A Million Dreams

by Dani Atkins

  13

  Izzy

  ‘Okay, so you have to imagine it when I’m ten pounds lighter and wearing industrial strength magic knickers.’

  I looked up as the changing cubicle curtain was drawn back and Maggie stood before me in yet another dress.

  ‘Hmm… nice,’ I said, with the same tepid enthusiasm I’d given the first three outfits.

  ‘You don’t like any of them, do you?’ asked Maggie, sounding despondent. ‘I’m never going to find a dress for Jonathon’s wedding.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘They all look great, it’s just… I’ve got a bit of a headache, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, sweetie, you should have said,’ cried Maggie, her eyes already searching for her handbag. ‘I think I’ve got some pills with me.’

  She was so lovely, and I felt like the worst kind of friend by lying to her. ‘That’s okay, I’ve already taken some.’

  I hadn’t wanted to come on this shopping expedition, even though I’d agreed to do so weeks ago. ‘I don’t want to go,’ I’d told Pete, sounding very much like Noah on the first day of a new school term. ‘I don’t want to be apart from him, not even for a minute.’

  Although Pete’s eyes had been sympathetic, his voice had been firm. ‘We can’t do that, Iz. We’ve got to carry on as if everything is absolutely normal. If we don’t, he’ll realise something is up. I’m going to take him swimming this afternoon, the way I’d planned, and you’re going to go shopping with Maggie.’

  So here I was, in a top-end department store, probably ruining what should be a wonderful experience for my friend. ‘Try the blue one on again,’ I said, forcing myself out of my private world of despair. Maggie plucked the silk dress from the hook, but there was concern in her eyes as she pulled the curtain shut again.

  ‘I really think this might be the one,’ she declared a few minutes later, pirouetting like a jewellery-box ballerina in front of the mirrored walls of the changing rooms.

  ‘You look lovely,’ I said, a lump forming in my throat at the delight on my older friend’s face.

  ‘Hey,’ she exclaimed. ‘What’s up, honey? You’re not meant to cry when you see the mother-of-the-groom’s dress – unless she looks bloody terrible, of course.’ There was a pause, which I realised too late was when I was supposed to laugh. ‘You wait, in no time you’ll be doing this for Noah. People always talk about how hard it is for dads giving their daughters away, but what about us mums giving away our sons?’

  She didn’t know – how could she? – that her words pretty much encapsulated the fear coursing through me like a virus. For a moment she thought I was laughing, but her smile faltered then froze as she realised the sounds she could hear were sobs.

  ‘Oh my God, Izzy. What is it? What’s wrong?’

  I shook my head, but could already feel the truth rising up in my throat, like something my body needed to purge. Maggie wriggled out of the silk dress with the speed of a quick-change artist. ‘These can wait for another day,’ she declared, with scarcely a backward glance at the dresses she had yet to try on. ‘We need tea. And we need it right now.’

  Maggie spotted a vacant corner table in the department store café and parked me there while she headed for the counter. She returned a few minutes later carrying a laden tray. Without bothering to ask if I wanted it, she passed me one of the two enormous slices of chocolate cake she’d bought.

  ‘Sod the dress,’ she said, spearing a mouthful onto her fork. ‘I’ll just buy the next size up.’ She poured our teas, disposed of the tray, and then looked across at me expectantly.

  Maggie never finished her cake, and anyone who knew her even half as well as I did would agree that nothing could have illustrated her shock more than that.

  ‘When did all this happen?’

  ‘Yesterday. Last night.’

  ‘And Noah knows nothing about it yet?’

  I shook my head vehemently. ‘I don’t want him to ever know. Hell, I don’t even want to know about it.’

  ‘You can’t be like that,’ Maggie said, with just the right amount of best friend bossiness. ‘I know this has come out of nowhere and knocked you off your feet, but you have to come back swinging now, because you can bet your life that’s what the other woman is going to do.’

