Tiny Acts of Love

by Lucy Lawrie

  I knocked on the door, feeling like a nervous schoolgirl called to the headmaster’s office.

  ‘Come!’

  It was a beautiful room with wood panelling and tall Georgian windows. Set into two of the walls were full-height bookshelves. These held his volumes of the Stair Memorial Encylopaedia, and various sets of dusty old law reports, although rumour had it that if you looked hard enough you might come across the odd PG Wodehouse or John Grisham. On the far wall was a fireplace, and today a fire had actually been lit.

  I realised, remembering the clink of glasses that I’d heard on the way up the stairs, that the fire had probably been lit because Radcliffe was hosting one of his ‘evenings’ tonight. This would be for his ‘magic circle’, the ten or so of his clients from whom was extracted the bulk of the firm’s revenue.

  As I walked into the room he didn’t look up, but motioned to me to sit down on one of the chairs by his enormous mahogany desk. I sat there, breathing silently and deeply, seeing if I could relax the tension in my neck and shoulders. A strange feeling of stillness began to ebb through me. What will be, will be, I told myself, listening to the slow tick of the clock on the mantel, and the scribble of Radcliffe’s pen. I stared out of the window at the darkening Edinburgh skyline, as the afternoon crept into evening.

  After several minutes I did start to wonder whether he’d forgotten I was there, and was wondering whether it would be polite to give a slight cough, when I heard an unmistakeable snoring sound emanating from somewhere near my feet. I jumped back with a little squeal, whereupon a grey muzzle and a pair of black eyes poked out from beneath Radcliffe’s desk and viewed me reproachfully.

  I had forgotten Bailey, Radcliffe’s ageing black Labrador, who could frequently be seen padding around the office. When I’d first joined the firm, my daily duties had included feeding, watering and walking him twice a day. This had surprised me at first. (I had imagined that I would be doing the whole Ally McBeal thing from day one, appearing in the Court of Session and attending tense but dramatic all-parties meetings, if not actually yet rising to the dizzy heights of drafting contracts in taxis.) However, I soon came to enjoy these little outings with Bailey, his claws scritching along the New Town pavements in eagerness to reach Queen Street Gardens where I’d let him off the lead and let him root around looking for interesting stones.

  ‘Ahhhh . . . Cassie. Thanks for coming in to see me.’ He stood up, and started pacing the room. Bailey jumped up and capered around him, wagging his tail, perhaps thinking it was time for a walk.

  ‘Right then, so Roger White’s been in touch about this Forrester case.’

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘A new case for you. I thought you were aware of it already – a Mrs Forrester? Interesting little set of circumstances.’

  My anxiety about the dinner party rumours receded a little, to make way for a fresh flood of anxiety about this new case. I was billed, in the firm’s marketing literature, as a specialist in employment litigation, but in fact, I found this idea appalling. It had been a long time since I’d done any appearance work.

  Roger White was a magic circle client, so I’d have to be sure not to screw this up, whatever it was. Radcliffe had no doubt summoned me because he wanted to be able to announce to him, in person, that the wheels of this new case were in motion.

  Radcliffe stopped pacing for a moment and plonked himself in one of the comfy leather armchairs by the fire.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘And have you got any details about the case?’

  He gave me an odd look, vaguely surprised. ‘Well, it sounds like a constructive dismissal case, or will be. She’s alleging unreasonable treatment, but there’s no legal precedent, as far as I can see. It’s a tricky one. I’ll bet it ends up in the tribunal.’

  Oh great.

  ‘And it’s a pro bono, by the way.’

  What? He was waiving the fees? This was getting all too confusing. Who was this needy, well-deserving Mrs Forrester?

  ‘Sorry, but . . .’ I cleared my throat and tried to speak more confidently. ‘Is there a business connection between Roger White and Mrs Forrester?’

  ‘I doubt it. He referred to her as his Auntie Jean. And Auntie Jean only wants to deal with you. Something about running into you in Sainsbury’s? She says she’s got a “connection” with you.’ He winced with mild distaste at this last statement.

