UniteDead Kingdom. Stuart Irving Irving
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burn-out' and thanking the bank for its stewardship as he embarked on a 'well-earned career break'. The guarantee of five per cent on any remaining profits wasn’t there.
“What about the five per cent you just promised?”
“Zan, you almost brought down the bank with your illegally leveraged positions. The only reason you’re not in cuffs or much, much worse is because your positions are now …” he looked down “ … only forty-nine billion off-side. Also, it's clear from your miserable, fear-stricken face that you acted alone. A lot of the theatrics back then were just to make sure. I’m actually beginning to believe that it might end up the trade of the year. What a turn-around, you lucky little shit. But let’s face it; it was too much risk for the profit it might generate. And we're not in the business of making bank-busting bets to only make a few billion quid. So, Zan, you’re still out for good. The five percent is just a possibility; let’s see by tomorrow what mood I’m in. Right now it’s a foul one and will only get better once you sign your FUCKING RESIGNATION LETTER!”
What is with this guy and shouting, Zan thought as he reached forward on the desk. He slowly bowed his head, reread the short contract, closed his eyes and signed. He shakily got to his feet, stood facing Ed as if to initiate a handshake, but saw the barely disguised disgust on his thin lips and thought better of it. He turned and walked in slow motion to the door, and onto a new life beyond.
Chapter 3: Back to School
Several months passed. Zan travelled, drank, played video games, went to archery club and tried to establish, once and for all, a new fitness regime. That failed when he realised, quite simply, he had nothing specific to get fit for. His plan to form his own trading firm crumbled for a similar reason; once he sat down and did the sums he lost the appetite for more risk and stress in his life. He'd worked for over a decade with little more than a week off and, despite squandering most of it, particularly in his time with Angela; the diligence of overpaying his mortgages had saved him. The champagne years were over but after he sold his two investment properties and paid down his debts it gave him the option to concentrate on quality of life. The five percent of his last day’s trading profit - which would have been sixty million pounds - never came. Let's face it, he thought, the money would have been good for my financial freedom but not so good for my state of mind. I didn’t expect to get it anyway. Maybe I should be thankful.
Predictably, Angela didn't take to the new low-powered, slothful Zan and high-tailed it for her next banking Alpha-male. He mourned her loss for nearly a month, then slowly but surely distracted himself with the search for a new girlfriend. As time marched on he thought less and less about her; once an hour became once a day, then once a week. He ended up missing her much less than he thought. Maybe the drama of my exit from the bank has killed my spirit for good, he thought, in one of his many days of reflection afterwards. Then as time passed, slowly and insidiously, reflection became isolation and then depression.
On one of his rare positive days, Zan got the urge to walk the streets of South-East London, hoping his next adventure would come to him. He didn’t have to wait that long. On an exceptionally hot summer’s day in July 2030 Zan nursed a coffee in the local Starbucks. The window read his unemployed status and science background, and flashed an advert only he could see …
“YOUR LOCAL SCHOOL NEEDS YOU.
As you are no doubt aware, tragedy has struck the local school maths department and we have lost three of our talented maths teaching team. We cannot let their passing prevent us from carrying on the educational needs of the school. We urgently need someone with a maths/science/engineering degree to help our local children pass their ULs (University Level exams). Salary starts at …”
The salary is shocking, Zan thought; about the same as my annual spend on booze and party powder in my trading days. But it would mean being productive and doing something good for a change. The idea of being intellectually challenged but not working from dawn to dusk had a novel appeal too. He typed the contact details on his sleeve and carried on his day.
Just a week later, after the excessive form-filling of the application, the first interview proved to be tougher than imagined. There were question marks on his commitment. And, according to the deputy head, the other candidates were fully qualified teachers with long track-records. They’d been flooded with candidates due to the emotional job advert and the media attention on the tragedy. But ultimately, the school committee couldn’t spurn the marketing opportunity of hiring the ex-head of derivative trading at the world’s most famous investment bank.
So, barely a month after seeing the advert, he found himself on a Sunday night in late August 2030 anxiously preparing his only formal clothing (which had doubled as his interview suit) for his first day of teaching. He looked at himself in the mirror and felt something he hadn't felt in a long time; at peace. He looked forward to passing on what he knew to eager young minds. He felt relieved at not having to do battle with the markets while colleagues screamed at each other. Most of all, he no longer felt haunted by the past, both immediate and distant.
Despite all the high-pressure moments he’d been through, Zan was somewhat daunted by the first morning of high-school. Not dissimilar to how pupils probably felt moving up from primary school, he reflected. They gave him a gentle start; three maths classes a day in the first term. Teaching proved to be unusually varied and immersive. Standing in front of rows of naïve, expectant young faces who hung on his every word was more rewarding - and at times tougher - than he expected. Along the way, there were pupils whose insight on the subject gave him some pause for thought. That was certainly the case on April 8th 2031, some seven months after he started: -
“… so as I was saying, the idea of the normal distribution is quite simple. Much of life is random and unpredictable so the best we can do is to estimate things as having a likelihood. This likelihood has to be parameterised. By ‘parameterised’ I mean it has to have its elements defined, such as confidence level of the estimate and—”
“Sir, why don’t you just admit this is all bullshit?” The voice came from the back of the class. Zan froze. For just a fraction of a second Zan had an acute sense of being exposed. It was a momentary disquieting feeling of having been called out as a fraud and the palpable sense that not only was it true, it was only a matter of time before EVERYONE FOUND OUT.
Who am I to be teaching them, he thought, when only a few months ago all I was doing was gambling disgusting amounts of money on the markets. I was heralded as the ‘New London Whale’ in the papers because of my trading size. Wasn't that the best day of the year when I read that article? And now I’m teaching. Any anyway, I always thought children were a fucking annoyance. And teenagers? One of my best years was a decade ago, a year off after university to pork and smoke my way round the Pacific Rim. Those girls were barely older than the ones in this class weren't they? The trophies I kept; what am I, a teacher or a soulless predator? Shut up! SHUT UP! I don’t—
“collect their panties anymore!”
Zan suddenly realised his eyes were shut and had been muttering to himself in front of the whole class. Did I say any of that out loud? Shit, shit, SHIT! He slowly looked up. The uneasy quiet in the classroom made the front row shift uncomfortably in their seats. They weren’t gasping in horror, thank god, so they couldn’t have heard me. But they do think their teacher was having a mini mental breakdown. Zan grimaced. One cheeky question should not have put him through this. The kid who asked the question was, as expected, the troublemaker Clive. Zan composed himself and looked straight at him.
“OK, what do you mean by that, Clive? What makes you think you can use language like that with me? Be VERY careful what you say next …”
“Sorry sir. Well, you’re talking about life being random, right? Then you said that we fit a probability to it, so that we can guess … eh … estimate things. But isn't that what gets us into trouble in the first place?”
“What trouble do you mean Clive?” Zan cleared his throat and felt annoyed at himself for taking this little troublemaker so seriously.
“Well just look at the news,” continued Clive,