The Fix

Chapter 14 Just Keep Swimming

Just before her 16th birthday in 1501, an auburn-haired Spanish princess set sail for England, where she was betrothed to marry the king's eldest son. The journey ended on a grand country estate set within the rolling hills of Hampshire, where she met for the first time Arthur and his rather more strapping younger brother Henry. Within a year her young husband was dead, struck down by sweating sickness, and Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon were engaged to be married.

On the same grounds, dressed in a morning suit, navy tie and cream waistcoat, his blond hair uncharacteristically neat, Tom Hayes stood smiling for the cameras, one hand clasping a half-full glass of champagne, the other on the small of his wife's back. Hayes and Tighe were married in a lavish ceremony on a September Saturday in 2010, less than two weeks after Hayes was fired. The venue was the Four Seasons Hotel Hampshire, an elegantly restored 130-room Georgian manor house a short drive from the village where Tighe's family lived. After the vows, guests congregated on the estate's manicured lawns and watched the sun descend, casting a dappled light on a lake in the middle distance. Among them were Hayes's broker Noel Cryan and former RBS colleague Brent Davies. In the evening, a spectacular fireworks display lit up the night sky.

Hayes appeared happy and relaxed, but the last few days had been brutal. Three days after his dismissal, he'd handed Citigroup a letter Sarah had helped ...