by Caro Fraser
‘By the way,’ said Peter, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I borrowed the shaving stuff in the bathroom.’
Felicity shook her head. She’d told him about Vince, but it didn’t seem to worry him. In fact, she wished it had bothered him more. So why did she feel so small when he obliquely brought up the subject? Guilt, guilt. She had nothing to feel guilty about.
He came to the bedside and kissed her again.
‘Are you glad you stayed last night?’ Felicity couldn’t help asking.
‘What a daft question. Of course.’ He straightened up. ‘Lunch some time next week?’ The slight uncertainty within her died away and happiness blossomed. She nodded. ‘OK. I’ll give you a call. Bye.’
She heard the front door close and lay back on the pillow. He wanted to see her again. They were lovers now. Everything had changed. While they were just friends, spending the occasional lunchtime together, there had been no issues to face up to, no decisions to be made. Now it was different. Vince would be on remand for another couple of months, and even after his trial, she knew in her heart of hearts that he was going to get a custodial sentence. That was inevitable. So what was she to do? Tell him now, make his life even worse than it already was, take away any hope for the future? That would be the honest, cruel thing to do. The alternative was to say nothing. Just carry on seeing Peter, knowing that Vince would be none the wiser, and let events take their course. That was dishonest, but it was less painful for everyone.
Anyway, wasn’t she jumping the gun a bit here? She and Peter had slept together once; OK, he said he wanted to see her again, but what if it was all going nowhere? What if two weeks from now, he dumped her? Or she might dump him … No chance of that, thought Felicity ruefully. She wasn’t in love with the guy, but she was quite smitten. He was too good to be true. Anyway, the point was, in a few weeks’ time there might be nothing that Vince need know about. Who could say? Even so, she knew already that she and Vince were drifting apart. It wasn’t just Peter. It was the culmination of weeks of thinking. No present, no future. There would come a time when Vince would have to face up to the fact that her life had to move on without him. But not yet. No point in hurting him yet.
She got out of bed, picked up her mug of tea, and went through to the kitchen to add some sugar, satisfied that she had salved her conscience for the present, at least.
As he drove to Bath, Leo went over in his mind that parting conversation with Anthony. He hadn’t meant to be dismissive or unfeeling. It was simply that he’d woken late, and he’d been in a hurry to pick up Oliver …
No, that was only part of the truth. The rest was more complicated. There had been a time, a few years ago, when Anthony had first arrived in chambers, when the spark between them could have engendered all kinds of possibilities. At that time, Leo himself was a different being, entirely without ties or responsibilities. He had wanted Anthony, not just as a lover, but as part of his life. But that was once upon a time. The years had changed things, even though Anthony might not be able to see it. Last night had happened because it had all gone on too long, something needed to be resolved. If Leo was being completely honest, he had taken advantage of the confusion of Anthony’s feelings to satisfy himself. So now what was he left with?
The traffic up ahead slowed, as cones appeared on the road, blocking off a lane. Leo glanced at the dashboard clock and swore under his breath. He picked up his train of thought again. It was clear from Anthony’s tone and attitude that he expected something from their altered relationship. Of course he did. The step he had taken was probably monumental, for someone of his ambivalence. Not that Anthony had any clear definition of what his expectations were – yet. Exclusivity would be part of it. Leo tapped the wheel impatiently, glancing again at the clock. The kind of relationship he and Anthony had already established made it impossible for Anthony to view what had happened in terms of a casual encounter, yet Leo knew that he himself wanted it to be no more than that. For him it was merely the selfish satisfaction of a long-held desire. Things had changed much in the years since that desire had first been born. He had married, he had had a child, his ambitions as a lawyer were gradually being realised, though there was still much further to go. His experiences with Joshua last year had shown him the dangers a hedonistic and uncontrolled lifestyle could pose to his professional existence. And mental stability.
