‘Wake up, Bill,’ Lana says.

Billie mutters something.  It sounds very much like fuck off, but Lana is persistent.

‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ she says, and gently shakes Billie’s shoulder.

‘What time is it?’

‘Nearly ten.’

Billie extracts her crown of white hair from under the pillow.  ‘This better be good,’ she grumbles and hangs her head off the side of the bed with her eyes still shut.

‘Come on, Bill.  I’ve only got thirty minutes.’

‘Pass me a fag,’ Billie mumbles, and makes a silent snarl with her lips.  Lana takes a cigarette out of a box she finds by the bedside, lights it and puts it into the curve of Billie’s snarl.  Billie inhales lustily.

Lana stays silent until Billie has sat up, propped up some pillows behind her, and is leaning back against them.  ‘OK,’ she says, ‘did you do it?’

Lana nods.

Billie’s eyes pop open.  ‘Whoa…. You did….? And you got the money?’

Lana nods and grins.

Billie almost chokes on her cigarette. ‘I don’t believe it!  The fat bastard agreed to cough up fifty grand?’

‘Actually, it wasn’t him.’

Billie holds a palm up. ‘Back up, back up.  What?’

‘OK, I did ask him, but he turned out to be a total perv; you won’t believe what his idea of a good time is.  Fortunately, someone else cut in and offered double what I had asked him.’

‘Bloody hell!’ screams Billie.

‘Keep your voice down,’ Lana whispers.  ‘Your mother’s in the kitchen.’

‘Double, as in a hundred thousand pounds?’

Lana nods a lot.

‘So who is this guy then?’

‘Have you heard of the Barringtons?’

‘Who?’

Lana walks to the laptop sitting on Billie’s messy desk and, flips it open.  When the familiar Google emblem pops up on the screen she types in Blake Barrington.  As the page starts to load she takes the laptop over and holds it out to Billie.  Billie grinds out her cigarette in an overflowing ashtray and takes it wordlessly.

She whistles low and long and looks up at Lana with shining eyes.  ‘Oh! Mr. Bombastic, call me fantastic.  I thought all the best-looking males were gay?’

Lana blushes.  ‘Pick the Wikipedia entry,’ she advises.

Billie hits the Wikipedia link and proceeds to read aloud from the screen.

‘The Barrington banking dynasty, also referred to as the House of Barrington is one of the world’s oldest existing banking dynasties with a history spanning over four hundred years.  The family is descended from Lord John James Barrington.

‘Unlike the courtiers of earlier centuries, who financed and managed European noble houses, but often lost their wealth through violence or expropriation, the new international bank created by the Barringtons was impervious to local attacks.

‘Their assets were held in financial instruments, circulating through the world as stocks, bonds and debts. Their strategy for success was to keep control of their banks in family hands through carefully arranged marriages to first or second cousins. Similar to royal intermarriages, it allowed them to maintain full secrecy about the size of their fortunes.  By the late nineteenth century, however, almost all of the Barringtons had started to marry outside the family into other great, old families.

‘The name Barrington is synonymous with extravagance and great wealth.  The family is renowned for its vast art collections, palaces, wine properties, yacht racing, luxury hotels, grand houses, as well as for its philanthropy.  By the end of the century, the family owned, or had built, at the lowest estimates of forty-one palaces, on a scale and luxury level perhaps unparalleled even by the richest royal families.  In 1909, the soon to be British Prime Minister Lloyd George claimed that Lord Charles Leon Barrington was the most powerful man in Britain and America.

‘The Barringtons are elusive.  There is no book about them that is both revealing and accurate.  Libraries of nonsense have been written about them.  An author who planned to write a book entitled Lies About The Barringtons abandoned it, saying, “It was relatively easy to spot the lies, but proved impossible to find the truth.”

Billie pauses and lets her eyes skim down the screen.  ‘Well, the rest seems to be stuff about their international investment banking activities, the mergers they have been involved in, and is as interesting as a man in a wet T-shirt.  Yup, and more shite here about them being one of the oldest institutions operating in the London Money Market.’

Billie yawns hugely.  ‘It just goes on and on about their…hedging services…worldwide assets… Boring, boring… Holding companies…Swiss registered. Boring, boring, primarily a financial entity but…largest shareholders in the DeBeers…a virtual monopoly of quick silver mines. Ah!  Here is something a little more meaty.  In 2008 the group had one hundred billion in assets!  God! Can you imagine having that kind of money? No wonder the great, great grandson is spending it like water.

‘Oh look.  Some pictures.  Wow! Get an eyeful of how the rich live.’ She turns the laptop around so Lana can look at the images as she scrolls down. ‘Just some of their chateaus, palaces, castles, garden-mansions and city houses.  Wow! Look at this one in St James’s Park.’  There is silence for a while as the girls gaze in wonder at the photos.

‘Do you think you will get to visit any of these places?’

‘Definitely not.  I have to sign a confidentiality agreement.’

‘Still, it’s an unbelievably exciting prospect, isn’t it?  Just don’t fall for him.’

‘I won’t,’ Lana says confidently.

‘Let’s skip back to Google and go to about…page three…and see what the conspiracy theories have to say about this august family.  Oh dear…blood-sucking crew.  “If my sons did not want war, there would be none.”  His grandmother said that.  Very nice.  In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln stated in his statement to Congress, “I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me, and the financial institutions in the rear.  Of the two, the one in my rear is my greatest foe.”

Billie shuts the laptop.  ‘OK, quite enough of this.  Let’s not spoil a good thing.  Let’s celebrate your total brilliance, instead.’

Lana opens her mouth to protest.  She knows exactly what Billie means by celebrate.

‘Aaa-aaa… Don’t say another word,’ Billie says, reaching under the bed to pull out a bottle of vodka.  She opens the drawer of her tiny bedside table and rummages around until she finds two dirty shot glasses.  She puts the two glasses on her bedside table, which is marked with leftover circles from other vodka full glasses.  These glasses will make new moons that overlap the other moons.

She fills them to the brim and holds one out to Lana.

Lana laughs.  ‘So early in the morning?’

‘Are you kidding?  This is an un-fucking-believable turnaround.  You go out of here in borrowed plumes to snare a fat bastard and you come back with not just the most eligible bachelor on either side of the Atlantic, but the son of the richest family on earth.  You’ve pulled off the deal of the century, girl.  We have to celebrate,’ Billie says firmly.

‘I haven’t pulled him, Bill.  He wants to have sex with me in exchange for money.’

‘So?  Would you rather be having sex with the hunk or the perv?’

Lana says nothing.

‘Look, I know you are into that deluded saving yourself for the special guy nonsense, but honestly, love, you really are getting too old to be playing virgin.  Every puss needs a good pair of boots otherwise it shrivels up and dies.’

Lana smiles.  ‘You don’t have one.’

‘Ah, but I have Mr. Rabbit.  Nothing dies when he is around.’  She opens the second drawer of her bedside cabinet to expose her huge and colorful dildo.

Lana gasps.  ‘With your mum in the next room?’

Billie shrugs.  ‘I use it when she’s at the supermarket.’