by Jo Kessel
Adam, it turns out, had recently met him. They’d been in negotiations regarding a series on famous cars. As someone with a genuine interest in flash motors, Scott Richardson seemed the perfect man to front the show. Adam had groaned when I told him what had happened. Said they probably wouldn’t be able to use him for the programme now. Adam said he’d quite liked him, that he’d been surprisingly down to earth. Adam and I normally perceive people similarly, but not in this instance. It’s too soon for a complete character assassination, but there’s something about him I just can’t put my finger on, despite the slick smoothness and charisma. I disengage from the tight grip of his hand and motion for him to take a seat. However I feel about this man, my job is to defend him, pure and simple.
“I don’t like wasting time and I don’t like lies,” he says, as soon as we’ve sat down. “So tell me, straight down the line, could I go to prison for this?”
His directness catches me off guard. I’d been about to offer liquid refreshments.
“Are you guilty?”
He locks his eyes onto mine and holds them.
“No,” he says, trying to stare me out.
I nearly always have an inner gut feeling as to whether a client is telling the truth, but in this case I don’t. It’s not that I DON’T believe him, it’s just that there’s so much poise, such a hard veneer. He’s the coolest of customers. I pick up Scott’s dossier, show it to him and then gently toss it back on my desk. I clear my throat, shift my body to ramrod straight, meet him bang in the eye with my gaze.
“I’ve read this through several times now, but I want to hear from you exactly what happened, Mr Richardson.”
“Scott,” he corrects, then starts to explain.
***
Scott Richardson, it transpires, has been having a yearlong affair with an older married woman called Elizabeth Simons, daytime controller at the network. She’s moneyed, successful and very beautiful. To quote, she’s got Grace Kelly’s regality, Jaqueline Bisset’s sexuality. They almost always see each other in Scott’s Notting Hill flat, but on the night in question, the husband in question (a man called Rupert) was meant to be away on business, so Elizabeth invited him to her marital home. They were in bed when Rupert made an unexpected appearance. Scott wasted no time in throwing his clothes on, ran out the house, got in his silver Jag XJ. But Rupert was quick to follow, chasing him in his black Mercedes convertible down a tight-winding single-lane B-road with a 30 mph limit. To quote Scott again, it was surreal, like playing an arcade video game. Rupert was driving like a lunatic and kept ramming into Scott’s bumper at what must have been about 70 mph. Scott put his foot on the accelerator, trying to get away, but Rupert overtook. He must have been going about 120 mph because Scott remembers seeing his speedometer needle flicking around 100 mph. Anyway, after Rupert had overtaken him he lost control of his Merc and swerved off the road onto the grass verge, crashing into a tree about ten meters further down. Scott stopped, called an ambulance and cooperated fully with the police.
“So yes,” Scott finishes. “I was driving dangerously and yes, I did blow the speed limit, but only because I was trying to get away. So what do you think? How bad does it look?”
“Well,” I delay, “at the moment it’s your word against his, but the police are appealing for eyewitnesses to come forward. We’ll also need to check out any CCTV cameras on that stretch of the road. Perhaps there’ll be something there that can help.”
“What are you saying here?”
His tone is politely impatient. He wants answers.
“Well, if the judgment goes against you I think, considering you’ve got a clean record and considering Rupert’s injuries aren’t disastrously bad, that the most likely scenario is a year’s disqualification or points on your licence plus a substantial fine. I suppose a suspended sentence isn’t impossible, but we’ve got to be more positive than that. I reckon we’ve an 80% chance of winning, but I’m trusting you to tell me EVERYTHING.”
“Do you think this will ruin my career?”
“I’m no expert in your field, but I think we should be positive about this too Mr Richardso- sorry, Scott.” I force a twinkle to my eye. I’m overreacting. How scary can a pretty boy TV Presenter be? “Perhaps this might MAKE your career!” Bill Clinton and Monica, Brad Pitt and Angelina – it didn’t seem to do their long-term reputations any harm.
He pulls a suave, knowing smile, clearly pleased with the answer.
***
I’d been looking forward to an evening in with Adam, but Kayla called just as I was leaving chambers, said she really wanted to see me, could she come round later. And when your identical twin says she really needs to see you, you say yes, even if part of you wants to say no. It’s instinctive. We’re always there for each other, at a moment’s notice. I would expect the same in return. Occasionally I think it pisses Adam off. He loves her, don’t get me wrong, but she’s a touch airy-fairy for him. He agrees that whilst in looks we’re two peas in a pod, in certain aspects of our personalities we’re like chalk and cheese.
