Courting Trouble (2 page)

Steve had grunted between spoonfuls that he couldn’t make it, as he had to give a presentation at the Anna Freud Centre that evening.

My muesli-laden spoon stopped mid-air. ‘At our wedding, the celebrant should have said, “I now pronounce you man and briefcase.” You are married to your work of late, Steve.’

I waited for a response. I’d recently mentioned wanting another child, and all I’d seen of my husband since were his dark eyes glaring at me over the top of his
Psychology Today
magazine.

‘You know how you’re a shrink, Steve? Well, I think it might be time to book an appointment with yourself.’

Cue more glaring.

‘A parent must always attend their child’s school concert . . . whether you need the sleep or not,’ I joked.

Still nothing.

Working from home seemed to assure Steve diplomatic immunity from all domestic chores, and so, as usual, I made Portia’s breakfast, which she gigglingly referred to as her ‘Freud eggs’, found her sports kit, checked her homework, unpacked the dishwasher, folded the laundry, sorted the recycling and took out the rubbish, then did the school run before parking the car near Angel station and storming off to court, getting more and more steamed up on the Tube on the way . . . Which is possibly why I lost my temper with the large, grey edifice that is Judge Jaggers.

On this day, County Court 6 was the scene of a property dispute between two ex-partners. I was representing a 26-year-old minor starlet from a reality-TV show who was being sued by her ex-boyfriend for the money he’d spent on her breast enlargements. He claimed that her new boyfriend was getting all the benefit.

Judge Jaggers, who’d obviously graduated from Cambridge in Advanced Pomposity, was so blatantly dismissive of me all morning, rejecting my points of law and granting every challenge made by the claimant’s barrister, that my blood pressure was soon reaching nuclear meltdown. Just before we broke for lunch, the judge interrupted my best point about possession being nine-tenths of the law to peer down his florid nose at me and boom in a voice dripping with condescension, ‘Perhaps undertaking a refresher course at law school for a week might prove useful.’

‘This judge is about as
useful
as a solar-powered vibrator on a rainy day,’ I whispered to my acned solicitor seated behind me. ‘If Judge Jaggers were any more moronic we’d have to water him once a week.’

Impetuosity. It’s a trait I inherited from my Australian mother – the art of saying what you’re thinking
without
thinking. I presumed I’d muttered my retort to the judge’s outrageous comment in a discreet Rumpolesque aside. But judging by the machinegun-fire of laughter which erupted from the starlet, it was obviously a whisper that could be heard in the Outer Hebrides. When I’d first met my client, I’d reasoned that her survival in the reality-TV jungle (she’d beaten a fire-eating transsexual and a yodelling dwarf to win the competition) was because she could so easily escape by taking an inflatable-raft trip down the rapids on her own lips. As she laughed, the disputed property – two round, creamy breasts nestled in low-cut, pale-pink silk ruffles – began to wobble so violently I was worried they might puncture, causing her to zoom around the court like a deflating party balloon.

But my client wasn’t to laugh for long. Her merriment was quite abruptly curtailed when I lost the case and she was ordered to pay her ex £8,000 and his court costs. Even worse, the judge said he could charge me with contempt of court for calling him a moron. Even more upsetting, though, was the fact that I had lost the case to my arch-rival, Jack Cassidy.

It was the first time I’d encountered Jack since I’d graduated and been called to the Bar eight years earlier. Seeing him again, under these humiliating circumstances, I felt a strong call to another kind of bar – the one with swizzle sticks and swivel stools. (Try saying
that
when you’re pissed.)

As Court 6 drained of people and the judge harrumphed off to call my Head of Chambers to complain, Jack winked at me. ‘Well, I think Clarence Darrow can sleep soundly at night. The reason there’s a penalty for laughing in court is because, otherwise, the jury would never be able to hear the evidence . . . Still, no one can ever accuse you of being dull, Matilda. You obviously haven’t changed a bit.’

Chuckling lightly, Jack removed his springy lawyer’s wig. I looked for any change in him. His thick mop of dark wavy hair now had a tinge of silver shimmering on his temples but other than that he looked just the same. As he shrugged off his long black gown, I gave my ex a good ocular going-over. Despite the fact that he held pride of place on my top-ten list of Least Likable Men on the Planet, after Mugabe, Putin and Rush Limbaugh, my insubordinate heart skipped a beat. The man must have been taking handsome lessons: he was looking lip-moisteningly better than ever.

