The three of them looked at each other. After so many weeks of hating the very idea her adversary, Angie thought this sounded as though the Fates must be on her side at last.
Not that she’d wanted him to be hurt, of course. Or not much. But it was hard not to take it as a sign.
‘Does it mean the case will be postponed?’ she asked, trying not to let herself feel hopeful. She’d waited for this for so long it seemed mad not to want to get on with it. But as the day came closer, she was getting more and more afraid.
Greg shrugged. ‘Adjourned, not postponed, Ange. You must get the terminology right. Probably. We’ll have to find out. I’ve got all CWWM’s solicitor’s phone numbers. He must be answering one of them, even on a Saturday.’
He pushed himself up from the table, a trail of bright orange squash caught in his beard.
‘Whiskers, Greg,’ Fran said, twinkling at Angie as she added: ‘It’s always happening and I’ve sworn I’ll always tell him. Too awful to go out looking like that.’
He picked the fibres out of his beard and washed them down the sink. As he slopped out of the kitchen in his ill-fitting sandals, Angie said:
‘If it’s not adjourned, d’you really think we’ve got a chance?’
Fran took Angie’s disfigured hand and held it firmly. The head of the long blue-and-green snake tattoo that spiralled up Fran’s right arm showed beneath the raggy cuff of her yellow sweater.
‘I do,’ she said, meeting Angie’s twitchy gaze with steady confidence. ‘Honestly. Greg and I wouldn’t have gone this far with you if we didn’t.’
‘Because they could take the farm,’ Angie said, ‘couldn’t they? If we lose and they get awarded costs.’
‘In the very worst case, yes: you could lose it, love. It’s true. I’ve never hidden that from you, have I?’
Angie shook her head. ‘Somehow you don’t see things so clearly at the start. Not when you’re on fire with rage. Now—’
She clamped her lips together, staring at the chipped worktop, which still held the curling bright-orange peel from the squash. It wouldn’t be fair to Fran to collapse on her, but Angie had to explain.
‘We worked so hard for so long to keep the land in good heart, the thought of throwing it away on fees for CWWM’s sodding lawyers is—’
‘I know.’ Fran slid her hand up under Angie’s sleeve and held her forearm in a strong grip. ‘It’s why we have to fight. They killed John. And they polluted your place, maybe for decades. You’ve a
right
to damages. Lots of damages.’
‘But if we don’t win and I have to give up the farm, I risk living on charity for the rest of my life.’
‘It’s benefit, Angie.’ The warmth in Fran’s face had gone and she removed her hand. Her expression was scarily hostile. ‘Not charity.’
Angie could just imagine John’s harsh voice telling her that was a matter of opinion. She buried the thought and said: ‘I know. Of course I do. I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve always paid my way. I don’t mean—’
‘You get used to it,’ Fran said, still not smiling but looking a bit less warlike. ‘And it means you can do useful stuff like we do fighting with FADE. You could join us full time, if you wanted. We’d love to have you.’
Angie put her hand across her mouth, holding in everything she couldn’t – didn’t want to – say and tried to make her eyes offer the gratitude that was becoming harder to feel as her fears sharpened their teeth.
David was walking behind George and Jay because the pavement was so narrow here. And they were all laden with clumsy carrier bags from Borough Market. The two back views made him laugh. George, more than six feet tall, had big broad shoulders inside his Hackett’s jacket and was a bit like a giant redwood, while Jay was barely five feet three and looked extremely weedy in his tight white T-shirt and jeans. He was shivering with cold, too, which was his own fault because he’d insisted on leaving his hoodie behind when George said he couldn’t wear it up.
‘Why d’you bovver with all this crap,’ he said suddenly, ‘when you could just get a burger and chips already hot?’
David winced. Food was George’s most important thing, almost like a fetish. Criticising it was like the worst insult.
For once George laughed, shifting two of his bags from one hand to the other. He had the heaviest of all.
‘Because burgers taste vile compared with the best well-hung fillet steak,’ he said. ‘Besides I like cooking. It’s so different from my work it makes me relax.’
