by Rachel Dann
‘Yes, you’re right. I…’ Dad trails off and follows us out into the hall. ‘Well, good luck with your trip,’ he offers, helping me back into my coat.
‘Thanks, I’ll phone you before we go.’ I smile politely.
We both know I won’t.
‘Yes, and you never know – maybe we’ll come out there and visit you!’ Dad calls after us.
Again, we both know he won’t.
I’ve got one foot out of the front door when Dad’s voice behind me makes me stop.
‘Kirsty?’
I turn back and see him in the hallway, frowning at the floor somewhere near my feet.
‘What, Dad?’
With a visible effort he drags his gaze up to meet mine head-on.
‘I can tell you really want to do this,’ he mutters, looking briefly over my shoulder, presumably to check Harry is not within earshot. He needn’t have worried – Harry’s already got the engine running again, just like at Mum’s. I raise my eyebrows at him, wondering where on earth this is going.
‘But, going abroad isn’t going to solve anything, you know?’
He says it mildly enough, but irritation pulses through me. What does he know about me? How dare he even imply there is anything that needs solving?
‘I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, Dad,’ I reply icily, then jump as Harry impatiently hoots the car horn behind me, ‘but I’ve got to go now.’
***
‘God knows how your Dad has so much luck with the ladies,’ Harry chuckles as we arrive home. ‘Fancy a cuppa?’
I go into the living room and flop exhaustedly on to the sofa. Harry knows I don’t like him joking about my Dad’s love life. Ever since my parents split up – so as far back as I can remember – my father has had a succession of ‘lady companions’ with whom he can go to the cinema, dine at nice restaurants, and even, if last year is anything to go by, take off on a mini-cruise of the Canary Islands without telling anyone. I only found out because Harry saw his photos on Facebook.
I suppose to anyone else my father would seem quite a catch – tall, athletic, still handsome in a gruff sort of way. Good company in any social situation, always the first to get a round of drinks in or tell a joke. I know this because I’ve met the mutual friends of my parents, old neighbours or friends asking after ‘good ol’ David’; I’ve seen the photos of a younger Mum and Dad, laughing together with drinks in hand at some party. I know he actually has a personality. It’s only around me, apparently, that it checks out and goes into hibernation.
You’d think getting a first-class law degree would go some way towards rustling up a little paternal pride – or even interest. When I first graduated, I went through a naïve, optimistic phase of trying to get him to take an interest in my new job at Home from Home.
‘It isn’t just any old admin role,’ I would insist to him, when I first got the job. ‘They were looking for someone with legal knowledge and experience, preferably a graduate. I’m actually lucky to have found a job where my university degree is relevant at all.’
Dad didn’t seem convinced, but I did have a point. The team of solicitors we supported might be the ones actually working face-to-face with our clients – vulnerable people who were often homeless or about to become so, needing legal representation to protect them. But the solicitors couldn’t do that job without us. It might be a legal support job, but in order to do the work you needed a good understanding of legal practice. And even though I rarely got the chance to actually meet our clients in person, it gave me a feeling of fulfilment to know my work was helping people who really needed it. Indirectly, maybe, but it still helped.
‘My point is there are no rules – you don’t have to follow the fixed career path you imagined when you were eighteen and chose a university course,’ I had insisted to my father, the last time we had spoken about the subject properly. That was early last year, and I’d just been promoted to Senior Legal Support. It wasn’t exactly a promotion, partly because I didn’t even have to apply for it, but it did mean a better job title and a slight pay rise. Dad had got my hopes up by actually phoning and inviting me out for a meal that night, after months of silence. But instead of being happy for me he’d spent the evening asking me all sorts of strange, searching questions about my future career plans and goals.
‘Helen Matthews from my final year Commercial Law module ended up opening a dog-grooming parlour and kennels with her boyfriend,’ I told him over dessert, in a last-ditch attempt to get him to see my point of view. ‘And if her Facebook posts are to be believed, business has never been better.’
‘I agree, Kirsty, that it’s fine to change career paths completely to follow a long-standing dream, or try out something new that really appeals to you,’ Dad ruminated, setting down his empty coffee cup and waving immediately for the bill. ‘But I would like you to ask yourself, Kirsty, is that really what you are doing?’
I mean, honestly. What would it have cost him just to say congratulations and crack open a bottle of wine?
After that I gave up. On the rare occasions I saw my father I made sure to steer well clear of the subject of my job, or any detail of my life in general, unless strictly necessary. And he seemed to get the message, because he hadn’t tried to ask me a single thing about my career or future plans since that night. He must have realised this was the best way – limiting our relationship to the superficial, and keeping contact to a minimum.
If I ever think back to that night, I tell myself – what does he know, anyway? He doesn’t know me. He would never remember that the whole reason I chose to study law in the first place was because I wanted to help people.
It had all started with a work-experience placement in my last year of secondary school. We didn’t get much say in where we went, and – to us, then – the teachers’ allocations seemed cruelly random. The girl who got sent to an industrial pet-food factory actually made her mum go in and complain to the Head. Meanwhile, some of my friends hit the jackpot and went to cool places like a newspaper office or the local zoo.
