The Loan   by Caroline Harbord

   Ms Cassandra Morgan, 28 and unattached, crossed her elegant lightly-tanned legs and surveyed her surroundings.  The room where she was waiting was small, too small, almost claustrophobic; the furniture a shade better than Ikea, more John Lewis list; but then banks did not like to flash their wealth around in front of the customers in case they got hold of the wrong idea.  She didn’t mind the waiting, rather, having experienced sufficient business power-play in her working life, she was expecting it.  She placed the file she had been carrying, on the table, looking at it with proprietorial pleasure.  Cassandra knew, as most of her contemporaries did not, that bankers, like civil servants, are in thrall to paperwork; the more you provide, the happier they are, and, in addition, the greater the respect in which you are held.  Her business plan was a full 2.9 centimetres thick!

    ‘Ms. Morgan.  So sorry to keep you waiting.’

   Roderick Chamberlain was, to Cassandra’s practised eyes, typical middle-management – fiftyish, rather pompous and very slightly scruffy.  Actually, Roderick was 53 and very definitely attached to Mrs Chamberlain (who had ironed his shirt only last night and would have been devastated by Cassandra’s critical appraisal), but he had come to realize recently that he had reached the pinnacle of his career.  This fact depressed him.  He was also aware that, had it not been for the departure of the other two contenders – Harry Browne to a lucrative and rather exciting job in the overseas department of a rival big name bank, and Graham Millfield to the West Country brief of a smaller but thrusting bank – the job of Manager (Small and Medium-sized Business) would possibly not have been his.

   Settling himself comfortably in the better of the two chairs (arms and a cushioned seat), Roderick perused his smart blue file on Morgan, Cassandra, Ms. – nothing there to frighten the horses, in fact a rather exemplary customer; no unauthorized overdrafts, no panic requests for finance; a small loan five years ago paid back in the required time frame; a few direct debits, one to the building society next door – presumably her mortgage; nothing out of order at all, a model of financial probity, an A star creditworthy customer.  Roderick gave her an encouraging smile. 

     ‘What can we do for you Ms Morgan?’

      ‘I want to borrow some money, a large amount of money?’

    Roderick noticed, as he had been taught to do, the use of the word “want” rather than the word “need”.  One spoke of an ordered existence where money was carefully husbanded and equally carefully spent; the other of chaos and panic, debtors’ prisons and bankruptcy, well no, perhaps not quite that bad, but not something with which Roderick wanted to involve his bank.

     ‘How much is “large”?’

     ‘Three hundred and fifty thousand pounds’

   Roderick swallowed once and turned a delicate shade of pink.  He had been expecting perhaps twenty-five thousand pounds, just enough to get a little business started, gifts, baby clothes, something like that, the sort of thing that women did.  Three hundred and fifty thousand pounds!  But mindful of such luminaries, and exceptions to the general rule that men always did these things better, ladies such as Anita Roddick and that American woman whose name he could never remember who had started a homeware (disgusting word) empire but had ended up in jail, for what he could not remember either, he decided to tread softly - just in case.

   ‘That’s quite a large amount.  Er, what sort of business are you thinking of starting?’

    Cassandra treated him to one of her ten kilowatt smiles, white teeth sparkling and just a small hint of creasing at the sides of her azure blue eyes.

   ‘Oh, I’ve already started it, in just a small way, but I need to expand.’  She pushed the file across the table towards him. ‘About two years ago I started as a Personal Trainer and I now want to expand into bigger premises with more equipment.  I’ve got the opportunity to take over the lease of a building and  . . . well, it’s all in the business plan.  I’ve given you cash flows, estimates, draw down times for the loan, repayment schedules and a five year plan to let you see where I’m going.  There’s a SWOT analysis, extracts from several articles in the broadsheets about my line of business and some cuttings from Life and Fitness and Workout Magazine.  I’ve included profiles of my competitors and where I think I can score over them; also a standard CV and references from my previous employers and letters from my accountants and my solicitor.’

    That was the start of it – six years ago now.  The first loan was followed a year later by another, bigger one and then two years later by a third and then a fourth.  The business was huge and growing.  Every time Roderick saw the name in the headlines on the business pages, or the company logo on a swanky new building, he felt a glow of pride.  This was his success, every bit as much as it was Cassandra Morgan’s.

    Roderick never knew what had first alerted Simon Sylvester.  In fact it was one of those coincidences which only occur in books, never in real life.  Mrs. Simon Sylvester had a second cousin living in Norfolk, and Cousin William had decided to throw a party for his 70^th birthday, inviting his disparate family from across the UK.  His list included the Sylvesters in their refuge in the West Country.  At the ensuing lunch (prawn cocktail, roast beef or vegetable lasagna, and Black Forest Gateau – disgustingly 1970’s fare according to Mrs Sylvester), Simon found himself seated beside his host’s eighteen year-old grandson.  The boy soon proffered the information that, while waiting for his university place, he was working as a personal trainer at the local gym, but that it really wasn’t up to much as the clientele were at least 80% middle-aged women.