  Of course. Lovely Jean, who’d calmed me down in the Sainsbury’s café.

  ‘I said you’d meet her tomorrow. Would you call her to arrange a time, please?’

  Radcliffe stood up to hand me the file, and I turned to leave.

  ‘One other thing, Cassie.’

  I held my breath. Was this the part of the conversation where I got reprimanded over the Poppet debacle? I couldn’t stand it any longer.

  ‘I heard about the completion dinner,’ I said. ‘I heard about what Poppet McCrae said to you.’

  ‘And?’

  He was giving me a chance to confess.

  ‘The thing is . . . I think I’d better explain the situation to you. I mean, how Poppet got this idea.’

  Radcliffe, standing behind his desk, arms crossed, was frowning now.

  ‘You see, I was at a dinner party last week. I made up a . . . well, a scenario . . . about a . . . sort of, paranormal problems, at a building site. It was just a bit of fun. It was one of those . . . awful dinner parties . . . where you can never think of anything to say, and I was a bit drunk. It didn’t even occur to me . . . that I might be besmirching the name of McKeith’s. I’m so sorry. I was very . . . unprofessional. Please . . .’

  I couldn’t find enough breath to get the words out. My legs had gone numb. I managed to take a step back and leaned against the bookcase as a wave of dizziness swept over me. A volume of the All England case reports toppled down onto the floor next to my foot, but I suspected if I bent down to pick it up, I wouldn’t be able to get up again.

  Radcliffe sat down behind his desk and began rifling for something amongst his papers.

  ‘You made it up? That surprises me. I thought it was quite funny, actually.’

  ‘What? But you said . . . that heads would roll.’

  ‘Oh, I just said that to shut that stupid Poppet woman up. She’s irritating in the extreme.’

  ‘Oh! Goodness, that’s a relief—’

  ‘But, Cassie. I have to say, this concerns me. More than anything else, I have to question your attitude. I mean, how do you react when a client piles on the pressure? This shaking and stuttering – what’s that all about? Where’s the confidence? I just don’t see it, Cassie. It concerns me. A great deal.’

  ‘No, of course I don’t—’

  ‘Well, I think a competency review is appropriate, in light of what I’ve seen today, and your conduct in general in the last few months. You’ll be familiar with competency procedures, naturally. I want you to copy me in on all correspondence for this new case, write up file notes of all telephone conversations and meetings, and email me reports each week with an update of how things are progressing. At the end of it I’ll interview the client myself to get a viewpoint as to you personally, how you’ve come across, how you’ve dealt with things and so on. Is that all clear?’

  I could feel my face burning with shame. My job was to advise employers about how to implement such procedures. I’d never dreamed that I would be subject to one myself. As I left the room, part of my very identity seemed to fall away. What was I, anyway? A new mum? A mildly unfaithful wife? A failed lawyer? It all seemed so impossible.

  18

  Reeling from the meeting with Radcliffe, I decided to catch a bus home rather than embark on the half-hour walk in my shaky state. But the traffic was heavy and progress very slow. I stared out the window as we edged along in the dark, condensation creeping up the glass. We crossed over the Dean Bridge, and the precipitous gully of the Water of Leith a hundred feet below. We inched past elegant New Town crescents before advancing west along Queensferry Road
.

  I checked my phone – there was an email from Helen, asking how the vigil had gone. Picturing her face if I were to tell her about the ‘Drugs Don’t Work’ moment, I slid my phone back into my bag. I’d build up to telling her later. And I’d also have to tell Jonathan about the competency review. I could just imagine his face, too . . . and my mum’s, if I were ever to tell her – which I’d have to, if I lost my job.

  I focused on the November gloom outside, trying to banish the procession of disappointed faces from my mind.

  Although you never knew with Jonathan – on occasion he’d been incredibly supportive with work crises. Once, as a newly qualified assistant, I’d come home in tears, laden down with boxes of files and a hideously complicated section of a public sector outsourcing agreement to draft for a transaction that was completing the next day. A colleague had supposedly been dealing with it but had gone on holiday and dumped it on my desk with a post-it note.

