It was late evening by the time he walked back to his flat and although he’d had nothing to eat all day he wasn’t hungry or thirsty. He sat slumped in a chair hardly able to believe what had happened for most of the night, a hundred thoughts whirling around in his head. His father would just love this, he told himself bitterly. From the time he had put a tentative step into the business world of investments, his father had been predicting that his son’s ‘wheeling and dealing’ would end in disaster. His brothers, like the puppets they were, had followed suit, begrudging his success more and more as the years had gone by. Only Clarissa had believed in him, and it looked now as if her belief had been misguided all along. He had failed. Spectacularly. Verity had been right. He was a loser in every sense of the word. How she would love this.

He put his head in his hands, a blackness so profound there was no end to it enveloping him. He had nothing to live for now. Someone in the crowds still milling about Wall Street when he had left had said that a dozen or more speculators had committed suicide already, and he could understand that. He had always regarded suicide as the coward’s way out before this; how judgemental and arrogant was that?

He had been a fool to end fools, that was the truth of it. Even last month he had been aware that some investors had started selling shares in large numbers after a number of financial experts had warned that the American economy was slowing down, but he had let it roll over his head, more concerned with the rumours about him which he was sure were originating from the Kingstons. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The self-recrimination and bitter regrets went on and on until he started to feel he was losing his mind.

As a grey cold dawn began to break, he considered his options. A couple of days ago he had paid the rent on the flat until the end of November; after that he would have nowhere to stay. He had no prospects, virtually not a penny to his name, and since the Kingstons had been spreading their poison, no friends.

He brushed his hair back from his brow and was surprised to find he was sweating as his hand came back damp. He’d been feeling ill for a day or two and had wondered if he was going down with something; standing in the wind and drizzle of rain in Wall Street all day yesterday wouldn’t have done him much good. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered.