by Harriet Tyce
9
Zora is no comfort at all. She smirks as I tell her what happened. I’m almost tempted to thump her, cortisol still coursing through me from the strain of the evening. I drown the urge in a large slug of wine, having poured myself a glass from the bottle that Zora has open on the kitchen table in front of her.
After downing half the glass in one go, I start to see the funny side of the evening a little more, and my fury passes. Zora is still looking unbearably smug, though, and after a couple more sips, I lean forward.
“Why do you have that hideous I told you so expression on your face?”
“Because I did tell you so,” Zora says. “It was obvious from the start that they’d be dreadful. I don’t know why you thought this school was a good idea, I really don’t. We hated it thirty years ago—it was hardly likely to have got any better, was it?”
“Leave it, Zora. You know I don’t have any choice. I’m really not in the mood. Can we talk about this another time?”
“But you asked me why I was looking so smug!” She leans back in her chair and folds her arms. “When exactly are we going to talk properly? You didn’t come here just because of your mother’s will. Your daughter’s miserable—you’re hating it too. Why the hell are you doing this? What’s happened with Andrew?”
Her expression is as serious as I’ve ever seen it. All the years I’ve known Zora, all the times we’ve talked through our problems together… this is the first time that I’ve felt so reluctant to tell her what’s happened.
“Why don’t you want me to know, Sadie?”
I look at my friend, memories of all the conversations we’ve had before crowding through my mind. The times Zora persuaded me not to run away from home, to stay calm in the face of the strongest provocation from Lydia. The comfort she gave me when Lydia made it clear that I had to choose between having her as a mother or becoming a mother myself, potential estrangement not a threat but a promise.
“I haven’t told anyone what happened.”
“I’m your best friend, Sadie. You know you can rely on me. And I know you—there’s no way you’d break your family up over something trivial. It has to be something big. Did you find him in bed with someone else?”
I shake my head. “I wish it were that straightforward. I mean, I think there is something like that happening, his behavior has been so off. But that’s not why I left…” I take another deep gulp of my wine. I find I’m suddenly desperate to share the burden of what’s happened. But fear still holds me reticent.
“But this is Andrew we’re talking about. Andrew, product of a broken home, the most loyal man on the surface of this planet.”
“As everyone says.”
“Look, I’m not trying to shut you down. What did he do?”
I shuffle on my chair. I can tell her how it started, at least. “He became more and more distant from me, over the last couple of years. I can’t remember exactly when I first realized—it was quite difficult after my mother died.”
Zora grunts in sympathy. “I remember.”
“And I couldn’t put my finger on it, exactly. He was making all these long phone calls at night, locked in his study. He never left his phone lying around. And then he stopped looking at me.”
“You what?”
“He stopped looking at me. We had a huge row two years ago when I found out about the will, what conditions Lydia had imposed. He thought we should jump at it. I said no. He was so awful that I did contact Ashams in the end, but they didn’t have any spaces—as I told you. And shortly after that, he stopped making eye contact with me. It was as if I had ceased to exist.”
“I don’t understand.”
“For the last couple of years, Andrew has refused to look at me. He’s turned into Teflon, an impermeable surface. Perfectly polite, perfectly helpful, doing all the stuff we normally do. But he won’t look at me.”
Zora is silent.
“See, I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
Zora sits silent for a while longer.
“Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“I’m not sure quite what to say,” Zora says. “He was giving you the silent treatment? Is that what was happening?”
“No. Not the silent treatment. He talked to me. Or rather, he talked at me. He just didn’t have anything solid to say. It was all meaningless. Admin. Food shopping. Nothing substantive.”
“But he was still talking to you?” Zora says.
“Yes. But it was like he wasn’t there. I tried, Zora. I tried everything. I tried suggesting date nights, cooked gourmet meals—I even tried to seduce him a couple of times.” I fall silent, shame flooding into me, remembering the way he’d almost looked at me, a resigned kindness in his gestures as he handed me a dressing gown to cover myself before he turned away.
“Oh God, you mean you stopped shagging, too?”