The traffic began to speed up, and Leo sighed in relief. The Aston Martin moved smoothly forward. There was a time when he would willingly have taken Anthony as his live-in lover. That had been at the very beginning. Anthony hadn’t yet been made a tenant at 5 Caper Court. That had been crucial. If it had got about – as it would have – that Leo Davies had as his lover a junior tenant in the same chambers, he would have been finished. Or at any rate, stalled in the professional doldrums for all time. He had even gone so far as to weight the chambers’ vote against Anthony and in favour of his rival for the tenancy, Edward Choke, to achieve his desires. As it turned out, it hadn’t happened. Nothing had happened – until last night. But the fact was there were things he cared about more than having Anthony in his life. That was the personal and professional truth. And he had no idea how he was going to make this apparent to Anthony without causing him pain.
He pulled off the motorway on to the spur road, and resolved to think no more about it. He would simply have to play it by ear, and hope Anthony’s good sense and professional judgement would prevail.
Melissa had sat in her car on the other side of the square where Leo lived for two hours, waiting for him to appear. She would have waited all morning, if necessary. Not that she had any real idea of what it was she intended to do. When he emerged from the door of the building, she felt galvanised, as though electricity were threading through her veins. She watched alertly as he went round the corner, fishing keys from the pocket of the battered leather jacket he wore. He must be going to fetch his car from the garage. She waited. After a few moments she saw the sleek shape of the silver Aston Martin emerge from the mews, and pull out to the left. Her fingers shaking with excitement, she turned the ignition and drove round the square until she was following some way behind. She let a car waiting at a junction slip ahead of her into the queue of traffic, so that she would not be directly behind Leo’s car, then followed him carefully through the streets of Knightsbridge, heading in a westerly direction.
There had been heart-stopping moments. Once, she’d got stuck as a refuse van backed slowly out into the street. The length of time it took the van to reverse, straighten up again, then lumber off, seemed endless, but when she sped past it she could see Leo’s car still up ahead at traffic lights. She’d had to put her foot down to get across before they changed. Two lines of traffic merging at road works on the M4 had left her many cars behind, but she had been able to keep the Aston Martin in her sights and catch up with it at a discreet distance later on. Later, when he had turned off the motorway on to an A road, she thought everything was going smoothly, until the car in front of her, two behind Leo’s, decided to let a tractor out of a farm gateway. By the time the tractor turned off further up the road, Leo’s car had disappeared. Glancing left and right at the junction of the road, Melissa had no means of knowing which direction he had taken. She turned left, hoping, and put her foot down. A few bends further up, she was rewarded by the sight of the Aston Martin ahead of her. She slowed, followed for another mile, and then the Aston Martin indicated right and turned through a gateway and up a driveway to a house set a hundred yards back from the road. Melissa drove slowly past, parked in a gateway further up, and walked gingerly back to the edge of the stone wall which bounded the garden. With shrubbery for cover, she peeped over the wall. She could see nothing at first, just Leo’s car parked by the house. He must have gone in. She waited, standing in her long raincoat, hair unkempt about her shoulders, eyes fixed on the house.
At last, Leo came out, and he was holding in his arms a toddler, a little boy. Some nameless emotion filled Melissa. Thi
s must be his son, the one he had talked about that drunken evening. The humiliating evening which had contained the dark beginnings of her present obsession. She watched greedily. A young woman with long, dark hair handed him a few things. Leo put the boy in the car and, after a few moments’ conversation with the woman, he got in. Melissa hurried back to her car. She imagined Leo was now going back to London, but she couldn’t be sure. She would have to carry on, keep her distance, and see where he went. This was all beginning to seem very promising.
On Monday morning, first thing, Leo went to Camilla’s room. She had been in since half-eight, and was bent industriously over a bundle of documents. Simon, with whom she shared the room, wasn’t yet in. Leo closed the door. In the moment before she raised her head to look at him, Leo found himself oddly touched by the sight of her, working away. She looked very young and alone in the big, dark room filled with briefs and books.
After a few seconds he said, ‘I came to apologise. You were quite right to behave as you did on Friday evening, and I was entirely wrong.’
Camilla blushed, disconcerted by the idea of Leo coming to her room to apologise for anything. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Well, you worried me when you suggested that perhaps I ought to find another junior. I’ve no wish to do that. So far you’ve been invaluable.’