  The last mouthful of tea changed its mind about settling in my stomach, and for a moment I panicked that I was going to disgrace myself among the Saturday afternoon well-to-do shoppers. Maggie with her razor-sharp instincts and unerring practicality had gone straight to the heart of the problem. Somewhere out there was another woman, another mother, who believed her claim on Noah was stronger than mine. I could roll myself into a ball, like a terrified hedgehog, or I could stand up and prepare myself for a fight.

  Maggie’s head dipped in an approving nod as she saw me sit up a little taller in my chair, my bowed shoulders subtly straightening out.

  ‘So the first thing you need is a good lawyer. One who’s ballsy, not afraid to take on a tough case, and willing to work cheap. Do you have anyone in mind?’

  I shook my head, pretty certain I wasn’t going to find anyone matching that description while scouring through Yellow Pages.

  ‘No matter,’ continued Maggie, smiling broadly and suddenly looking very pleased with herself. ‘I happen to know just the person.’

  *

  ‘Here?’ questioned Pete, wincing at the throb of heavy metal music pulsating from the open doorway of the record shop we’d pulled up alongside. ‘Are you sure?’

  I checked the number above the door and saw it matched the one written on the piece of paper in my hand.

  ‘Her office is on the fifth floor,’ I said. Our eyes travelled in tandem from the dimly lit interior of the ground-floor shop, up the facade of the small office block. It had to be said, the upper storeys didn’t appear a great deal more promising. The building had the look of a place where you’d expect to find boards nailed over the windows, and ‘Keep Out’ signs hammered across the entrance.

  ‘This does not look like the kind of place a hot-shot lawyer practises from,’ Pete declared, giving the shop one last dubious look before manoeuvring effortlessly into a parking space I’d have sworn was too small for his car.

  Once out of the vehicle, the area didn’t look any more inviting. Pete locked his car, and fondly patted its bonnet, as though he very much doubted it was still going to be there when we emerged from the building.

  Although we didn’t have to go through the record shop to reach the block’s upper levels, the steady throb of music still followed us as we walked around the perimeter and found a second entrance. The door swung to a close behind us, leaving us in a small airless hallway, which housed two unappealing options. The narrow lift door looked no wider than a broom cupboard so we turned towards the shadowy staircase, ignoring the fact that it didn’t appear to have been swept or vacuumed in quite a while.

  Somewhere between floors two and three, Pete paused in our climb to ask: ‘I don’t suppose Maggie happened to mention how long her niece has been a lawyer, did she?’

  I stopped, grateful for the chance to catch my breath. Must exercise more, I mentally promised myself. ‘No. She didn’t. But she did say she was very good at her job. Graduated at the top of her class, I think. She worked for one of the big companies after qualifying but has now decided to set up on her own.’

  Pete’s smile was weak.

  ‘You can’t judge her abilities purely by the state of this building. It’s probably a statement location. You know, sort of hipster.’

  ‘I’m not even sure I know what that means. I just want an incredible lawyer, one who knows her stuff and can make this whole damn mess go away.’ Me too, I thought silently, too winded by the stairs to speak by the time we finally reached the fifth floor.

  There were only two offices on each storey. The door to one of them was propped open, revealing a room that might recently have been visited by the bailiffs. It was stripped bare of everything except a single l
andline telephone, sitting in the middle of the paint-splattered floorboards.

  With matching nervous expressions, we turned towards the second door. It was hard to tell whether the glass panel was opaque or just covered in a film of dust. Most of it was hidden anyway behind a piece of white A4 card with Francesca Burrows, Lawyer printed on it. It was stuck to the door with four blobs of Blu-Tack.

  ‘This must be the place,’ I said in a tone that strived for chirpy, but didn’t quite make it.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re probably right,’ murmured Pete, lifting his hand to rap on the panel.

  Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised by the slight, spiky-haired young woman who ushered us into the office, given the unconventional choice of location. My first thought on seeing the girl standing before us in her music festival T-shirt and ripped jeans was that she probably worked in the shop downstairs. But then she thrust out her hand.

  ‘Hi. You must be Izzy and Pete.’

