by Harriet Tyce
“Watch where you’re going!” The woman’s scorn is sharp in her voice. “I could have fallen down the stairs.” She pushes past us and marches off, her perfectly blow-dried hair bouncing on her shoulders with each step. I look after her, heart still pounding from the encounter. Tall, blonde. Hostile.
“Are you OK?” Robin says at the same moment another woman starts tutting and shouldering past us.
My throat tightens as though I might cry. Or scream at them all to fuck off. I brush moisture from my eyes with brisk fingers.
“I’m fine.”
Once we’re safely inside, and I’ve introduced Robin to the registrar and filled in the emergency contact forms, I stand next to Robin in an expectant manner.
“You can go now, Mom,” Robin says, and the registrar laughs.
“She’s safe with us, Mrs. Spence.”
“That’s my husband’s name,” I say. I can’t bring myself to say ex-husband with Robin standing beside me. “My name is Roper. Sadie Roper.”
“Of course, Ms. Roper,” she says. They keep looking at me, waiting for me to leave.
Robin nods. “Go on, Mom.”
I look at the registrar. “You don’t need me for anything else? A tour, or meeting the form teacher, or something?”
She shakes her head. “Not today. You will meet Robin’s form teacher in due course. We’ll send you details of the parents’ evening.” She turns to Robin. “I’ll take you to your classroom.”
She whisks my daughter away from me before I can even say goodbye.
3
I head back fast to the bus stop on the other side of the road, the pain subsiding in my ankle as I go. I need to make some progress on the house and then get to chambers to see if there’s any work available. The long years spent away from criminal practice yawn in front of me, but I refuse to let them put me off. I’ve braved worse in the last weeks. Far worse.
It shouldn’t be this way. Anger courses through me: at Andrew for being such a bastard; at the rejection, the rage that’s driven me clean across the Atlantic, straight back into the clutches of my mother and that wreck of a house. Thoughts of a tidy new-build apartment drift through my head. White walls and clean wooden floors, not the dark jumble of a neglected Victorian house, windows obscured by overgrown ivy. A toxic legacy.
The bus pulls up. No good thinking about this now. I’ll wash, scrub, clean; bleach it all out. I take out my phone, ready to text Zora, invite her for dinner. My finger hovers over the screen for a moment before I write the message.
Surprise! Long story, but Robin and I are back and staying at the house. Dinner tomorrow? Lots to catch up on xx
Planning for the future, no looking back.
As soon as I’m home, I look at the boiler I was too tired to examine the night before, discovering to my surprise that it’s relatively new. After a few minutes, it’s up and running. Warmth, hot water—that’ll chase away the demons.
Heartened, I get to it, scouring and scrubbing every surface in sight, not stopping for a second to let any thoughts of the past enter in, shutting myself off from any recognition of creaking floorboards or cracked tiles, the mark on the wall where my mother threw a book at me, the nail sticking out of the floor where I ripped countless pairs of tights, always forgetting it was there. As the dust lifts, so does the gloom in the house, and cold sunlight poking through the dirty glass of the kitchen window lifts my mood a little more.
After a couple of hours of frenzied activity, the kitchen is usable. It’s still the same oven, the one I remember from all those years ago. I test it’s working, remembering almost instinctively how long to hold the knob down before the gas catches light.
The old electric kettle is still here, its cord frayed, the metal of the wire exposed. I remember telling her to throw it away the last time I was here, fifteen years ago. I pick it up and turn it in my hands for a moment, tracing the marks of limescale etched on its surface, before my chest tightens and a sour taste rises in my mouth. Why do you care if I get electrocuted? rings in my ears. I dump it in a black bin bag, a smile lifting the corners of my mouth. Digging through the cupboards, I take out a small saucepan and fill it with water, put it on to boil.
