My ex-boyfriend is wanted by Interpol. The FBI would also like to catch up with him. And there are a few thousand investors who would like to do more than shake him by the hand.
I find this extremely gratifying. Not so long ago, I was sorting out some newspapers with which to line my cat’s litter tray. A broadsheet fluttered open to reveal a face and a name that I knew. Under the banner “Business Big Shot” was the name and photo of this old high school boyfriend.
I’d dated him briefly, never seen him once since leaving school, and suddenly, here he was, a Business Big Shot, large as life (which was pretty large, at 6’6”) and with a fortune to match.
His parents had been pretty wealthy too. My father jokes that one night when he came to pick me up from their house, he made the mistake of parking at the wrong end: it was a long walk to the front door.
Big Shot’s father was self-made, a plumber by trade, and expected his sons to be successful too.
“It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t write well, he’ll have a secretary to do that for him,” he remarked to a teacher who had criticized his son’s homework.
And sadly, he was right. Big Shot had gone on to set up and run a successful investment company, gaining the trust of many clients. He had married, bought himself a smart island home in the Med, and was now, according to the newspaper report, being sued for a sumptuous divorce settlement.
“I could have been that ex-wife!” I thought with a sudden pang of regret.
And Big Shot he was in more ways than one. He had recently been gunned down in South America, supposedly for refusing to part with his Rolex. Well, at his size, he’d be an easy target.
But since the newspaper report appeared, I’ve had an update from a mutual friend, the teacher who has never forgiven Big Shot’s father’s misogyny. It seems Big Shot is a target once more, this time for the police. He pulled the rug from his company overnight, fled with his clients’ millions in his pocket and has never been seen again. He has left many lives and many fortunes in ruins.
So I’m now very pleased that I gave my cat the opportunity to express its own opinion on the newspaper article about him.