     ‘They sign on in January to get rid of the Christmas excesses and then the numbers dwindle away as the year goes on; some of them are quite disgusting, they’ve no self control whatsoever.  There’re hardly any men at all, just a few middle-aged guys disposing of their spare tyres.  I have to work really hard to sign up enough people’

   The rest of lunch was spent in learning the ins and outs of the leisure and personal training business.  Something was niggling at the back of Simon’s mind but he couldn’t think what.

   When the Sylvesters returned home, Simon decided to pay a visit to his local gym – a founding branch of Cassandra Morgan’s mini-empire.  Here, everything was much as he expected.  Well-groomed, clean-looking young women, bounding with health and good looks, signed him in, escorted him around, showing off the impressive gym equipment, the sauna, the massage rooms, the pool, the restaurant, and then, just as he was indicating signs of flagging, offered to give him an initial work programme. 

     ‘Can’t I just try the machines and have a swim?’ he enquired.

      ‘Oh certainly Sir’ said the Nordic beauty who was his current companion, ‘but we don’t recommend unaccompanied use of the weights or the equipment for fear that you might try the wrong exercises for your body.  People can do terrible things to their muscles and their ligaments if they don’t know what they’re doing.’  She smiled sweetly and expectantly.

      ‘Right, I’ll just have a swim today and perhaps a massage’.

   It was a tolerably enjoyable afternoon, if you like that sort of self-pampering thing; but something was still bugging Simon; something somebody had said. 

   It was half-past three in the morning when Mrs Simon Sylvester was woken by her husband exclaiming, ‘80% middle-aged women – never!’  Being married to a journalist, she was quite used to his odd hours and odder comments, so she turned over, pulled the M & S floral duvet around her shoulders, and went back to sleep.

   It took Simon Sylvester six months to complete his investigation.  He visited practically every gym and leisure centre in every town and city in the south of England, but he concentrated his greatest effort on the twenty-five glossy, glitzy and biggest ones, belonging to Cassandra Morgan.  At the latter, he talked to the staff, mainly female, and he talked to the clientele, mainly male.  Then he did some digging.  This is the least pleasant but most rewarding part of a journalist’s duties, and what Simon dug up was what you would expect to find when you start digging – a lot of dirt, the sort of dirt which would ruin reputations in Town Halls and Board Rooms across the country.  Then he packaged the dirt in a neat little five page article (complete with photographs) and sold it for a not inconsiderable sum to the tabloid which offered him the most money.

   Mrs Roderick Chamberlain had been getting rather tired of her husband’s constant references to Ms Cassandra Morgan.  She hadn’t minded until the day she had seen a photograph in the local paper of Cassandra, ravishing but businesslike, in a little number by Dior, opening the latest of her creations.  Then she had developed a somewhat sneering tone every time Roderick brought his protégé's name into the conversation.  When she saw the headline in her morning newspaper, she opened her eyes wide, felt a joyous leap followed promptly by a pang of sorrow for her husband, but said nothing.  Roderick, racing out of their 5-bed mock Tudor detached, late for work, a piece of toast still in his hand, had failed to listen to Today, having recently developed an inexplicable antipathy to John Humphreys, so he had not heard the news.

   As he walked into the huge open plan foyer of the bank, Roderick detected a frisson of interest; eyes looked away, people stared and then quickly moved to one side.  He took no notice, apart from the instinctive male reaction to check his trousers, but swept up the stairs to his office where Julie, his loyal, long-time assistant was sorting the post.

    ‘Oh Mr Chamberlain, isn’t it dreadful?’ she cried

     ‘Isn’t what dreadful, Julie?  Surely Wayne Rooney hasn’t injured himself again?’  Roderick liked to think he was a man of the people, a manager who understood his juniors’ likes and dislikes, someone who was on a par with them when it came to discussions of such important matters as football and Coronation Street.

     Julie thrust the newspaper at Roderick.  He blanched; he felt as if his stomach was descending a hundred stories in a super-fast lift.

    CASSANDRA MORGAN LEISURE EMPIRE IN SEX SCANDAL

    What really goes on behind closed doors in the gym?

Late last night it was confirmed by the Somerset and Avon Police Department that investigations were ongoing into allegations that the Cassandra Morgan gym and leisure empire is a front for a high-class prostitution racket.  Over the years . . . . .Metropolitan Police Vice Squad called in . . .  collapse in share value . . . Ms Morgan not available for comment . . . .local Mayor protests innocence . . . high-profile protégé of bank . . . prison . . . .

   Roderick felt sick.  How on earth would he explain it all – to the police, to the bank, to his wife?   

   You see, in the end, it wasn’t a matter of “needing”, it was more a matter of “wanting”. They’d been so lovely, so willing, so delectable. . . . and after all, he had only done what he had always done – made arrangements to give large sums of the bank’s money, in the privacy of small rooms, to plausible young women who’d asked for it!