A Perfect Obsession (5 page)

Compared to Leo, Charles was a paragon. Sweet, decent, loving and reliable. What diabolical law ordained that one could love hopelessly without any effort, but find it so hard to return total adoration? It was perverse.

Still, it was no use thinking about it. She was happy with Charles, and there was no way that she and Leo would ever have worked. She must approach Leo’s involvement in this Lloyd’s case with complete equanimity and professionalism. She would call him tomorrow, and try to take no special pleasure in it.

The court rose at five. By the time Leo had finished discussing the case with his instructing solicitor and reviewing the timetable of events for the following day, it was quarter to six.

‘How do you feel it’s going?’ asked Sarah, as they crossed to the Temple from the Law Courts. Dusk had already fallen, and the twinkling lights of rush hour traffic stretched the length of the Strand.

‘Hard to tell. We should win, but I expect the other side to make a meal out of the fact that our clients’ P&I club didn’t tell their clients’ club that they were going to pursue an indemnity claim against the owners.’ He glanced at Sarah. ‘What do you think? You’ve been a pupil for six months now. Should be able to make some sort of an assessment.’

Sarah gave him a cool little smile. ‘The trouble is, whenever the great Leo Davies is on his feet and talking, it’s
hard to see how the other side can possibly win.’

‘Do I detect a note of irony? Remember, at my time of life I require flattery to be delivered with some modicum of sincerity.’ At the gateway to Middle Temple Lane, Leo stopped. ‘Do you know, the last thing I feel like doing is going back to chambers. There’ll just be a stack of telephone notes and other things to deal with. Why don’t we go for a drink until all the solicitors have safely shut up shop?’

Sarah nodded. ‘Suits me.’

They walked back along Fleet Street to Bouverie Street, then down to an out-of-the-way pub at the end of an alleyway, once busy with the rumble of printers’ lorries, now, since the defection of the newspapers from Fleet Street, silent and deserted. There were very few people in the pub. Leo bought drinks and they sat at a table tucked away in a corner. Leo stretched out his legs and smothered a yawn.

‘Tired?’ asked Sarah.

‘I’m always tired these days,’ sighed Leo. ‘Pressure of work. I suppose I’m taking too much on. That’s why I didn’t particularly feel like going back to chambers to face it all after a day in court.’

‘Why do you work so hard? You can’t need the money.’

Leo took a sip of his whisky and reflected on this. He set his glass down. ‘If you want the truth, it’s probably so that I don’t have any time left to reflect on what a fuck-up I’ve made of my personal life.’

Sarah hadn’t been prepared for such candour. While she had already calculated that, in her plan of campaign to marry Leo, it would first be necessary to find her way
to the most vulnerable and private part of his being, she hadn’t expected an opportunity to present itself so suddenly.

‘I thought those things didn’t matter to you. Relationships. Feelings. When I first met you, you seemed to have your life nicely sorted out – sex was sex, business was business. People were a matter of calculation.’

‘I suppose that’s how it was, once upon a time.’

‘I always liked that way of thinking. Take your pleasure where you can, don’t make any emotional investment, don’t expect anything in return.’

‘Oh, dear – did I teach you that?’

‘Somewhat. As a philosophy, I’ve found it’s always worked quite well. I hate it when people start wanting things, expecting time and attention.’

‘There was a time I thought it could work like that. I think things changed last summer.’

‘With that boy?’ Jealousy flared in Sarah. ‘I’d have thought that would teach you to stick to your philosophy, and not let feelings get in the way of having a good time.’

Leo was silent for a few moments, then asked, ‘Have you ever been in love?’

Sarah sipped her wine. ‘Of course. Hasn’t everyone? How do you think I became the person I am? I won’t ever make that mistake again.’ Even now her mind shied away from herself at seventeen, that first love, the pain and misery.

‘What an odd thing to say. In my experience, it just makes people hungry for more of the same, no matter how
miserable the experience. But, as you say, you’re a cynical young thing. Maybe it has something to do with age. It’s easier to live for yourself when you’re young.’ Leo gazed reflectively at his glass. ‘At my age, love just leaves you feeling more and more vulnerable.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re worried about a lonely old age.’

‘Perhaps I am.’

‘Come off it, Leo. That summer at Stanton, I didn’t know anyone with a busier social life. Look at you now. High-earning silk, unattached, good-looking, all that bullshit – you must still be in heavy demand.’