Even though the house is on a busy road, there’s no sound of traffic in the kitchen at the back. I’m unnerved by the silence. I look through the window of the back door onto the concrete patch outside. It’s overshadowed by evergreen trees—a yew, chill and dark in the corner, all the plants my mother used to tend brown and withered, dead leaves lying in drifts in the corners. I’ll cheer it up—geraniums, bulbs in big blue pots. I remember the time I brought a bunch of tulips home for Mother’s Day, handed them to her. So loud, she said as she thrust them from her, petals crushed in the sink. It’s bad enough being a mother, she said. I don’t need any reminders. I remember how small I felt at that moment, how stupid, my feet too big for me as I stumbled backward and fled from the kitchen.
Time to plant daffodils, snowdrops. Crocuses. Parrot tulips, the brighter the better. I’ll get Robin to help. Turning away from the door, I look again around the kitchen. It might be cleaner, but it’s still bleak, still empty.
The water boils and I make tea, sitting back down again, nursing the warmth of the mug in my hands. It’s nearly noon. Is it time yet for Robin’s lunch? Maybe the food will be better now. I hope it’s better now. I think about what we used to be served: lasagna swimming in grease, cold mashed potato, green-gray hardboiled eggs at the heart of a rock-hard veal and ham pie. I take in a deep breath, release it. Not now. I’m not going there. What lies beneath is worse, much worse, and I don’t have time. My thoughts snap back to Robin.
It’ll be OK, I’d said to Robin. Really welcoming. Reassuring phrases that rolled off my tongue. But in truth, it was never welcoming at all. Formal, assertive, utterly confident in itself. Sink or swim. That’s how it was all those years ago. Maybe it’s changed. I remember the grip of Robin’s fingers on my arm, clutching so hard I’m surprised they didn’t leave a mark. I hope it isn’t as bad as Robin feared.
I fear it might be a lot worse.
My tea cools rapidly, and I drink it in gulps, pushing the mug away from me when I’ve finished. I need to change to go into chambers and ask the clerks if there’s any work available for me. Realistically I know it might be tricky, but I can’t let doubt creep in.
Before I go, I want to sort Robin’s room out a bit more. It’s the room my mother used for guests, few though they were. I shovel out piles of old newspapers and torn magazines, ruthless in my clearing. A chest of drawers emerges, a wardrobe, old coats and jackets, a moth-eaten fox fur, its tail held in its mouth with a tortoiseshell clip. It all goes into bin bags.
A message arrives from Zora. Yes please to dinner tomo. I want to hear ALL about wtf is going on. I can’t believe you’re back tho can’t wait to see you xx
I feel my spirits lift, a small chink of light breaking through. It will be so good to see her. But it’s going to be a long explanation. I send back a thumbs up emoji, unable to muster any more words.
4
Dressing for chambers feels like stepping back in time. I pull on underwear, black tights, a white shirt and black skirt and jacket, grateful for the sentiment that made me hang on to this suit through the years when I had no use for it. A tired black suit I used to wear in court over ten years ago.
The skirt does up easily. The jacket too—as if those years never intervened. I look at my silhouette, reflected in a dusty mirror on the back of the door. It could be nearly twenty years ago, my first day in chambers, before Andrew, before Robin, before my career gave way to a life I entirely failed to anticipate.
Despite everything, the forced nature of this new start, I feel a twinge of excitement. At least I’m finally going to be able to use my legal qualifications again. I’m going back to work.
I walk fast down Kentish Town Road to Camden Town tube, nerves rising, and sooner than I’d like I’m at Embankment, then Temple. I walk up
Temple Place, cut through Milford Lane, the gloss paint on its black iron railing gleaming in the sun. I pause for a moment, looking from left to right. I remember this alleyway well. I got off with Andrew here once, right at the start of our relationship, heady on cheap wine and the fire of early love.
That was a happy night, a good memory. Thoughts creep in of a time earlier than that, a darker night some months before, the older barrister who thought that young female pupils were his for the taking, his for the groping. I had to struggle hard, kick him harder still before I was able to break free. I stop at the place where it happened, to the left of the stairs, wiping my hands down my skirt. Nearly two decades ago but still fresh in my mind. I shake my head clear, keep walking, up the stairs and through the arch at the bottom of Essex Street into the ordered red brick of its parallel rows of barristers’ chambers.
