Free Paper Money by Ken Follett

grammar
    school, and that was all he needed.
     
    He had flourished in the grammar school, he remembered. He had been the
    leader of the gang, the one who organized playground games and classroom
    rebellions. Until he got his glasses.
     
    There: he had been trying to remember when in his life he had felt
    despair like this; and now he knew. It had been the first day he wore
    his glasses to school. The members of his gang had been at first
    dismayed, then amused, then scornful. By playtime he was being followed
    by a crowd chanting "Four-eyes." After lunch he tried to organize a
    football match, but John Willcott said: "It's not your game." Tim put
    his spectacles in their case and punched Willcott's head; but Willcott
    was big, and Tim, who normally dominated by force of personality, was no
    fighter. Tim ended up stanching a bloody nose in the cloakroom while
    Willcott picked teams.
     
    He tried to make a comeback during History, by flicking inky paper
    pellets at Willcott under the nose of Miss. Percival, known as Old
    Percy. But the normally indulgent Percy decided to have a clamp down
    that day, and Tim was sent to the headmaster for six of the best. On the
    way home he had another fight, lost again, and tore his blazer; his
    mother took the money for a new one out of the nest egg Tim was saving
    to buy a crystal radio kit, setting him back six months. It was the
    blackest day of young Tim's life, and his leadership qualities remained
    stifled until he went to college and joined the Party.
     
    A lost fight, a torn blazer, and six of the best: he could wish for
    problems like that now. A whistle blew in the playground outside the
    flat, and the noise of the children ceased abruptly. I could end my
    troubles that quickly, Tim thought; and the idea appealed.
     
    What was I living for yesterday? he wondered.
     
    Good work, my reputation, a successful government; none of these things
    seemed to matter today. The school whistle meant it was past nine
    o'clock. Tim should have been chairing a committee meeting to discuss
    the productivity of different kinds of power stations. How could I ever
    have been interested in anything so meaningless? He thought of his pet
    project, a forecast of the energy needs of British industry through to
    the year 2000.
     
    He could summon no enthusiasm for it. He thought of his daughters, and
    dreaded the idea of facing them. Everything turned to ashes in his
    mouth.
     
    What did it matter who would win the next election? Britain's fortunes
    were determined by forces outside its leaders' control. He had always
    known it was a game, but he no longer wanted the prizes.
     
    There was nobody he could talk to, nobody. He imagined the conversation
    with his wife: "Darling, I've been foolish and disloyal. I was seduced
    by a whore, a beautiful, supple girl, and blackmailed ..." Julia would
    freeze on him. He could see her face, taking on a rigid look of distaste
    as she withdrew from emotional contact. He would reach out to her with
    his hand, and she would say: "Don't touch me." No, he could not tell
    Julia; not until he was sure his own wounds had healed and he did not
    think he could survive that long.
     
    Anyone else? Cabinet colleagues would say:
     
    "Good God, Tim, old chap--I'm terribly sorry.. and immediately begin to
    map out a fallback position for the time when it got out. They would
    take care not to be associated with anything he sponsored, not to be
    seen with him too often; might even make a morality speech to establish
    Puritan credentials. He did not hate them for what he knew they would
    do: his prognosis was based on what he would do in that situation.
     
    His agent had come close to being a friend, once or twice. But the man
    was young; he could not know how much depended upon fidelity in a
    twenty-year-old marriage; he would cynically recommend a thorough
    cover-up and overlook the damage already done to a man's soul. to HIS
    sister, then? An ordinary woman, married