  Jonathan had made cheese-on-toast and large mugs of tea, and had then gone onto the local government website and found and printed off copies of all the current regulations dealing with employment transfers from the public sector. Then, while I drafted, he flicked back and forth through the legislation double-checking that my cross-references made sense. By the time we’d finished, and crashed out on our bed, fully clothed, it was four a.m. and dawn was breaking.

  I thought wistfully of that night now, as I tinged the bell to get off the bus. At that time, I’d still believed that I was at the start of a bright and promising career; that I could rise to the top and succeed with the best of them. And Jonathan had bolstered me up in this belief from the moment I’d met him, taking a close interest in me, and all the future possibilities of me. Which had now, it seemed, wound down to this: a part-time job doing the cases nobody else wanted to do, and an impending competency review.

  I did screw up the courage to phone him – after first popping upstairs to see Sophie, who was in the bath. She was smacking the water with her hands and soaking poor Dita. I took off my suit jacket and knelt down to kiss her, leaning over the side of the bath so she could wrap her wet, pudgy arms around my neck.

  ‘Oh Jonathan,’ I said with tears in my voice, once I’d shut myself in the study with the phone. ‘Radcliffe has put me on a competency review procedure.’

  ‘Are you at home? I’ll be right there.’ The phone clicked as he hung up. If I’d announced an imminent nuclear attack, I don’t think I could have elicited a prompter response.

  ‘Right,’ he said as he walked in the door, throwing his coat and briefcase down in the hall. ‘Tell me everything.’

  Jiggling Sophie – now clean and in her pyjamas – on my knee, I told him the shameful story.

  ‘Where does he get off, treating you like that? Come on.’ He led the way to the study and fired up the computer.

  ‘Okay, so first off, he bothers you on maternity leave – in fact, you’d only just got home from hospital, hadn’t you? – insisting that you had to head up a new case. And threatening you with redundancy.’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘He has a go at you for taking the work experience student to Braid Hills, even though you were showing initiative and would otherwise have had to cancel the meeting.’

  I nodded again, while Jonathan typed.

  ‘Then he drops you in it with this Workplace Phantoms nonsense, something you clearly shouldn’t have been involved in in the first place. Then, even though you’ve had to stay up all night doing that, he insists you go into the office the next day to deliver a presentation. And then, after you’ve had no sleep for – what, thirty-six hours? – he’s surprised when you feel a bit shaky when he lays into you?’

  ‘When you put it like that . . .’

  ‘He’s an arse. Right, don’t worry, Cassie. I know you’re upset, but just take the feelings out of it for a minute. Let’s be pragmatic. All we need to do is make a note of all this. Then if he tries to get rid of you using this stupid competency review thing, you just show him this list and say you’ll take him straight to a tribunal.’

  Jonathan finished typing the document while Sophie wriggled and strained in my arms. He’d taken me aback with how supportive he was being over this. It made me want to go to him with all my other worries, place them all in his arms and let him take care of them for a while.

  ‘There!’ he announced once he’d finished typing. ‘All sorted. Hey, Cassie-Lassie, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Oh, Jonathan . . . I just feel so bad.’

  ‘I told you, none of this is your fault . . .’

  ‘Not about the competency review. About – you know. What happened. Last night.’

  Jonathan looked longingly at the computer screen, as though there might be a list he could draw up to get round the issue of my almost-infidelity.

  ‘Well,’ he said, swallowing. ‘Nothing really happened, did it?’

  ‘No, but . . .’ I let the silence speak for me.

  ‘It’s what you wanted to happen,’ he said in a low voice. ‘That’s what this is about, isn’t it?’

  ‘There was a part of me that went straight back to being twenty again,’ I said. ‘I felt so . . . I don’t know . . . beautiful; a young, free thing.’

  ‘You are beautiful,’ said Jonathan, taking my hand and kissing it. ‘I’ve not been paying you enough attention recently, I know. Why don’t we—’

  ‘It’s not that.’ Now I’d started, I couldn’t stop there. ‘I love you. But it made me . . .’