“I wonder where she’s got to?” I glance at our huge wall-mounted clock in the lounge. It’s a huge flat blue circle with a silver frame and roman numerals. Adam bought it from Heal’s and then we spotted it as a prop in some quirky BBC4 drama about a load of lawyers living together. Serendipity! It’s a quarter to nine and she was meant to be here at eight. I sit down on the chaise longue, start plumping up the burgundy silk cushions impatiently. Upholstered in beige, with a dark wood Louis XIV frame and fancy, ornate legs, it’s my most glorious antique extravagance.
There are two sharp knocks at the door. When I open up, I’m taken aback. Kayla’s eyes are blood-shot and carrying heavy black bags.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she says.
“It’s not a problem,” I reply.
“No, really,” she repeats. “I’m sorry. I’m late.”
***
We knocked the kitchen through into the dining room when we bought the house, creating a nice, big living space. The wooden floor, the original in-built dressers painted a pale blue and its French windows looking onto the small back garden with an American style veranda decked with hammock and chimes make this room a firm favourite with almost everyone. The work area, displaying no sign of the earlier spaghetti with rocket and basil carnage, is what I would call ‘rustic chic’, farmhouse style. Kayla follows me. She loves this room, how she always feels a sudden sense of calm when she enters, but she doesn’t look so good now as I turn to face her.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“I’m sorry. I’m late,” she says yet again.
I’ve an instant gut feeling what she’s saying, by her emphasis, but hope I’m wrong.
“Are you ok?”
Silence.
“Speak to me Kayla.”
Long silence.
“I’m pregnant.”
Just as I thought.
“Are you sure?”
My tone is even, although I’m shell-shocked. I’ve been hoping to break this kind of news for months and presume that for Kayla it was an accident.
She fishes in her pocket, pulls out a used pregnancy test stick, with matching blue lines going down two little windows.
“How many weeks?”
“I don’t know. Six, seven.”
“I presume its Vijay?” I ask, although it doesn’t add up.
She nods, pursing her lips in a rueful grimace.
“But you said he didn’t ejaculate.”
“Well, he’s obviously no tantric expert,” she smiles slightly at the absurdity of our conversation. “Accidents happen.”
“So what are you going to do?” I whisper.
“I know you’re the wrong person to be talking to about it, but I can’t, I can’t.”
My fingers are interlocked, playing each hand like a fast scale on a piano, over and over.
“I can’t,” she repeats quietly. “I don’t have what you and Adam have. What would I d
o with it? How would I cope?”
I want to say you should have used protection. I want to say a lot of things, but I don’t, because it’s her life, it’s her choice and I have to respect that.
“But you’re 30,” is all I manage.
The subtext is that by the time you’re 30, you CAN cope, you should be responsible, but Kayla would probably argue that for her NOT having the baby was being responsible.
“Twenty-nine,” she tries to lighten the mood.
It’s our 30th in a couple of weeks. We’ve both been very much aware of it.
“Kayla, you’ve got to think about this.”
“I’ve carried this with me for a week Ali, hoping it would go away. I’ve done a new pregnancy test every day, hoping the last one was faulty and every day I got the same result. And you know what the sad thing is? I feel great. I feel really, really good. Physically, I mean, not mentally. But I’ve made up my mind and there’s nothing you or anyone can do to change it.”
“What about Vijay?”
“What’s he going to do about it? It wouldn’t make a difference.”
We stand staring at one another, barely blinking, for at least a minute. Kayla breaks the silence.
“I need you with me on this one Al. Please,” she pleads.
I’ve been trying to conceive for more than a year and inside Kayla’s tummy is the growing embryo I yearn for. If this were anyone but my sister, my response might differ wildly. Only this is my identical twin. She could drive her car through my house and I’d thank her for the fresh air.
***
“AHHH.”
I double over in pain and clutch my stomach, take a seat slowly. At first I wonder what’s going on, if this is the sudden onset of salmonella, but deep down I know what’s going on. This is psychosomatic, only not my psyche. It’s an identical twin thing. We’ve always been like this, Kayla and I. Felt each other’s pain physically or sensed each other’s danger. We call it cotwincidence. Once, when we were five or six, Kayla did her knee in and I ended up limping too. Another time we went mountain biking in the French Alps. We’d got split up and suddenly my nose started to hurt, for no apparent reason. Kayla, it transpired, had fallen off her bike and broken her nose. Sometimes we feel the pain on BEHALF of each other. Like neither of us actually suffer from period pain, but we often get stomach cramps when the other menstruates. That’s what’s happening now, but Kayla isn’t having her period. She’s having an abortion and I’m waiting, outside the treatment room, leaning forward, rubbing my tummy.
She chose an Ealing clinic above a central London one because it had sounded slightly prettier, leafier, more suburban. Weird how location could matter, but somehow it seemed to. I hadn’t wanted to go. It was almost too hard, too twisted, for someone who’s trying to get pregnant to stand by and watch a pregnancy being terminated. But how could I not be there for her?
