The Gap of Time Read Online Free Page A

himself. He called it Sicilia because he liked that it sounded just a little bit Mafia. He was Italian on his mother’s side.
    Sicilia soon had £600 million of managed funds and Leo was going for the billion. There was nothing better than cash shortages on the ground for making money out of thin air.
    —
    Back in his office Leo saw that he had confused Milo. Milo was darker and more reflective than his father—more like his mother. Father and son came together over simpler things than life and death. Leo took Milo to football and swimming. He didn’t do homework with him or read to him—MiMi did those things.
    “Mummy will be here soon,” said Leo, for want of anything better to say.
    “Shall I go and write my story?” said Milo.
    Leo nodded. “Take your school bag into the kitchen—get some milk and one chocolate biscuit, OK?”
    Milo liked his father’s offices. There were always people to make a fuss of him and things to eat, and best of all there were the planes.
    Leo hugged Milo. They loved each other. That was real. Milo was all right again now. “There was a man lived in an airport,” he said, going out.
    Leo turned back to his desk—made by Linley out of long planks of Russian birchwood sanded fine as glass. The office was white space: virgin walls, polar leather sofa, Eskimo carpet. There was a big blown-up black and white photo of his wife on the wall. He kept the digital version as his iPhone screen. The only colour came from a red neon wall sign designed by Tracey Emin.
    The neon said “RISK=VALUE.” It was part of a quote Leo had seen at an OCCUPY demonstration:
What You Risk Reveals What You Value
. The quote had bothered him until he changed it. When he started his new company he had commissioned the neon.
    —
    Leo leaned forward into his intercom. “Web-Cameron! I want to talk to you!”
    Leo was laughing at his own joke when Cameron closed the door. Cameron was ex-army. He knew how to take an order.
    “Cameron. I want you to install a webcam in my wife’s bedroom.”
    Cameron took this in but he didn’t understand it. “You want a visual surveillance system in your wife’s bedroom?”
    Leo looked impatient. “You are in charge of Security and Transport at Sicilia. This is delicate. I don’t want an outsider doing the job. I want the camera to link through here to my personal screen.”
    Cameron was uncomfortable. “I have seen these things on adult viewing sites—but…”
    “I’m not jacking off on my wife’s pixellated tits if that’s what you’re worrying about. And we’re not pimping her for twenty quid every seven minutes to a construction worker on an iPhone with his hand down his trousers. This is marital. This is divorce.”
    “You are wanting to divorce your lady wife?”
    “Why do you talk like that? Is it because you are Scottish? She’s my wife, not my lady wife. I don’t have a man wife.”
    And then Leo thought of Xeno. And he thought it in a bubble of insight that he burst.
    “The truth is, Cameron, that I think MiMi is having an affair. And I want to catch her at it. You know why they call it a webcam?”
    “It is a camera linked to the web,” said Cameron slowly.
    “It’s a spider’s web, Cameron, for catching insects. I can’t sleep at night because my bed is crawling with insects.”
    “Your wife is pregnant,” said Cameron.
    “You think the sow can’t squeal with pleasure because her belly’s swinging with piglets?”
    Cameron felt his face go hot. His polka-dot tie was hurting his throat.
    “You are speaking of your wife and child.”
    “My child? My bastard.” Leo snapped a pencil in half.
    “Have you any material reason to believe that MiMi is having an affair?”
    “You mean, have I seen her with anyone? No. Did the private dick who’s been trailing her for two months find out anything I don’t know already—where she goes, the man she sees, her emails, texts? No.”
    “You said you hadn’t seen her with anyone.”
    “Anyone?