Jay looked over his shoulder at David with an expression on his round face that said: ‘Mad or what?’
David tried not to laugh.
‘You mean,’ said Jay in a voice that suggested he was making a huge effort to understand someone from outer space, ‘like a kind of hobby?’
‘That’s right,’ George said, pausing at the crossing while a lorry thundered past, then leading the way to the opposite pavement. ‘And there’s no need to sound so snotty. It’s a much more useful hobby than nicking things.’
David clenched his hands so tightly around the thin plastic of his carriers that they felt like knives digging into his fingers. If George was hard to tease safely, Jay was
impossible. There was a scary silence. Jay lagged so he was nearly as far behind George as David himself. Then he speeded up again.
‘You wouldn’t say that if you wasn’t so old and clumsy. You’d be out lickin’ the belly with the best of us if you could.
I
see you looking at them lobsters and wanting to stuff one up your shirt when the bloke told you how much they was.’
‘Ouch,’ George said with a laugh. ‘What a horrible boy you are.’
‘You did, though, didn’ you?’ This time when Jay looked over his shoulder at David, his face was full of glee. ‘Admit it. Go on.’
‘I admit I did have an extraordinary moment of idiotic temptation, which I had absolutely no difficulty whatsoever in resisting because I am an honest bloke with a will of steel.’
‘Yeah, and a mouth like a fucking dictionary.’
‘Don’t swear. And speed up or we’ll be late for tea.’
David followed them feeling really happy. No one else saw the things in George that Jay could see, or talked about them like this. It made life at home more interesting than usual. And a lot less lonely.
By nine o’clock that evening, Trish knew she’d read as much as she could absorb without a real break.
‘Ads
orb
,’
she said aloud in Robert’s languid patrician accent. ‘Not
abs
orb
,
Trish.’
She realised she was light-headed with overconcentration and lack of fresh air. Only one other member of chambers was still at work, so she looked into his room to warn him she was off and would leave him to lock up.
‘How’s it going? You’re taking over Antony’s stinks case, aren’t you?’
‘Going OK, I think, although I could’ve done with a bit longer to get my head round the welding of tank seams, fire protection systems, the dangers of reformulated benzene and so on.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘We’re all rooting for you, you know.’
Touched, she waved her thanks and stumped downstairs, feeling the hardness of the stone steps through her boots, and painfully aware of tight muscles she’d been clenching all day as she hung over her desk and twisted her legs around the central pillar of her chair. For once she looked forward to the lavish dinner she knew George would have cooked to welcome her back.
In the murk at the foot of the stairs a pale rectangle lay on the front-door mat. Bending down, she saw it was an envelope with her name and address typed under a heavily underlined ‘Strictly private and confidential’.
Worried, she ripped it open as she left the building and set off towards Blackfriars Bridge and home. She’d walked the route so often she didn’t need to look where she was going, and there was just enough light from the streetlamps to read the handwritten letter from David’s head teacher.
Dear Trish,
Many thanks for your generous offer to pay some of Jay’s fees. We may take you up on it in due course, but we have yet to see any signs that he could guarantee the self-discipline and effort necessary to justify our taking him into the school on a long-term basis. He knows he still has to prove himself.
I think it only fair to warn you of some of the things he’s done in the past before you commit yourself. You see, it’s not just theft and antisocial behaviour – you might expect that. There’s arson, too. He did a year in secure accommodation for setting fire to his old school. And his behaviour was even worse before he reached the age of criminal responsibility; when he was three, he was seen to do some quite serious damage to his baby sister – hands round her throat, squeezing; a few years later he set light to his mother’s clothes when she was lying insensible with drink in the kitchen. There was a stepfather at that stage. Later on, Jay was several times found to be carrying a knife into lessons.
It is, of course, a risk to have taken him into Blackfriars, but so far we have seen signs that he may have outgrown such behaviour, and he is searched each morning and evening – something he very much dislikes but accepts. There have been no knives. We are in close touch with his social worker, who is relatively optimistic. But what we now need is hard, i.e. written, evidence of the brains we as well as you have discerned in him, and some proof that he is prepared to apply them.
