‘He spoke to me every day, Julian. I sent you his thoughts on the business. Some of them were not really coherent but, as you know, some of them made a lot of sense. Asset ratios, for example.’

‘Can I tell you something, Estelle. We were not the only people who were mistaken about the markets. We believed, like the Nobel Prize winner who advised us in setting up our main hedge fund, that it was possible to take the risk out of investment banking. What we didn’t realise, and I regret bitterly that we were so foolish, is that the markets have no logic – unlike mathematics – and they can be thrown by all sorts of random events, human events. We lost a huge amount of money. It just vanished. So what you apparently said to Amanda is true; we are trying to boost our capital. The boat has gone, the Chelsea house will go – Fleur’s agreed – the charitable trusts have gone and the family trust has lent the bank money.’

‘Without Sir Harry’s consent, and his vote on behalf of the relatives.’

‘Without my father’s consent. He was not competent to give his consent, according to Mr Abbott. That’s why we had the power of attorney drawn up, that you witnessed.’

‘The problem is, you are trying to mislead the regulators and the ratings agencies.’

‘We are just holding them off. This is a matter of life and death. The bank is on the line.’

‘And the Koopman Foundation?’

‘Amanda said you mentioned that. It’s not just Koopman’s if we go under. But in fact we have discretion over Koopman’s investments, renewable every year. I know that they probably wouldn’t have liked them to be put into the bank’s funds if they knew the situation. But that’s where we are. We didn’t want to be here, but we are. You know the City runs on rumours. If you spread rumours about breaches of fiduciary trust, the whole thing could implode very quickly.’

‘You’re selling, aren’t you?’