I ended up shadowing a paralegal in a solicitor’s office.
I arrived on my first day fully anticipating the most boring two weeks of my life, stuck in a dusty office with a bunch of middle-aged men talking over my head in legalese while I made them endless cups of tea.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The job did involve some photocopying and filing, of course. But Terry, the flamboyantly camp and surprisingly young legal assistant to the family law team, actually let me shadow him in everything he did and explained it all to me with infinite patience and enthusiasm. The most fascinating parts were the client interviews. I would never have imagined the variety of waifs and strays that pass through a family solicitor’s waiting room every day. People in the most heartbreaking, desperate situations. Fathers separated from their children, daughters searching for their mothers, men facing homelessness after unfair dismissal from work, women battling discrimination or abuse.
I spent an open-mouthed two weeks watching Terry deftly interview each applicant, simultaneously cheering them up and extracting all the necessary information with a series of sensitive yet probing questions, establishing whether or not the solicitors would be able to represent them. I think on more than one occasion he exaggerated the facts to ensure they would.
One man really stuck in my memory. Joel. His surname is long forgotten, but I can still recall every detail of his face, and the desperation written all over it when he first came to Bourne & Bond. He’d just been released from prison after a two-year sentence for drink-driving. He had lost everything – his house, his job, custody of his children. He was appealing for legal support in a court hearing against the local housing authority, who had repeatedly sent his application to the back of the list. And without a stable address – he argued in near-tears during his interview with Terry – he could not secure a job, reopen his bank account, or even take out a mobile phone contract. His l
ife was literally on pause.
Joel was probably only in his early thirties, which seemed really old to me at the time, although on all the subsequent occasions I’ve thought about him, I’ve been conscious of that age looming nearer and nearer in my own future, and its being really very young indeed to lose everything and have to start your life all over again.
He wasn’t the most tragic or desperate case I watched Terry interview during my two-week work experience, nor the most complicated. But something about Joel cemented him in my mind from that moment on. I looked at his face as he begged Terry to take on his case, and I saw an underdog. And, for some reason that I couldn’t quite place, I identified with that.
Joel’s court hearing came up on the penultimate day of my work experience, and I was allowed to attend, albeit under strict instructions not to move from my seat next to Terry in his note-taking role, and not to speak under any circumstances.
He was represented by Tracey, the only female solicitor in the family law team and someone I’d only brushed past a couple of times. Until that day she’d seemed like an unremarkable, greying, forty-something woman with photos of cats surrounding her desk. Not someone I would have remembered after leaving. But that day in court she became my idol. I watched in awe as she tore apart the prosecution’s arguments about Joel being an unreliable candidate for a housing contract, and firmly and eloquently, yet fiercely, presented an array of evidence proving that Joel had got his life back on track, conquered his alcohol problem and deserved a chance to change his future. By the end of her discourse everyone in the room was wholeheartedly convinced by Tracey, including – perhaps most importantly – Joel himself, who sat with tears of gratitude streaming down his face as he was awarded a housing contract then and there. As I watched him shaking Tracey’s hand ecstatically and telling everyone in the room how he was going to change and turn his life around, a realisation about my own future began to take shape.
Nobody paid any attention to the wide-eyed seventeen-year-old sitting in the stands watching events unfold in rapt fascination; but it was that day that really convinced me to pursue a career in law. The next month we had to make our A-level choices and, a year later, university applications.
Of course, with time I realised I was being a little idealistic. A law degree wasn’t all standing up in front of your classmates and reciting passionate arguments to save innocent people from death row. In fact, it involved memorising a lot of obscure clauses and articles in areas that didn’t hold my interest so much, like commercial rights. But I threw myself into it, keeping in mind my reasons for doing it all in the first place. I wanted to defend people. I probably earned myself a reputation for being boring and nerdy all over again, but I told myself all the work would be worth it.
But then, of course, it’s not like you graduate and are immediately out there fighting for people’s rights on international television. There’s the bloody Law Practice Course, obviously, then you need to get years of experience before you can be out there on the front line. So that’s why the job at Home from Home, when it came up, at least seemed like a step towards my ambitions. Relevant experience to be gained in the meantime, until Harry’s and my circumstances changed.
Of course, sometimes I can’t help longing to be part of the team of solicitors directly helping the people who apply for assistance. At times, I find myself loitering by the case files at the end of the day, leafing through the most recent applicant’s papers and reading the arguments put together by the solicitor to defend their case. When I hear of a positive outcome, someone winning an appeal against a landlord and being allowed to stay in their home, even now I still think of Joel.
On a good day, I go home from work feeling I’ve contributed to something important, something that benefits humanity.
Not to mention that a smaller charity like Home from Home is inclined to be far more understanding about maternity leave.
Or a four-month unpaid sabbatical.
After getting my request provisionally approved by my line manager, I had to get it signed off by Angela, Head of Legal and a formidable woman who terrified even the solicitors.
