helsinki or Prague. He would lounge around, eating dumplings with Ellie and making love until mid-afternoon.

“Morning.”

He forced his attention back to the present as Arun carefully folded his gangly frame into the chair next to him. For such a tall man, he moved with an admirable degree of grace.

“You heard about the crash?”

“Hmm?”

“Can’t figure out if there’ll be any impact on us.”

“Nah, stuff like that doesn’t have an effect,” said Matty knowingly.

“Well, not usually, but this plane had half the Polish government on board.”

How had he missed that? He always prided himself on being first when it came to significant news stories.

“Terrorist attack?” he asked weakly.

“Don’t know. They haven’t said. But the President was on there with his wife, the leader of the National Army, the Head of the National Bank, 18 members of Parliament – you name it, they were there. I doubt that it was an accident.”

Matty brought up the page on his computer. The BBC had already got hold of many of the headshots of the victims, and a wall of solemn black and white photography filled his screen.

“Who does that? What sort of a country puts all of their most important people on one plane? It’s almost as if they’re playing into the hands of the terrorists.”

He shook his head and then a soft prickling sensation developed in his gut as he noticed Jason making his way towards them at speed. At an animal level, Matty was intimidated by Jason – he admired his stockiness and his ability to simply, yet forcefully, make his views known. Matty yearned for those qualities, which he was painfully lacking. He couldn’t even blame his build – it was something deeper than that, a charisma, a presence.

“What’s our Sterling-Złoty exposure? We don’t want to get caught with our pants down again,” Jason told him, perching casually on the edge of the empty desk behind him. There was no ‘Good morning.’ Jason didn’t need to greet anyone.

“Don’t you want the emerging vols piece first?” he asked weakly. He knew that this deadline wasn’t until tomorrow, because he had set it himself.

“I need both today,” Jason said simply. “By midday latest.” And then he sauntered off, just like that, his heavy frame swaying between the rows of desks where his worker bees were already on the phones, already in full swing, eager to bring him home the honey.

Matty lay his palms flat on the desk to steady himself. The unfairness boiled within him and, as was usual in situations in which life wasn’t working out quite how he wanted it to (and which happened increasingly often), he took a walk. It was only a break away from what he was currently doing that could clear the redness which flooded his mind.

He paced up and down the corridor, his fingers drumming against the side of a newly painted radiator, and his mind took off. He was lucky of course. Matty was among a minority of his friends who had managed to get work despite the crippling recession that had started almost two years before. Most of them, despite their university degrees, were still doing admin work or lowly paid ‘internships’, and that was if they’d been fortunate enough to fight off the throng of competitors to get there. He felt guilty about how comparatively easy it had been to get his position at Chipston Capital and how quickly he’d managed to clamber up the first few steps of the ladder to success. He knew that by joining the firm, he’d become one of the hated crowd of fat cats who of course were to blame for the country’s economy falling to pieces. He knew that while they congratulated him, his friends were visualising him digging a knife into their backs.

But what else was he to do? He turned up every day in his pressed shirt and his suit from Gieves & Hawkes which, even though it had been four years, still made him feel as if he were poorly acting a part in a production in which he’d been blatantly miscast. And the bottom line was that he wasn’t getting anywhere and, more importantly perhaps, that he hated it all.

He would have to escape, if only for a short time. He would plan it tonight. He took three deep breaths, as instructed once by his childhood GP, and braced himself to walk back in.

But that night, he didn’t get home until a quarter to ten. He’d somehow managed to reassure Jason that their Sterling-Złoty positions weren’t substantial, and then spent four and a half solid hours catching up on other work he’d side-lined.

He collapsed on the sofa next to Ellie, who sat cross-legged beneath a thick wool blanket, a pile of exercise books on her lap. She was in her pyjamas, her face washed and her hair dishevelled, but even in this state Matty was always amazed at how beautiful she was.

He lay down with his head on her lap, knocking the books into disarray.

“Let’s get away somewhere,” he muttered, yawning.

She ruffled his hair.

“You know we can’t afford it.”

It was true. They’d spent a lot on a trip to New York at Christmas, and Ellie wasn’t earning a lot as a teacher.

“We can,” he insisted. “Come on.”

“Well…” she said slowly, “I suppose we could do a long weekend. But I’m still really worried about it being too expensive.”

“It won’t be if we avoid the tourist hotspots. We could go to a random European city?”

“Which one?”

The news flickered on the TV in front of them and he caught a glimpse of the carcass of a plane, lying on its side in the dense fog, surrounded by forest. It sparked a sudden idea in his head.

“Warsaw?” It was the last place people would be flying to following an air disaster, and there were bound to be knockdown rates.

He picked up Ellie’s battered laptop and brought up a flight comparison website. He wasn’t wrong. There were several flights leaving around half term time which were less than fifty quid per person. It was a no brainer.

“I suppose,” Ellie shrugged, “I don’t mind where we go.” Her cheeks were flushed and a tiny smile began spreading across her full lips.

The panic rose in Matty’s stomach. She thought it was an engagement holiday. He momentarily considered calling off the idea altogether, but the urge to get away was stronger than the awkwardness of Ellie’s hopeless anticipation. Yes, he would get the leave signed off tomorrow and they’d be off.

Half an hour later they were lying in bed, his cheek nuzzled against the warm space just behind her ear, his hand on the crevice of her hip bone. He fell into the novelty of a wonderful, undisturbed sleep, happy in the knowledge that something was about to happen, a break in the monotony, a chance to escape.