‘Oh, yes – there’s all that. Somehow, it’s lost its appeal. I don’t want to go to endless dinner parties and God knows what else. It gets to eleven o’clock and I just want to go to bed.’

‘What? With a cup of Horlicks and a good book?’

Leo smiled. ‘Something a little more interesting than that, perhaps. But the social circuit leaves me cold. I get tired of the different faces, the talk, the inconsequentiality of it all. The desperation – it’s palpable. I can see the attraction of having someone – something … stable, settled.’ He drained his glass. ‘Maybe it’s all to do with Oliver. Having children changes you.’

‘I wouldn’t know. And I don’t intend to find out.’

‘You should. It’s worth it.’

‘Really?’ Sarah regarded him with interest. ‘Would you like more children?’

Leo hesitated before replying. ‘I might. I don’t know. It seems a rather unlikely scenario at the moment.’

‘Another?’ she asked, picking up his glass.

Leo nodded, reaching into his breast pocket for his cigar case.

When Sarah came back to the table with the drinks, Leo was smoking thoughtfully. ‘So tell me,’ he said, ‘what do you intend to do with your young life? Your pupillage ends in summer. What then?’

‘I don’t know. I’m afraid my heart really isn’t in the commercial bar. Too much like hard work. In fact, anything which involves getting up at half past seven in the morning is a very unattractive prospect. The past six months have been bad enough.’

‘If you don’t like law, why did you choose it as a career?’

‘Oh, I don’t mind
law.
As an intellectual discipline, it’s all right. It’s just the idea of getting a job that I don’t like.’

‘You’ve got a job. God knows we pay you a small fortune for the privilege of being a pupil. It wasn’t that way in my day, I can assure you. Pupils paid their pupil-masters.’

‘Leo, you sound positively Dickensian this evening. You’re not
that
old, you know.’

‘I suppose not.’ Leo smoked in silence for a few moments, then said, ‘That was the chief problem with Joshua, though. Maybe that’s why I harp on it.’

‘What – your age?’

‘The generation gap. I thought it didn’t matter. Of course, it was the reason the whole thing was a non-starter. His interests weren’t mine. Music, films – you name it. As for his friends …’

‘The truth is, no man is ever likely to provide you with the kind of relationship you want. Not of that age, anyway. They’re all on the take. If it’s stability you’re after, stick to women.’

Leo chuckled. ‘Like you, you mean?’

‘Why not? The generation gap, as you put it, never seems to have troubled us.’

‘Hmm.’ Leo narrowed his eyes. ‘That’s very true. But then, our association has been largely physical and occasional.’

‘Not always. Take this evening, for example.’

It was hard to deny. He liked her company. She knew so much about him; he never had to be on his guard. One way or another, Sarah had become a part of his life. An irritating one, on occasions, but admittedly a distractingly pretty one. He felt a familiar stirring in his blood, a sexual quickening, as their eyes held one another’s.

‘Are you trying to tell me something?’ Leo blew out a haze of cigar smoke and smiled quizzically at her.

‘Not at all. Now, are you going to buy me another drink?’ Sarah had a very shrewd idea of the right point at which to turn things and move away.

‘Very well,’ sighed Leo. ‘It’ll have to be the last. I ration my intake quite carefully these days.’

When he returned with the drinks, Leo picked up where they had left off. ‘Anyway, you didn’t finish telling me what you intend to do with your future. If you don’t want to stay at the Bar, what else had you in mind?’

‘I don’t know. Make some suggestions.’

‘You could join one of the P&I clubs, I suppose. They like bright young barristers.’

Sarah sighed. ‘Nine to five in the City.’

‘Can’t think of anything else, short of switching over and becoming a solicitor.’

‘No, thanks.’ Sarah drank her wine. ‘There must be alternatives to work.’

‘Such as?’

She smiled. ‘Maybe I’ll find a rich man and marry him.’

‘Good luck.’ Leo knocked back the rest of his Scotch and glanced at his watch. ‘Come on, I have to make tracks. I’ve got some papers at home that I must read before Friday, and I won’t get much of a chance tomorrow.’

They walked back up the alleyway in silence, and stopped on the corner. ‘Don’t you have anything to pick up from chambers?’ asked Leo.

Sarah shook her head. ‘I took my things over to court. I’ll just go straight home from here.’