  If I was a little slow in returning the gesture, she didn’t appear to notice. Her handshake was warm and surprisingly firm, causing the multitude of silver rings on her fingers to leave tiny impressions on my skin when we were done.

  She had the most unusual colour eyes, blue-violet like a Siamese cat, and as I looked into them I recognised the resemblance to the fresh-faced girl I’d often seen in Maggie’s family photographs. She’d certainly changed a lot since the last snapshots had been taken.

  The young lawyer turned to Pete, beamed broadly, and then repeated the handshake, as she asked: ‘Not quite what you were expecting, huh?’

  Pete and I replied in contradictory unison.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  I glared at him, but Frankie Burrows was too busy laughing to notice. A pinstripe business suit wasn’t what made you good at your job, although I suspected that was what Pete would have preferred to be seeing right now.

  ‘Come in,’ Frankie invited, motioning us further into the room. There was a desk and a filing cabinet in one corner of the office, but she led us towards a small seating area furnished with two bright orange settees that I recognised from my last visit to a well-known Swedish retailer. The building and the location might be questionable, but everything in Frankie Burrows’s sparse office was spotlessly clean and looked brand new.

  ‘It’s very nice to meet you, Francesca,’ said Pete politely.

  ‘Frankie,’ she corrected, nodding towards the settees. They creaked under our combined weight, but Frankie was so slight, she scarcely dented the one she sat down on. She was tiny, barely bigger than Noah, I thought, and we were tasking her with something enormous. Were we making a terrible mistake here? My doubts were multiplying, running away from me like escaped ponies, and I was pretty sure Pete was already mentally halfway back down the grubby staircase.

  ‘I apologise for the surroundings,’ Frankie said, waving one skinny arm in the air. There were at least two tattoos inked into her smooth white flesh. ‘You know what it’s like when you’re just starting out.’

  Pete flashed a worried glance my way. She’s too inexperienced, it said. This case is too big for her. I kept my hopeful smile pinned in place even while I reluctantly agreed with him. But Maggie had been so sure about Frankie. She wouldn’t have recommended her if she didn’t think she was up to the job.

  ‘So, it’s quite a shitty situation you find yourselves in.’

  It was an unexpected opening remark, which broke through the ice like a pickaxe. Perhaps this was the right place for us, after all. I’d given Maggie permission to tell her niece everything, and it was quite a relief not to have to go through it again, because each time I did my anxiety levels climbed a little higher up the chart. Pretty soon they’d be off the scale altogether.

  ‘So, our meeting today is kind of like a blind date,’ Frankie said, drawing her legs up beneath her, like a cat getting comfortable. ‘If you decide you’d like me to represent you, our next meeting will cover all the formal rubbish we have to go through, but today I just want us to get to know each other and talk through exactly what we’re getting into here.’

  However unconventional her office or appearance might be, I felt a sudden rush of confidence. Frankie Burrows sounded like she knew exactly what she was doing, which was certainly more than Pete and I did.

  ‘Your case against the clinic is rock solid,’ she said with a nod of her head. ‘Basically, they screwed up big time and we have their nuts firmly in a vice.’ Her language was certainly colourful and I liked the way she made no apology for it. There was a family resemblance to Maggie here that went way deeper than just the shape of her nose or her unusual-coloured eyes. ‘But I have to warn you that financial settlements have a nasty habit of dragging on and on – sometimes for years.’

  ‘The money is unimportant,’ Pete declared, a statement I felt sure our bank manager might disagree with. ‘All we care about is how this affects Noah.’

  Frankie sat back in her seat, her eyes clear, direct, and brutally honest. ‘I’m not going to bullshit you. This case is a challenge, and very hard to predict. We have to assume the biological parents are going to put forward some sort of claim for shared custody or access.’

  I swallowed, trying to ignore the taste of bile in my throat. This was our gravest fear, and hearing it coming from the mouth of someone who – I hoped – knew what she was talking about made it all seem horribly real. Pete’s hand reached out across the orange seat between us, and I gripped it hard enough to turn his fingers white.