So I’m sitting in this big, light, bright, white waiting room, disguised as a faux lounge, on a blue metal designer chair, waiting, chest slumped onto knees, for the longest five minutes ever. I can feel all Kayla’s pain and pray I’m transferring some of it. When the pain subsides, I hear a door open. I look up. Kayla’s standing there, in front of me. She smiles weakly, though not with her eyes. All colour has been drained from her ghostly face. I rush to take her in my arms, to try to make it all better.
MARCH
Chapter 6
“Alison Kirk,” calls a heavily pregnant nurse.
How DARE a nurse in a fertility clinic be pregnant!
I’d gone to see my GP after Adam got his sperm test results. She’d said because I’d been trying for over a year it was worth getting checked out and a good place to start would be cycle monitoring. St Mary’s Hospital offered it for free at their Outpatient Clinic. So that’s where I am, for the second time. The first time they’d scanned me to check the lining of my womb (it looked good apparently) and taken blood to check my hormone levels. I’m presuming, as I follow the pregnant nurse, that today will be the same.
“Sorry about the wait,” she says as she closes the door behind her, and motions for me to lie down.
She picks up my notes, has a quick glance through.
“Right, the results from the blood we took last time were perfect, so let’s have a look and see what’s happening down there. Could you scoot a little bit towards me?” she asks.
She dollops a load of icy cold gel onto my lower abdomen, plants the probe on my flesh, starts painting circles with it and talks me through what she’s checking for as I look at a blurry collage of wavy white lines on a black screen.
“Excellent…mmmmmmmm……yes…….that’s the lining of your womb there and it looks like it’s thickening up nicely…mmmmmm……this here is your right ovary……………….and…… this here……. is your left ovary………and all these tiny circles here are your follicles, but this one here (she pushes the probe harder towards my bikini line), this one’s much bigger, can you see?”
“Yes, I think so.”
I’m lying. I really WANT to get what she’s looking at, but I can’t. It all looks like bad TV interference to me.
“Well this one’s got your egg growing inside and I’d say (she screws up her face, considering) that you’re going to ovulate within the next two to three days.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” the pregnant nurse smiles. “So you better get cracking.”
Oh joy. More sex.
“Does it look like a good egg?”
“I’m afraid we can’t tell the quality,” she says, putting the probe back in its socket, giving me a tissue to wipe off the gel, “but it all looks as it should.”
“How long to go?” I ask, as I make myself decent.
“Still three months, I just look huge.” She pats her bump. “Too much chocolate.”
I gather my belongings, remembering I don’t have time for chitchat and neither does she.
“Is that it? No blood test?”
“No, come back at the same time in five days and we’ll do one then, to check your progesterone levels.”
“Right. Ok then, thanks. See you next week.”
Each and every woman sitting in the corridor outside looks up as I leave the room. I ignore the strange catwalk sensation, which makes me feel as conspicuous as a polar bear on a beach, head out the building and speed-walk to Paddington station.
***
Scott Richardson knocks at the door mid-afternoon. I’m alone in chambers, doing key on-line research and quickly click on my screensaver as he enters. What I’m researching isn’t for anyone’s eyes but mine.
“Thanks for coming at such short notice,” I say, shaking his hand briefly, professionally and offering him a chair.
Since our first meeting I’d wondered if it was simply his celebrity status putting me on guard, but the minute his palm met mine, my eyes met his, the same sense of unease flooded back. It’s the proximity I don’t like. He gets up too close and personal, his face right there in yours. He nods and flatters, pretending to be deeply interested and respectful, but overwhelmingly I just feel that my space has been invaded.
If Jekyll is his darker side he takes a momentary back seat, letting Hyde pull his winning TV Presenter smile. “I’m hoping we can make this a quick one. It’s been a long day.”
Scott’s show, Look Who’s Talking, goes out live at 10.30, five times a week and his working day starts at 06.00. It only looks so easy because he’s well rehearsed, well researched. He’s lucky that the network has stood behind him, despite the looming trial. Unperturbed by tabloids full of corny headlines, a la ‘SCOTCHA!’ and ‘SCOTT RICHARDS-DONE?’, they’re sure the whole thing will blow over without too much fuss and aren’t going to stop backing their horse. So it’s business as usual for my client who seems pretty unfazed and together. Of course, this could all be a façade. His outer coating might be pure sugar icing, but I sense the layers underneath are made of far less palatable ingredients.
“I don’t think so,” he’s quick to answer.
“Are you sure, quite sure? Apparently you had lunch with him in the Oxo Tower a couple of weeks before the incident,” I try to jog his memory.
There’s a long, long silence. His face is mask-like, not a twitch, then all of a sudden he double blinks, his irises dart from side to side like a metronome needle.
“Yes, yes,” his eyes settle on mine. “Cameron Matthews, that’s right. I remember.”
“Excellent. Good. So who is he?”