Camilla made an effort not to betray the pleasure his words gave her. ‘I wasn’t being serious when I said that.’
‘In any event, I wanted to let you know—’ He sat down in a chair opposite her desk and crossed his legs, ‘—that from now on my behaviour will be entirely professional.’
A faint sense of panic struck her. What if he thought she wasn’t interested in him at all? She hadn’t meant that – only that the conduct of the case might suffer. What if he never came near her again?
‘Why on earth are you gazing at me like a frightened rabbit?’ asked Leo in bemusement.
‘I wasn’t. Sorry. OK, whatever,’ she babbled.
‘My conduct will be entirely circumspect for the duration of this case.’ He changed the subject, indicating the papers on her desk. ‘What’s that you’re reading?’
‘The Selikoff report on asbestosis. I got it last week and I’ve nearly finished it.’
‘That thing by the American Surgeon General? Good God. You must be the only person on the planet who’s ever read it all the way through. Apart from Dr Selikoff himself, that is. Everybody kept referring to it in the last Lloyd’s case in tones of great authority, but it turned out no one had a copy. Where did you get it?’
‘I got someone from one of the American Names groups to send it over. I thought I might be able to dig up some useful material from it.’
Leo nodded thoughtfully. The girl was a thorough grafter. ‘And?’
‘I’ve got quite a lot of figures and helpful quotes.’
‘Good. I’ll have a look at them when you’ve finished.’ Leo eased himself out of his chair. ‘See you later.’
When he was gone, Camilla exhaled a long breath and sat back in her chair. For the duration of this case … That’s what he’d said. What if he’d lost interest by then? What if several weeks of working together in platonic harmony dispelled any ideas of ever kissing her again? That would probably happen. She guessed she was of momentary interest to him, and that it would pass. Well, that would be the price she’d have to pay for rebuffing him now. At least it spared her any pain in the long run. She gazed sorrowfully at the seven-hundred-page report on her desk, then, with a sigh, resumed her reading.
At lunchtime, Leo chanced to meet Anthony in the clerks’ room, but beyond saying hello and exchanging a few comments about work, the encounter held no significance. To Leo’s relief, Anthony’s manner was entirely normal. He seemed to expect nothing more from Leo – that, Leo suspected, was just for the moment. At some time soon, Anthony would want to talk, and Leo had no real idea of how he would handle it.
That evening Leo got home feeling tired and jaded. He still had an entire evening’s work ahead of him, reading and rereading statements. When this case was over, he told himself, he would take a holiday. He hadn’t had one in a long time, and the events of the last eighteen months had been gruelling, one way or another. He poured himself a drink and stabbed at the ‘play’ button on the answer phone. The sound of Melissa’s voice made him groan. Without listening to what she had to say, he fast-forwarded to the next message. The one after that was Melissa again. And the next. Jesus, he thought angrily, the woman was out of control. He wiped the tape.
As he was changing in his bedroom, the phone rang. He found himself hesitating before he picked it up. ‘Hello?’
‘Leo, did you get my messages? I thought you might ring back—’ He hung up.
He wasn’t surprised when the phone rang again a few seconds later. He picked it up, slammed it down, then took it off the hook. After fifteen minutes he replaced it. He couldn’t leave the phone off the hook all evening. The case began next week, and all kinds of people would be trying to contact him. He stared at the phone, willing it to remain silent, but it began to ring, gently, persistently. He left it unanswered. He knew it was her. What was he to do? It might not be her, and he couldn’t just let the damn thing ring all evening. In that case he might as well just leave it off.
But the fact that the phone rang at two-minute intervals for the next hour told him it had to be Melissa. He tried to eat supper and ignore it. He tried to work and ignore it. The persistency of it was maddening. And, though he didn’t like to admit it, frightening. After a while he could stand no more. He sat at his desk in his study and stared at the phone as it began to ring again. Almost beside himself, he picked up the receiver and snarled, ‘Listen, you mad—’
Before he could get the word ‘bitch’ out, he was aware of Conor Grimley’s cultivated Irish tones saying ‘Hello?’ in bewilderment.
