Not a lender, not a patron collecting quiet debts, but simply a door that opened, and a burden that vanished, and a child who got to live.

I knew, better than anyone alive, what that telephone call meant on the other end of the line.

I had spent a year of my life waiting for it, lying awake for it, flinching at the telephone for it.

And that, I came to understand, was the real qualification Arthur had seen in me, the one no boardroom could have taught.

The directors knew the finances better than I ever would.