I take a deep breath, nod. “I put it down to work pressures. I tried to blame the late-night calls on work, too. But then…” I pause. “Then, there were a couple of nights when he didn’t come home.”
“And?” Zora takes a drink, another.
“I followed him. I sent Robin off on a sleepover and I waited for him to leave the office and I followed him. This was just last week.”
“Did you see anything?”
I look at Zora, but it’s not her I’m seeing. It’s Andrew, the back of his neck, the slope of his shoulders as he walked in front of me through the subway, the way he took the stairs out of the final station two steps at a time, bounding as if he couldn’t wait to get to his destination. And the blonde hair of the woman he was meeting, standing under a shop entrance in the rain, bright against the gray afternoon.
I focus back on Zora and nod, once. She doesn’t ask again.
“So, he’s having an affair,” she says with finality. “Did you really have to leave? Shouldn’t you have stayed and confronted him?”
I look at her, bleak. “I did. I did confront him.”
“What did he say?”
“He laughed, Zora,” I say. “He just laughed at me. Then he walked out of the house. He disappeared for a couple of hours. His phone was switched off. And when he came back it was like he was a different person. Like someone else had taken control of his body.”
I feel a chill thinking about it now, the coldness in his eyes, the way he looked at me as if I were a stranger. The first eye contact we’d made in months, and I was shriveling under his contempt. Yes, I’m fucking someone else. And I want you gone. If you don’t leave this weekend, take Robin with you, I’m going to take her away somewhere and you’ll never see her again.
I take a deep breath, repeat his words to Zora.
“Oh, come on,” she says. “That’s such bollocks. He couldn’t do that.”
“Maybe not,” I say. “But I believed him. I couldn’t stop him. He showed me as much, the following day. Someone collected Robin out of school with his permission—a blonde woman, she told me afterward—delivered her to Andrew, and he kept her out for a couple of hours incommunicado. Both of their phones were off. No one had seen them. I was going spare.”
“That sounds pretty bad,” Zora says.
“It was the worst evening of my life,” I say. “You’d think it would be amazing, seeing her come home safe, but that was almost the scariest moment of all. He had convinced her it was all entirely normal, just a treat at the cinema for the evening—he’d even persuaded her to switch off her phone so they could be uninterrupted. She came skipping in and I couldn’t say anything I wanted to say. I didn’t want to freak her out. That’s when I realized I was going up against something I didn’t even understand. By then, I’d had the offer of the place for Robin, the house—can you really blame me for coming here?”
She looks at me for a moment and sighs. “I guess I think you should have stood up to him. But at the same time… That must have been terrifying, not knowing where Robin was.”
I shudder, remembering the way I ran back from the
school when I realized Robin was missing, trying to call them both over and over again, my imagination running away with me at the thought of what might have happened to her.
“It was all designed to drive us here. That was the other thing—he’d spent the whole evening telling her about the brilliant new adventure she was about to have, that moving to the UK was going to be great, that it was all decided, and both he and I were really happy about it. So when she came back, she was resigned to the move. What could I do? I could hardly tell her what a bastard her dad is. It was the last straw. I’ve put up with him for ages. But it’s not there. There’s nothing there any more.”
She keeps looking at me. “It just doesn’t make any sense, though. Why would he behave like that?”
“I have no idea, Zora. Literally no idea. He’s changed more than you would believe. He’s not the man I married.”
I stand up, straight in front of Zora. She averts her head.
“You’re not looking at me either,” I say, waiting for a response. Zora keeps her head down. The air lies solid between us. She sighs, leaning back into the sofa.
I turn my back, busy myself with a second bottle of wine. I don’t turn around until I’m sure my expression is under control. When I’ve finally topped up her glass, I sit back down.
“Anyway,” she says. “Let’s change the subject. I think I’ve got you some work.”
All my animosity slides away. “Really?”
“Really. There’s a trial coming up, a grooming case at a school in central London. Male teacher, female pupil. He’s the son of a judge and they’re paying. Barbara Carlisle is leading the case. You remember, the QC?”
“I saw her the other day when I went into chambers,” I say. “Though I kept my head down.”