‘South America, eh?’ She peered at me over her dramatic, gold-rimmed glasses, doing her best Devil Wears Prada impression. ‘Backpacking, is it? Or are you more of a – what do they call it – glamping type?’
I blinked at her, not sure what glamping was but not feeling able to admit it.
‘We’re going to do the Inca trail,’ I ended up mumbling, suddenly wondering if this was a terrible mistake and she was going to sack me for my impertinence. And then wondering, to my own surprise, whether that would actually be such a bad thing. ‘The Inca trail and the Andean region. Peru, Ecuador, Venez…’
‘You know, Kirsty,’ Angela interrupted me, obliviously, ‘I have to say that when you asked for this meeting, I was expecting you to talk to me about the Team Leader vacancy.’
The… what?
I remembered seeing something advertised on the internal monthly email bulletin, but it hadn’t really drawn my attention. There didn’t seem much point applying for a minor promotion within Home from Home when I was only going to be there temporarily anyway.
‘In fact, I would even go as far as to say I was hoping you were going to talk to me about it.’ Angela settled back in her chair and observed me over her glasses, arms folded. ‘As one of our most qualified – no, the most qualified member of the support team – it seemed an obvious choice for you.’
‘Er, thank you – that’s a great compli—’
Angela waved one hand at me, cutting me off again.
‘But, if a four-month sabbatical is what’s on your agenda right now, then fair enough – you know our open-door policy on staff extracurricular development. And in some respects it is actually good to see you making a decision.’ Angela suddenly seemed to lose interest in the conversation. ‘Good luck, Kirsty – and enjoy the old mundo latino.’ She flicked me a cringe-worthy wink as if waiting for me to say something.
There was a long pause.
‘I did GCSE Spanish.’
‘Ah, right.’
As I thanked Angela and started backing away gratefully towards the door, she suddenly looked up again from her paperwork and called me back.
‘Kirsty?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not everyone achieves their goals by following their expected path, you know.’
What on earth she meant by that I had no idea, but I didn’t have much time to dwell on it. I finished work just a week later, after which only an awkward weekend spent sleeping in Harry’s parents’ spare room, surrounded by luggage, stood between us and the unknown.
Chapter Three
‘Did you know Quito is one of the most dangerous places in the world for an aeroplane to land?’ the large American man in the next seat informs me cheerfully, as the fasten seatbelt sign comes on and my ears begin to pop.
We’ve been flying for nearly eleven hours and I haven’t slept a wink. Any form of relaxation has been rendered impossible by the buzz of excitement and trepidation at the thought of finally beginning our adventure.
Harry, in the window seat beside me, has been very quiet ever since we took off – at first I thought he was asleep, but several times, towards the end of the flight, I catch his reflection in the window, staring out, away from me, his eyes wide and serious, looking down across the blackness of ocean and sky below us. I tell myself he’s probably just uncomfortable, his six-foot frame meaning he’s even more restricted than me by the limited leg room. And we can hardly engage in conversation, as the cabin crew turned the lights out not long after take-off, and everyone else around us promptly tucked themselves up under the flimsy aircraft blankets and proceeded to snore their way across the Atlantic.
So I switched on the little reading light over my seat and spent the flight eagerly leafing through my various guidebooks for the hundredth time. I may not have slept, but I’ve learnt that
Quito, the capital of Ecuador, is the second-highest capital city in the world, at 2,800 metres above sea level. It is surpassed only by La Paz in Bolivia – at 3,200 metres – where the locals use a special brew of coca leaves to alleviate symptoms of altitude sickness. I’ve discovered that some parts of the Peruvian rainforest have more species of plants and animals per square mile than anywhere else on the planet. I have read about Canaima national park in Venezuela, the same size as Belgium and home to the famous Angel Falls, considered by many the most beautiful place in the world.
I’ve also been rereading my notes and ideas for this trip, all compiled into a folder and organised by country. I hold the folder on my lap now and leaf through the neatly labelled plastic wallets inside, even though I already know their contents by heart. Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. Three months, three countries and a checklist of unmissable attractions in each.
My travel folder became a bit of a secret from Harry in the weeks leading up to our departure. His attitude to my planning hadn’t improved as our trip drew closer. In fact, it became a source of tension between us to the extent I ended up preferring not to share all my ideas with him, to avoid any more irritable reactions. It’s just the way he is, I kept telling myself. He’s not a planner. He doesn’t see the point. Mum and my sister had been known to call him lazy – no, what’s that silly word Mum was always using? Lackadaisical. But I know he just prefers to be spontaneous. At a time like this, however, planning is crucial. For example, Isabela Island in the Galápagos must be visited during a specific two-week period in January if you want to see its native tortoise eggs hatching on the beach. Imagine missing an experience like that just because you didn’t plan properly! Rocking up a week too late and finding only the remnants of empty egg shells strewn across the sand, the locals shaking their heads sadly at you and saying ‘sorry love, you’d better come back next year’. That would be awful!
I’m finally forced to put down the guidebooks when the plane starts shimmying from side to side like it’s dancing to a Beyoncé song. I look down and notice my knuckles have gone white holding on to the armrests.