I’ll keep you in touch with details of his progress and of our deliberations.
Thank you, once again, for your most generous offer.
Yours ever, Jeremy
PS I have absolute confidence in your discretion and good sense, Trish, so I know I don’t have to ask you not to pass any of this on to David.
‘So why did you?’ she muttered, pausing at the crossing for the traffic lights to change. She folded the letter and slipped it back into its envelope, before carefully tucking it into her handbag. It had better go into the safe in her bedroom for complete security, she thought. Not that David ever went through her handbag, but she couldn’t leave something like this anywhere accessible to Jay.
What a relief to know he wouldn’t be there tonight! Quite apart from needing some peace after a day of cramming her brain with chemistry, she wanted time to get rid of the mental pictures of Jay’s drunken mother lying at his mercy on the kitchen floor.
Trish had reached the foot of the iron staircase that led up to her flat. She knew the big airy loft still felt soulless to George, just as his cosy Fulham house stifled her, which was why they’d kept both. He spent most weekends in Southwark with her and David and sometimes week nights too. But he liked to be able to retreat to his much-loved cottagey refuge sometimes.
She no longer fretted over the eccentricity of running two expensive places within a few miles of each other. They could afford it these days and their relationship worked so much better than many of their friends’ marriages that they were both reluctant to take any risks with it.
In the end they’d probably pool their resources and buy somewhere in a more conventional area of London than this dark narrow street of redundant warehouses and industrial buildings. But the time hadn’t come yet.
Still, she wouldn’t have minded changing the approach to her eyrie. The iron staircase, more like a fire escape than anything else, seemed much steeper than usual and the thought of getting herself up it was daunting. She hadn’t
been this tired for years. It must be a result of the lax way she’d lived over the months since taking silk. Once she’d been able to work all night and still skip up these stairs for a bath and breakfast before turning round to go straight into court.
She’d soon be back in training, she told herself, as she set one foot on the first step and pushed herself up off the ground. All her muscles shrieked in protest. A foretaste of middle age. She made sure she didn’t cling to the handrail or actually pull herself up.
Wafts of delicious smells surrounded her when she eventually reached the front door. Inside, firelight flickered on the high walls. David was stretched out on one of the black sofas near the great open fireplace, wearing his navy towelling dressing gown over the red pyjamas, reading, with the earpieces of his iPod firmly stuck in his ears. He must have decided to have his shower before eating, to compensate for her late return.
Conscience-stricken at the thought of keeping him hungry, she could still smile at the sight of his hairy legs and envy him his lifetime’s freedom from waxing and razoring. Maybe one day genetic engineering – or even evolution – would result in perfectly hairless female bodies.
Yes, she thought, and maybe there’ll be self-cleaning houses too and no-calorie clotted cream.
She closed the front door and double locked it, kicking off her slouchy boots and draping her coat over the back of a chair. She couldn’t face another climb to put them away in her bedroom yet. The sounds of an earnest arts discussion on Radio 4 issued from the kitchen until the voices were suddenly muted.
‘That you, Trish?’ called George.
‘Safe and sound. What’s cooking? It smells great.’
‘Sauce for the fillet steaks: mush, dried mush, butter, wine, garlic and a soupçon of thyme. We went to Borough Market today and loaded up. Now you’re back I’ll cook the steaks.’
‘At last!’ said David, pulling out his iPod with a theatrical sigh.
He looked up at Trish and gave her the wary smile that was reserved for days when he felt he ought to apologise for something but didn’t want to lower himself by putting it into words.
She ruffled his shaggy hair and bent down to kiss his head. To her distress he winced, as though she’d actually hurt him, then shuddered:
‘Ugh, Trish! I’m not a baby.’
‘I know,’ she said, feeling better. ‘But I need comfort after the kind of day I’ve had while you’ve been swanning about having fun. Borough Market indeed! I suppose you ate lots of those fab sandwiches.’