  ‘We’ll have no legal precedents to cite,’ continued Frankie, shooting down my hopes for a straightforward conclusion with two loaded barrels. ‘We’re going to be making legal history with this one, guys.’

  The look Pete and I shared went far deeper than just concern.

  ‘We’ll need to prove to the courts that Noah’s best interests are served by staying where he is, in the sole care of the only two parents he has ever known. But until we know what the set-up is with the other couple, it’s impossible to guess what we’re up against.’

  ‘Can you do it? Can you handle a case this big?’ asked Pete, without a flicker of embarrassment at posing the question I’d been too polite to voice.

  ‘I can,’ Frankie assured him. She smiled. ‘I want this. And I can do it.’ She picked absently at one aubergine-coloured thumbnail. ‘You could say you had me at “embryo mistake”.’

  ‘Can we afford you?’ Pete asked, clearly working his way down a list of difficult questions he had mentally compiled.

  ‘More easily than you can afford anyone else, I imagine,’ Frankie batted back in reply. ‘I’ll keep the costs down as much as I can, and as you can see my overheads here are pretty low.’ We both smiled fleetingly, the way I felt sure she’d intended. ‘I’ll apply for legal aid on your behalf, but whether we’ll get it, and to what level, is impossible to guess.’ She leant forward and reached for a small notepad, scribbling down a figure on it. ‘That’s only a ballpark figure, but it gives you an idea of what it will cost taking this to the Family Courts. She watched us carefully, but we were prepared. Our eyes might have widened a little but there were no embarrassing shrieks of dismay.

  ‘Whatever it takes. However much it costs,’ said Pete quietly, and in that moment I truly don’t think I had ever loved him more. Which made it doubly ironic when Frankie cited the next potential problem.

  ‘I understand from Auntie M that you two are currently separated?’

  I flushed as if she’d uncovered a guilty secret. ‘We are,’ I admitted cautiously, as though tiptoeing barefoot across a floor of broken glass. ‘Is that a problem?’

  Her small bony shoulders shrugged revealingly. ‘It might be. It depends how dirty the other side want to play things. And of course it depends on Bio Mum and Dad’s set-up. Maybe we’ll catch a break and find out they’re divorced too.’

  ‘We’re separated, not divorced,’ enforced Pete firmly, as though clearing up the world’s bigges
t misapprehension. ‘And… and we don’t have to be.’

  My head snapped to the right to find Pete staring directly into my eyes. Frankie Burrows could have left the room at that moment and neither of us would have noticed.

  ‘Isn’t that something we ought to discuss first?’ My voice was a croaky parody of the one I usually used. But then again, Pete’s didn’t sound exactly normal.

  ‘What is there to discuss? If living apart could potentially damage our claim to keep Noah with us, then we shouldn’t be doing it anymore.’

  I’d dreamt of this moment a thousand times or more over the last nine months, but never once in any of my imagined scenarios had I pictured my husband saying those words in a solicitor’s office, in front of a total stranger.

  ‘This is probably something you guys need to discuss in private,’ Frankie interjected, looking suitably uncomfortable. ‘But I won’t deny it would be good to be starting off on a level playing field. Just let me know whatever you decide to do.’

  There was a sense of the meeting winding up now, and she’d certainly given us plenty to think and talk about. But Frankie had one more disclosure.

  ‘Before you make your decision about whether you want me to represent you, I should probably tell you that I’ve heard on the grapevine that the other party have engaged a highly respected legal firm to handle their case. But I don’t want you to think that hiring fancy fat-cat lawyers who operate out of a swanky office is going to give them even the smallest of advantage. They can hire the most expensive team of suits in the country, but that’s not what you need here. You need someone who’ll fight like a tiger to keep your boy with you. You need someone who’s not afraid to step into the ring for you, and who won’t back down – and I won’t. I’m scrappy, and that’s what you’re going to need to win this – a scrappy lawyer.’