“Her hearing?”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you, Dr. Templeton. We need to run some more tests. But you should try to prepare yourself for the worst. There’s a strong chance that your daughter may never be able to hear again.”

ELEVEN

GABE MCGREGOR HAD TOLD HIS MOTHER HE COULD TAKE care of himself. But he proved to be a poor prophet.

Although by no means stupid, Gabe was dyslexic and easily bored. As a result, he had left school at sixteen without any qualifications, despite being naturally good with numbers. He arrived in London with nothing but his good looks, optimism and fifty pounds in cash in his back pocket. Work was scarce.

“I’m a hard worker. I know I’ll have to start at the bottom. What about the mail room?”

He was sitting opposite the head of human resources at May & Lorriman, an investment bank in the city.

“I’m sorry, son, but this isn’t a Michael J. Fox movie. Even our mail boys have a minimum of five GCSEs-General Certificates of Secondary Education.”

The head of human resources felt sorry for Gabe, but there was nothing she could do. Rules were rules. She’d only agreed to see him because he’d shown up at the office every morning for the past week, begging for an interview.

Undaunted, Gabe set off down Moorgate, determined not to leave the City, London’s famous financial district, till he had a foot in the door. But it was the same story everywhere.

“You’ll have to submit a written application,” said Merrill Lynch.

“Three A-levels or equivalent is our minimum qualification for back office,” said Goldman Sachs.

“We don’t hire casual workers,” said Deutsche Bank.

Gabe was baffled.

The banks all claim to want “entrepreneurs.” Applicants who can “think outside the box,” that’s what their brochures say. But show a bit of entrepreneurial spirit and they slam the door in your face.

Next he tried the real-estate agencies. There was plenty of money in property, and at the end of the day it was a sales job. I can do that. Foxtons, Douglas & Gordon, Knight Frank, Allsop’s. Gabe tried them all, knocking on doors, tramping the streets of London from Kensington to Kensal Rise till his feet ached and his head throbbed.

I don’t need a salary. I’ll work on commission.

All I’m asking for is a chance.

I’m sorry, son.

You need A-levels.

Go back to school.

Depressed and defeated, Gabe finally began looking for manual work, but even that was tough. The Irish had a stranglehold on construction in the capital and were loath to dole out work to a Scot with no friends to recommend him.

Have you worked on a site before, lad?

No.

What’s your trade, jock? Electrician?

No.

Plumber?

No.

You must have some skills?

Gabe sat on the single bed in his dirty council flat in Walworth. He was hungry, tired, lonely and broke.

You must have some skills. He’s right. I must. What are my skills? What the hell am I good at?

For twenty minutes, Gabe stared at the wall, his mind a blank. Then it came to him:

Women. He was good with women.

Women loved Gabe McGregor. They always had. At school, Gabe regularly charmed his way out of trouble with women teachers, and got the bright girls in his class to do his homework for him. With his broken nose and rugby player’s physique, he was not classically handsome. But one look into his playful, spirited gray eyes and grown women had been known to go weak at the knees. Gabe was a natural flirt, a bad boy who needed mothering. It was a lethally attractive combination to the opposite sex.

How the hell do I make money out of that?

Gabe took a shower and changed into his one clean pair of pants and a white linen shirt. Grabbing his last few pounds in change, he walked down to the Elephant and Castle and caught a bus to Knightsbridge.

Thirty minutes later he was standing on Sloane Street. It was six o’clock on a warm July evening, and the stores and bars were still busy. All around him Gabe saw rich, beautifully dressed women. They poured out of Chanel and Ungaro in their Gucci heels and diamonds, flicking their expensively dyed hair as they strode past. Often they were in groups, chatting and laughing as they swung their Harrods shopping bags, sipping flutes of champagne on the sidewalk cafés. Sometimes they were alone. Never, or almost never, were they with a man.

Where are all the husbands? Still at the office in Goldman Sachs, with their A-levels and degrees from sodding Harvard, earning the money to pay for all this designer clobber.

More fool them.

One woman caught Gabe’s eye. Brunette, attractive, in her late thirties or early forties, she was standing outside Harvey Nichols, glancing impatiently at her expensive Patek Philippe watch. Whoever was meeting her was evidently late. Irritated, she stuck out her arm to hail a cab, then thought better of it, instead disappearing back into the store.

Gabe ran after her. The driver of a Jaguar E-type beeped at him furiously as he stepped blindly into the traffic.

“Wanker! Have you got a bloody death wish or something?”

But Gabe didn’t hear. Plunging through the double doors into Harvey Nichols, he caught up with the woman just as she was stepping into the elevator.

“You’re in a hurry.” She laughed as the doors whooshed closed. Gabe realized he was panting, he’d been running so fast. “Thirsty?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I said you must be thirsty. This lift goes directly to the fifth-floor bar. Is that what you wanted?”

Gabe grinned. Up close she looked older, perhaps midforties, but she had good legs and the sort of naughty, mischievous smile that boded well for what he had in mind.

“Absolutely.”

Her name was Claire, and Gabe lived with her-lived off her-for a month, till she finally decided enough was enough.

“You’re lovely, darling, you know you are. But I can’t spend the rest of my life with a boy young enough to be my son.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s exhausting! This morning I fell asleep in the middle of a deposition. I’m a partner in a law firm, Gabe, I’m not Maggie May. Besides, it’s time you found yourself something to do.”

Gabe found himself something to do the next morning. Her name was Angela.

After Angela came Caitlin, Naomi, Fiona and Thérèse. For the first year, life was good. He still had no security. No savings. But he moved from one luxury West End apartment to the next, wore clothes that were not made of polyester and did not scratch, dined at London’s finest restaurants, enjoyed regular sex with a string of grateful, well-preserved older women, and had access to more first-class cocaine than he knew what to do with.

At first the coke was under control. Gabe enjoyed the odd line at parties and that was it. But as the boredom and emptiness of his days began to bite (there were only so many times you could go to the gym or go shopping while your girlfriend went to work) the charlie became a lunchtime habit, too. Pretty soon he was getting high at breakfast. That was when the trouble started.

Fiona, a divorced Internet entrepreneur with a stunning Chelsea town house, kicked Gabe out when she came home early from work and caught him snorting drugs off her Conran walnut coffee table with her fourteen-year-old daughter.

Thérèse called it a day after money started going missing from her purse.

“That’s funny. I’m sure I had a hundred in my wallet. Didn’t I stop at the Lloyds cash point last night?”

“Christ, babe, I don’t know. What am I, your mother?”

It was Gabe’s anger that raised her suspicions. Convinced she was being paranoid, but scared of being burned again, Thérèse waited till Gabe was away in St. Tropez for the weekend and had surveillance cameras secretly installed in the bedroom.

Two weeks later, Gabe was out on the street.