‘Right.’ Leo nodded. Sarah thought she knew what was coming next. ‘Listen,’ added Leo, ‘I have to do some work on those papers, but why don’t you come back with me, make us both some supper while I read them, and then …’

She smiled and lifted a finger to stroke the side of his face, once. ‘It’s a lovely idea, Leo, but somehow I don’t think so – not tonight.’

It wasn’t what he had expected, and he felt surprisingly disappointed. Sitting in the pub with her, the prospect of having her company for the rest of the evening, and then the night, had seemed a pleasurable one. He nodded. ‘Right. Right, OK … Do you need a cab?’

‘No, thanks. I’ll walk down to Temple tube. Bye.’

She turned and walked away, and after a few seconds she heard the sound of Leo’s footsteps dying away in the other direction. She pulled up her collar and snuggled it around her face. That had been just right, she thought. Perfect. It
was the first time, ever, that she had said no to Leo. In the past, she’d had nothing to gain by playing hard to get. That had all changed now.

On Wednesday evenings Felicity went to visit Vince in the remand centre at Belmarsh. These were depressing occasions. Felicity always started off trying to be cheerful, but it was impossible to counter the gloom generated by Vince. Not that Felicity could blame him. Even if the police dropped the murder charge to manslaughter when his case came to court, as Vince’s solicitor assured him they would, what was the best he was looking at? Four years, possibly five. Vince would be the first to admit that he was no saint, he tended to get into fights and other kinds of bother, but that it should all end like this was to him the most blatant injustice. All right, the guy had died, but he hadn’t meant him to. He’d been unlucky. Fallen down and hit his head. How could they put him away for something he’d never meant to do, saying he’d killed a guy when that wasn’t the way it had been at all? He hadn’t killed him. The bloke had kicked his bike. He’d hit him, and the bloke fell down. He was unlucky. They were both unlucky.

On Felicity’s early visits to the remand centre after Vince’s arrest, it had been all he could talk about, the unfairness of it, how he hadn’t meant to, they couldn’t convict him of murder, that wasn’t bloody justice … until she was weary of hearing it. Then after a couple of weeks his invective against Fate and the police had stopped, and a kind of sullen passivity took its place. Sometimes conversation was hard. There were even occasions when it seemed to Felicity
that Vince was deliberately trying to take everything she said the wrong way, so that he could argue with her. She couldn’t fathom the growing resentment that she detected in his manner each time she visited. She told herself that she still loved Vince, and that she would see it through with him, but there were times when she wondered if he even wanted her to. The baby she had lost was never mentioned. Felicity told herself that she didn’t blame Vince – though, if he hadn’t been drunk and argumentative, she would never have had that fall … She had to convince herself it was for the best, really, otherwise she would have been stuck with a baby, no job, and Vince on remand. Not a happy thought.

That evening she sat at one of the Formica-topped tables in the big room where visits were conducted, and waited for a warder to bring Vince through, hoping he might be in a better frame of mind tonight. But Vince only gave Felicity the bleakest of smiles when he came in. He sat opposite her, hands flat on the table.

‘Hi,’ said Felicity. ‘Happy Valentine’s Day.’

‘Right.’

‘So – how are you doing?’

Vince shrugged. ‘Saw my solicitor today. She reckons my case might not come on till June. That didn’t exactly do me a lot of good, hearing that.’

‘That’s another four months!’

‘Yeah, I don’t need you to tell me that.’ He sighed and ran his hands through his shoulder-length dark hair. ‘Anyway, tell me what you been up to.’

Felicity talked for a while about chambers, and told him about a film she had been to see the weekend before. She
always racked her brains before coming, trying to conjure up interest in her humdrum existence, anything to keep him amused.

‘Who did you go to the film with?’ asked Vince.

‘Maureen.’

‘Oh, yeah? Still not got herself a bloke, then?’

‘No.’

‘Sure it was just you two? No guys?’

Felicity said nothing for a moment. She hated this. ‘It was just me and Mo.’

‘Yeah, yeah …’ Vince drummed his fingers on the table. ‘Get any valentines, then?’

She felt herself flush instantly. A dead giveaway. Why did he always make her feel like she’d done something wrong, like she had something to hide? Because he was convinced she was seeing someone else while he was on remand, that was why. It was almost like he wanted her to be. She couldn’t lie. Vince could read her like a book, and she could feel her cheeks still tingling. She tried to sound diffident. ‘Yeah. Just the one. I thought it might have been from you.’