When I reach my old chambers, halfway up Essex Street, I stop for a moment and take a deep breath. Earlier, it felt that time had gone backward. It’s happening again. I’m as ungainly and as clumsy as the first day I started pupilage, all elbows and knees, my hands hot. I take a deep breath, draw back my shoulders, and push open the door.
“Miss Roper,” David Phelps says, and this time the years roll back and stay there.
“David,” I say, damping down the supplicatory note that’s creeping into my voice.
“To what do we owe the pleasure?”
He’s standing behind reception, papers in hand. He must have been on the way to his desk as he would hardly have been answering the phones—as if in answer to this thought, a young woman slips past him and takes a seat at the desk next to the switchboard.
“Do you have an appointment?” she says to me in a neutral tone, scrutinizing me, her eyes sliding up and down me. I feel suddenly conscious of my outdated suit.
“No,” I say, lifting my chin.
“Then how can I help you?”
“Miss Roper is an old member of chambers,” David says, perhaps taking pity on me. Or perhaps not. I smile at him, and he looks through me with the eyes of a shark, dark and predatory, waiting for the first sign of blood.
“I was wanting to talk to you about restarting my practice,” I say. “I know it would have been better if I’d written first, but everything has happened rather faster than I anticipated.”
“I see,” David says.
“I’m back in London now. My daughter is at school. There’s nothing to stop me from starting up again.” A note of defiance is creeping into my voice. I can feel my nerves stretched on edge but I won’t let him drive me away.
“Hmm,” David says. “The small matter of instructing solicitors, miss? I don’t see them lining up, desperate to give you work.” It’s almost reassuring that he’s still loading the word “miss” with more scorn than ought to be possible. Almost. Not entirely. At least I know where I am with him. I always did.
“I was hoping that there might be some junior work available, David, and through that I would be able to build up my practice in time.”
“I’m terribly sorry, miss, but as any of our juniors would tell you, there’s not exactly an abundance of work available these days. A lot has changed in the last few years, as no doubt you’ll be aware.” He pauses to smooth his hair down, a tic I remember from before. “Come to that, how many years is it now?”
“Nearly eleven.” My chin is still up.
“It’s not as if you can just walk back in, miss. There’s also insurance, your practicing certificate, your continuing professional development. As I said, a lot has changed. It won’t be possible.”
“But I’ve done all of that already,” I say. He thinks he’s got one over me but he’s wrong. “I have insurance. My practicing certificate and my CPD hours are up to date. I made sure I kept on top of all the legal developments online. I knew I’d be back one day.”
“Miss—” David starts to say when he’s interrupted.
“My eleven o’clock conference will be here shortly,” a woman says from behind me, her voice imperious. Something familiar about it, tugging at my memory.
“Of course, Miss Carlisle. Would you like coffee to be brought to the conference room?” David sounds like a completely different person. Respectful. Obsequious, even. No wonder. I should have remembered immediately I heard her voice. Barbara Carlisle is one of the most senior Queen’s Counsel in chambers. Powerful even when I was a tenant in chambers all those years ago.
I keep my head down.
“Naturally,” she says. “For eight.”
She does not say please. I keep my head averted, hoping she’ll leave soon so that I can continue my conversation with David in private. He has a different idea.
“Miss Roper,” he says, turning to me. “I understand your position. But it is simply not possible to turn up in chambers out of the blue after over a decade and expect to be given work. We have procedures. Regardless of your former tenancy our protocols still apply. If you write a letter in the correct format to the Tenancy Committee, they will consider your position in the fullness of time. I believe their next meeting is at the end of March.”
Not for months. I nod, mute, swallowing my frustration. I turn again to go, walk toward the door when Barbara approaches me.
“Sadie,” she says. “I remember you. You were the second junior on that fraud with me?”
“I was.”
“And you left for America, isn’t that right? Had a baby?”
“Yes, Robin’s nearly eleven now,” I say.
“And you’re coming back to work?”