  ‘Wobble?’

  How many times had I wished that Jonathan would be the sort of husband that finished my sentences off for me? But not in these circumstances, not sentences laden with shame and dismay and truths that could barely be faced.

  ‘Yes. I suppose that’s right. It made me wobble.’

  How could I find words to say what I really felt? That the way I felt in Malkie’s arms had made me wonder whether I’d accidentally ended up on the wrong path in life. Whether that moment last night was like a door opening through parallel worlds, a way back into the life I was supposed to be leading.

  ‘Have you ever wobbled?’ I asked, suddenly suspicious about why he was taking things this well.

  He thought for a minute, a deep frown creasing his forehead. ‘Have I ever bumped into an ex-girlfriend and felt a thrill? Have I ever wondered what life would have been like if we’d stayed together? Sure. I think that happens to everyone.’

  I felt a surge of love for Jonathan. He always knew just the right thing to say, to put things in perspective, to place them in the context of a reassuring, secure normality.

  ‘But it hasn’t struck you off balance, like this?’

  ‘Not really.’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘But then, I don’t know what your relationship with Malkie was like. Maybe it was pretty special. Any relationship with you would be pretty special.’

  I was speechless at this last comment . . . couldn’t think how to respond to this generosity. But then Jonathan snapped back into take-charge mode.

  ‘Listen, you go and get Sophie off to bed. I’m going to make you a nice cup of tea, and some toast, because I don’t think you’ve eaten anything today, have you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Ah-ghu,’ said Sophie, grabbing a fistful of my hair. ‘Ah-hoo.’

  ‘Then I want you to watch EastEnders, then get tucked up in bed and get a good night’s sleep. I’ll even make you a hot water bottle, how does that sound? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think the way you’re feeling has at least something to do with lack of sleep, and low blood sugar, and the after effects of that stupid vigil thing. Then tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, we’ll see what we can do to get you un-wobbled.’

  ‘So you’re okay about it, then. Sort of.’

  ‘I’ll level with you, Cass. I don’t see this as a deal-breaker. The fact that you came right back here and told me all about it – that’s the most important thing. I think you’ll feel back to normal
soon.’

  But what if Jonathan’s un-wobbling plan, the hot water bottle and everything, didn’t work? What if I still felt the same way tomorrow? Next week? Next month?

  ‘We’re meant to be together, Cassie. We’ll get through this.’

  I nodded. Sophie nudged my chin up with her head and buried her face into my neck. She was trying to tell me she was ready for bed.

  ‘Anyway, that’s what I have to think, isn’t it? Because the alternative is pretty grim, Cass.’ His voice was crisp and businesslike now, as he turned and left the room.

  19

  I shivered as I waited for Jean Forrester to buzz me into the tenement, and it wasn’t just because of the cold, drizzly November afternoon. I’d been jittery all day at the thought of this case, with its looming threat of a tribunal hearing, and scrutiny by Radcliffe as part of the competency review. The buzzer echoed up the stone stairwell as I swung the door open and went in.

  The flat was on ground level, and Jean was already standing at her door smiling a welcome at me, drying her hands on a yellow checked tea towel. As I approached she threw the tea towel across her shoulder and held out her hands, as though I were a favourite niece come to visit.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, smiling back, feeling like a nine-year-old and forgetting to be lawyerly.

  ‘Come in!’ She gestured towards the interior of the flat with a little flourish and a nod. Her white hair looked stiff, as if it had been recently set into curls – perhaps even in honour of this very occasion.

  ‘And how’s the little one doing? Is she sleeping?’

  ‘Oh, she’s really well, thanks. The sleeping’s not great, but we’ll get there.’

  The living room hadn’t been touched in thirty years, decoration-wise. The sofa, covered in a brown, bobbly material with flecks of orange, had armrests like enormous chocolate Swiss Rolls perched on either end. In a matching chair, drawn up close to the old-fashioned gas fire, sat Gerry, dressed in smart trousers and a neatly pressed blue shirt.