Chapter 85
Maximum Speed
The Dreamer was dumbfounded. ‘You just carried on? You didn’t slow down your life … even after all that?’
‘I sped up, if anything. I had mistaken being caffeinated and adrenalised with being alive. I had mistaken an addiction for purpose. There was no balance. I got greedy. The old gain, gain, gain. Our strategy became one of takeovers … We went hard on the discounts … We got into trouble with local booksellers because we were moving next door to them and taking their customers. I felt a kind of calm when competitors closed down, never thinking of what that meant to people’s lives.
I wanted a world of no competition, no variety.
Just Budd Books everywhere, my name on everything.
I’d totally lost what I was in this for and it was as far away from Agnes Bagdale’s original shop as it was possible to be.
I was Thomas and Ebenezer together at times …
But a new era had dawned. And there were no punishments for greed. Only rewards.’
Something caught his eye through the window: Wilbur – suited, with slicked-back hair – on stage at the Excellence in Business Awards at the Metropolitan Hotel on Park Lane in London, forgetting to mention Maggie in his speech, while she sat on a table next to his empty chair, trying not to worry about the lump she had found.