Since moving back to London and joining Diplock Chambers, I’d heard that women stalked Jack Cassidy with everything except a net and a tranquillizer dart. I’d also heard that he’d sold out. Once, he’d been a radical student, but he had lost his socialism along with his distinctive Yorkshire burr. I had loved his accent. It sounded like syrup on sandpaper. But the man now had pinstriped principles to match his new velvet vowels. He used to be so idealistic that everyone had presumed he’d become a human rights lawyer or go to New York to run the UN. Instead, the man had developed a talent for rushing to the defence of the winning side. He was charming, debonair, lazy; his colleagues referred to him as ‘Sir Lunchalot’.

‘Why don’t I take you out to lunch and give you some tips on how to manage your anger,’ Jack suggested, loosening a few buttons at the top of his shirt.

‘I wouldn’t need to manage my anger, Mr Cassidy, if people would learn to manage their idiocy. That judge is a misogynistic cretin. He rejected every reasonable point I made while favouring every inane argument you dredged up.’

As I shed my robes, I felt his gaze running up my legs and body. I turned to meet his eyes just as they locked on to mine.

‘Do you know the difference between a good lawyer and a great lawyer?’ Jack said to me, smiling wryly. ‘A good lawyer knows the law. A great lawyer knows the judge. Judge Jaggers is so far back in the closet, you can see Narnia, a white witch and snow. I just batted my lashes at him – in a manly way – and he was mine.’

This kind of cynicism sums up everything I loathe about Jack Cassidy . . . That and the fact that he’s seen me naked.

‘What happened to you, Jack? I . . . well,
we
all thought you were going to stride the globe, righting wrongs, liberating underdogs from their kennels . . . But you haven’t exactly taken the world by storm. I think your “storm” got downgraded to “light drizzle”.’ I picked up my stack of files. ‘
You’re
the one who should be accused of contempt of court, for the contempt with which you view your profession and your talent.’

I executed a pretty formidable flounce from the room, considering I was wearing high heels. Despite the fact that high heels make me walk like a dressage horse, I wear them in court to enable eyeball-to-eyeball contact with opposing, condescending male barristers.

‘I like your shoes, Matilda . . . Of course, the reason men created stilettos is so that women feel good lying on their backs no matter what,’ my narcissistic nemesis called after me.

Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Fall flat on your face, and the whole world laughs – whether you’ve grazed your knees and snapped one heel or not. If ever I’m a contestant on
Mastermind
, ‘Humiliating Moments Witnessed by Jack Cassidy’ will be my specialist subject. As I swivelled to zing back a stinging retort in his direction, I’d lost my balance in my stupid shoes and was now spreadeagled on the landing, halfway down the stairs.

The law of probability states that the likelihood of being watched is directly proportional to the embarrassingness of your action. Jack skipped lightly down the stairs to pick me up off the floor.

‘You would be watching, wouldn’t you?’ I grumbled.

‘Do you know what’s behind every great woman? A man checking out her peachy posterior.’ Jack winked.

I was very restrained. After all, I didn’t stuff my broken stiletto up his nose. But, gathering my scattered papers, I was beginning to feel that the whole world was against me – which was totally irrational and paranoid. I mean, Sweden is neutral, right?

‘Have a good day,’ the security guard commented as I limped by. To say I was
not
having a good day was like saying that the members of the National Rifle Association are sane, rational, peace-loving liberals. But I should have stopped then and there to strap on a bulletproof bra, because, on this particular day, fate was clearly using me for target practice. It was only October, but London was already in the grip of a deep, early winter, with the sun hanging low among the bones of the trees.

Too dejected to take the Tube, I splurged out on a taxi. Alighting near Chancery Lane, I changed back into flat shoes before trudging through the rain to my Chambers. Lincoln’s Inn was built in 1422 by churchmen, who were the lawyers of their day. This explains why the picturesque squares and cobbled courtyards resemble medieval cloisters. But the vine-entwined arbours, fragrant rose gardens and graceful, four-square sandstone buildings with their arched windows and Juliet balconies belie the cut-throat struggles that go on within these ancient walls.