Leo took a deep breath. ‘Conor. Sorry. I had no idea. I’ve been getting nuisance calls. I just – anyway … Sorry.’
‘Nuisance calls? Dear me, that’s very distressing. It happened to my sister-in-law. I suggest you get your number changed.’ He paused sympathetically for a second or two. ‘Actually, I wanted a word with you about my opening statement. Have you got a moment?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Leo, and sat back in his chair. At least while he was talking to Conor, he had some respite from that lunatic woman.
When he’d finished talking to Conor, Leo put down the phone and tried to resume his work. But the silence seemed threatening, poised and expectant. It was almost a relief when the ringing began again. Leo reached below his desk and disconnected the plug from the socket. Anyone who wanted to talk to him, apart from the madwoman of Kensington, would have to call him in chambers. He went through to the drawing room and disconnected the phone there. The ringing ceased. Silence settled, and Leo felt the tension in him ease. Tomorrow he’d see about getting his number changed. That wouldn’t be the end of it, he suspected. It was probably only just the beginning. It was intolerable to think that this woman could so insidiously affect his existence, forcing him to the inconvenience of changing his number, then informing friends and colleagues, changing his personal notepaper, and so forth. He would have to see his solicitor, to find out just what steps he could take, before she really began to wreck his life in earnest.
A week later, the case between Sir Stephen Geldard Caradog-Browne and the Society of Lloyd’s opened before the Honourable Mr Justice Olby in Court Seven, Chichester Rents, Chancery Lane. The court itself was a large, low-ceilinged, windowless room of a most depressing aspect. The barristers and solicitors were seated on either side of it at ranks of long, functional tables. All round the room, shelves were filled to the ceiling with documents, which Sarah and many of her kind had spent long hours paginating, marking and filing in endless Lever Arch files. Yet more boxes of documents stood stacked beside the lawyers’ tables. Rows of chairs were provided at the back of the room for those Names who cared to follow t
he day-to-day proceedings, and to the side for the press and public. Not that anyone anticipated public interest. The opening of the case was reported only in The Times, The Telegraph, and the Financial Times, and each devoted only a couple of paragraphs to it. It was generally felt that the Lloyd’s scandal had burnt itself out, and that this action for fraud was something of a no-hoper.
The mood amongst the attendant Names, however, was tense and hopeful – at least, to begin with. They thronged the rows of chairs in the courtroom, and hung avidly on Conor Grimley’s words as he embarked upon his opening statement, listening intently as he set forth their grievances and expounded the iniquitous behaviour of Lloyd’s of London over a twenty-year period. Any hope that the joint satisfaction of hearing their case put at last might improve relations between Lady Henrietta and Sir Stephen Caradog-Browne remained unrealised. If anything, now that the action had begun, their separate factions focused more closely than ever on tactical matters and each day, after the court proceedings had ended, they conducted long and wearisome meetings about disputed points with Rachel and Fred in the offices of Nichols & Co.
Conor Grimley’s opening address lasted throughout the entire first week, and well into the second. The initial tension generated in the first couple of days amongst clients and lawyers alike rapidly died away. By the time Paul Rollason, counsel for Lloyd’s, rose to make his opening address, things had become positively soporific. Leo and Camilla attended for the first two days, and then absented themselves to attend to more important aspects of the case.
The end of March came, the first buds began to break on the trees in Fountain Court and the gardens of the Inns of Court, and in Court Seven a steady procession of witnesses took the stand, day after day, to be examined by Conor in his patient Irish brogue. Leo took over the examination of a particular few, whose acerbic and indignant tendencies he could best keep in check, but by and large he busied himself with the preparation of his cross-examination. For him, involvement in a case of this kind was like being buried in some grey half-world, where the sights and sounds were those of the sombre courtroom in Chichester Rents and his room in chambers, his preoccupations exclusively those of minimum percentage reserves, stop loss insurance, and reinsurances to close.