“I want to come back. I need to come back. But apparently there’s nothing available.” I glare at David who gives a self-satisfied smirk, eyebrow raised.
“I see…” Barbara says, but I don’t hear the rest of her sentence. David’s sneer has finished me off and I’m close to tears of humiliation or anger—I’m not sure which—but I’m damned if I’ll let them see me crack. I march out of reception without looking back.
5
I wait for Robin outside school with my head down, focused on my phone, unwilling to catch anyone’s eye. I know I’ll have to engage at some point soon, but right now, I don’t have room inside me. Too disappointed by my reception in chambers, too tired from trailing up and down on the tube. It takes me a minute to realize that Robin is right at my elbow. Her expression is still tense, though not so much so as this morning.
“How was it?” I say, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek. Robin pulls away.
“Can we just go? Please?” We walk swiftly toward the bus stop. It’s only when we’re on the bus, some ten minutes later, and Robin has looked around once, twice, as if to double-check that there’s no one in the same uniform sitting anywhere near, that she’s prepared to say anything about her day.
“It was OK,” she says. “OK. The art department is really good.”
“That’s great. How were the other girls?”
Robin exhales sharply through her nose but doesn’t otherwise reply. I open my mouth to ask the question again but stop myself. “Zora is coming over tomorrow. She wants to hear all about it.”
“All about what?”
“All about why we’re here so fast, why I’ve sent you to Ashams…”
“Maybe you can tell me while you’re at it,” she says with a withering look and turns back to the window. She’s not a little girl any more. Only ten, but I can already see the teenager she’ll become, no traces of the toddler she once was, her profile tense against the gray afternoon light.
As soon as we get into the house, Robin slams up to her bedroom. I leave her to it. A couple of hours later, she comes downstairs and gives me a hug.
“The house is feeling a bit warmer,” she says. “And my room looks much better. Thank you. I’ve started putting my stuff away.”
It’s the reward that I wanted; more than I could expect. I’ve done my best with Robin’s room. The room I’m sleeping in—my mother’s old room—is still horrible, but I don’t dare yet go ups
tairs to my childhood bedroom on the third floor, preferring to sleep on the same floor as Robin. Keen to avoid those ghosts.
“Do you fancy pizza for supper?”
Robin’s pleasure at the suggestion wards off any further discussion about the house. Her face softens and she spends the rest of the evening chatting enthusiastically about her old friends and their tribulations. Not so grown-up after all.
The next evening, Zora bursts through the front door, grabbing me in a massive hug before letting go of me to take hold of Robin. Then she turns to me, hugs me again. She smells exactly the same as she’s always done—fags and a vanilla-scented perfume. Most people I know have given up smoking—not Zora. Her work as a busy criminal solicitor gives her too much stress for her to be able to give up, she always argues.
“Look at you both,” she says. “I can’t believe I’ve got you home again.”
“It’s… interesting to be back,” I say.
“I can imagine,” Zora says. “I know you never wanted to come back here. It must feel as though life’s completely collapsed for you. Are you OK?”
Robin and I nod, wordless, before Robin mutters something and scoots out, running upstairs to her room.
“And Andrew? How’s he coping?”
“Let’s leave talking about Andrew,” I say, turning and walking toward the kitchen. “It’s really hard. Why don’t you come and have a drink?”
Zora follows me through and sits down at the kitchen table. She looks around with an approving expression on her face.
“It looks a lot better in here,” she says.
“Thanks for keeping an eye on the place,” I say, pouring wine into two glasses and putting one in front of Zora.
“I was happy to help,” Zora says.
“And thank you for not asking too many questions. It’s taken me ages to process it.” I remember the phone call to her, my voice tense, anxious, trying hard to be businesslike after the bombshell of discovering the provisions of my mother’s will. No quick sale as I’d assumed—a long-protracted agony while we decided whether to comply with her terms for the legacy, or see it pass into someone else’s hands. I didn’t tell Zora then, unable to put into words how controlling my mother had been. It was hard enough to ask her to help look after this house.