Word of my morning’s performance had spread like – well, like the genital lice which no doubt plagued the pious churchmen who once practised here. My Head of Chambers asked to see me the moment I had shed my coat, gloves and hat. I’d been on probation for a while now. Because I am nothing if not an amazing businesswoman, I’d actually made a loss in the last quarter. This was mainly due to the fact that I’d taken on too much work for free. As far as my Chambers is concerned, the terms ‘pro’ and ‘bono’ should be used only when referring to a penchant for the lead singer of an Irish rock band and not when working for free on Death Row cases in the Caribbean. My breast-implant-ownership case was supposed to have been a step towards landing more lucrative cases. But Judge Jaggers’ call, threatening to report me to the Bar for unprofessional behaviour, proved the final nail in my commercial coffin.

Of course, my Head of Chambers, who has the sort of face you wouldn’t wish on a bull terrier, didn’t call it ‘getting the sack’. Mr Phibbs, which was a perfect name for a lawyer so adept at bending the truth, referred to his request that I vacate Chambers as a ‘career-alternative-slash-enhancement opportunity’ and a chance to ‘vocationally relocate’. Whatever way you looked at it, with my legal practice kaput, to continue with his euphemisms, I was now ‘economically marginalized’ and, with mortgage payments to be met, soon to be ‘under-housed’. Unless my husband started to pull his financial weight, that is. Not only was Steve into his second year of researching some academic tome which would never sell, but he’d inherited his father’s old Porsche and was spending a fortune fixing it up. He was committed to that car, in sickness and in health. I would go straight home and insist that he put his opus on hold and take on more clients. ‘You have responsibilities now,’ I would say. ‘You have an unemployed wife and a car to support!’

I was halfway out of Phibbs’s room when I turned back to throw myself on his mercy. I approached the large mahogany desk and the cold stare of its occupant in the hope of winning a stay of execution. But, if I really
had been
a spy, my code name would be ‘Bloody Idiot’, because my Head of Chambers interrupted my plea bargaining to remind me brusquely of the calibre of former members of the Inn, from Sir Thomas More and John Donne, to Prime Ministers Pitt the Younger, Disraeli, Gladstone and Thatcher . . . Was it any wonder that my boxes had to be packed? I was two months behind in Chambers rent and had until the next day to move out. A high-earning barrister who had applied from another Chambers was moving into my room forthwith.

Numb with disbelief, I descended into the fuggy air of the Tube. No more taxis for me. On Holborn platform, I just stood staring into the black tunnel waiting for the myopic eye of the train. A mouse twitched along the track. I momentarily envied his busy, purposeful little life down there in the semi-dark.

As the Tube hurtled me home to Islington, I steeled myself not to sob until I was wrapped up in the warm, protective arms of my husband. After all, the man was a professional. He knew how to cope with a person in psychological crisis. Despite everything, we had always taken comfort in each other’s arms. I’d come home hurt from the small humiliations I’d endured in court to find Stephen burdened down by patients’ complaints, and we’d somehow turn all that emotion into desire. Stephen’s office is in the front room of our tall terraced house in Cranbrook Crescent. I knew from the communal calendar we keep in the kitchen that preparation for the Anna Freud event had required him to cancel that day’s sessions – which is why I opened his closed door without knocking.

I’d always joked that psychiatry really is a terrible waste of couches. Well, my hubby obviously thought so, too, as he was putting his own couch to much more imaginative use. It was more bonkette than banquette, judging by the vigorous up-and-down motion of his pale buttocks. Stephen always said he’d married me because he admired my morals and integrity, and yet here he was, pumping away at a woman whose moral integrity couldn’t be located by the Hubble telescope. Petronella Willets had been my room-mate at college. We’d been fierce rivals at law school, vying for the highest marks, and had kept in competitive touch ever since.

When my eyeballs stopped sending SOS signals to my cerebral cortex, I relocated the power of speech. I wanted to say, ‘That’s all for today. Your allocated time is up,’ or some other aloof spoof of shrink jargon, but instead heard myself shriek, ‘What the hell, Stephen? What the fucking hell?’

I now watched in stunned disbelief as Petronella propped herself up on her elbows, her highlighted blonde hair streaming back from her face like the goddess at the prow of an invading Viking ship.