‘Francis didn’t just lose a million in Monaco. He lost four million. If he doesn’t come up with it, they say they’re going to kill him.’

Despite myself, I relished the melodrama of my revelation. I sat back proudly, waiting for her reaction. For a while she stayed silent, leaving the conversation ajar, and background jazz from the wall-mounted speakers drifted across our table. It did not seem like the silence of shock. She seemed to be weighing her options calmly. She stirred sugar into her black coffee with a neat, deliberate motion, tapped the teaspoon twice on the porcelain rim and set it down on the saucer.

‘I know.’

For a moment, I was too astonished to speak. ‘What do you mean you know? Did he tell you about this?’

‘Nah. But a debt that size doesn’t stay private for very long. It’s already been auctioned, haggled over, sold on. When Francis started acting loopy, I started asking questions in London.’

‘How long have you known?’ I asked.

‘About a week.’

‘And who has the debt now?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘Why not?’

‘All right, I won’t. What would the name mean to you anyway?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe I could . . . How did he get that much credit?’

She took a sip of her coffee. ‘These people aren’t like fucking Barclays, James. They don’t take a look at your credit history and see if you can make the monthly payments. They look at your friends, they look at your family and they say, “How much can they all afford to lose?” because, as fucked up as the world can be, at the end of the day most people won’t choose a nice house over a dead son.’

‘I’m not sure that’s true of Lord Soulford,’ I said.

‘Me neither. I don’t think it is,’ she replied. ‘I think we were Francis’s security. I think he put us up, they checked us out and gave him the money. You should have a good hard think about that when you’re writing out your cheque.’

‘They’ll really kill him?’ I asked.

‘It’s a strong possibility. He’s made the debt public now, it has to be payment or punishment. And let’s face it, James, I love Francis, but someone was going to.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

She shrugged, her matter-of-fact shrug, an urban gesture that I imagined must come from repeated confrontations with an aggressive reality. It was unanswerable. ‘Look at him. He looks doomed. Always has. You can just tell he’s going to get knocked off, sooner or later. Suppose he speeches you. You give him this money today. What you going to give him tomorrow? Because he’ll come knocking.’

This speech was only partly authentic. She had betrayed herself in the slight slide into rude-girl patois. I had heard her use that voice too many times when trying to front a taxi driver or forge a discount. But her words connected, I could not fend them off. Despite myself, I attacked her.