“Well, we’ve been served a whole load more evidence to go through. The case itself is straightforward enough, but someone needs to go through all of this, and it’s not going to be Barbara. I was going to get someone in the office to look after it, but she’s agreed that it might be helpful to get a junior, so…”
I’ve moved from wanting to shake Zora to giving her a big hug, slopping wine from her glass down my top as I do so. “When do I start?” I say.
“I’ll take it that’s a yes,” she says, laughing.
“Yes. Yes, please,” I say. “I’d love to. The only thing is, which court? I haven’t organized any after-school childcare yet.”
“You’ve only just got here,” Zora says. “Give yourself a break. It’s at Inner London. Straight down the Northern Line to Elephant and Castle—it’ll be fine. I’m not sure when they’ll want you, exactly. I’ll send out the instructions tomorrow, and after that it’ll be up to Barbara to get in touch with you. I imagine it’ll be pretty soon, though. There’s a lot of material to go through.”
“I owe you for this,” I say. “I really do. I can’t wait to get back into court. I’ve missed it so much.”
“It’s about time. It’s such a shame all you women barristers fuck off as soon as you have babies, you know.”
“They don’t make it easy,” I say. “I could hardly go off at the drop of a hat to cover a two-week gun trial in Nottingham, could I? Andrew wouldn’t give up work to stay at home.”
“I suppose not,” Zora says. “Anyway, it’ll be good to have you back at the bar. I’m looking forward to working with you again.”
“Me too,” I say, and I hug her again. This time, I don’t spill her wine.
SUNDAY, 9:35 A.M.
Another nightmare. Formless, shapeless; dread looming over me, swirling up over the horizon. I wake, my eyes heavy, horror close.
Coffee, shower, my senses twitching. Shouldn’t they have called by now? Isn’t it time she was home? I want her home, that’s for sure. The house is too quiet without her.
Another coffee. Nerves still tingling.
If only I could press a button, see where she is on a screen… But, no. I won’t be one of those mothers. I’m not
a helicopter. No stealth reconnaissance for me—no tags, no trackers. I won’t let what happened destroy my trust. Nor my peace of mind.
That’s a joke. I’m a cat on a hot tin roof, skittering from room to room, the emptiness too loud. Once she’s home I’m never letting her out of my sight again. Find My Friends, Life360—I’ll get a tag implanted in her arm if I can.
Time passes. Slowly, slowly, no matter what I do to try and fill the time. I pick up my phone, put it down again. It’s still early. Too early. It’s not time to worry yet. It’ll never be time to worry. That was then, this is now. She’s had a lovely weekend away and she’s on the way back home. Everything is fine.
A cat howls outside and I jump, resume pacing, one window to the next as I wait, and wait.
10
“You choked on a bit of egg?” Robin says as we sit on the bus to school the following day.
“Yes.”
“And everyone else was in skirts and dresses?”
“Yes,” I say. “You don’t need to rub it in.”
“Ouch,” Robin says.
I laugh, and for the first time I feel better about the evening. Ouch is the best response.
“And Daisy’s mom’s house is really good?”
“Yes, it’s lovely. I told you all this already,” I say. I might be feeling a bit better about what happened, but it doesn’t mean I want to dwell on it.
“Who did you talk to?”
“I’m really not sure. There were so many names. Someone called Jessica.” The memory of Jessica’s scorn scores straight through me.
“I think that’s Portia’s mom,” Robin says. “Portia’s one of The Group.”
“Right,” I say, storing the name away, still desperate for any information about school that Robin might give, while not wanting to show that desperation. “What is The Group?”
I wait for Robin to bite my head off rather than replying, but instead of a rebuff, Robin thinks about it for a moment. “They’re the ones who decide who talks to who and who sits where.”
“But you can’t let other people tell you what to do!” The words burst out of me before I can stop them.
“Mom,” Robin says, her face averted.
“Seriously, though. There can’t be some central committee that decides who gets talked to. That can’t be on. I’m going to speak to the school about this,” I say. Panic is beginning to build, rage too, my breathing coming fast. “Are they telling people not to talk to you?”
Silence from Robin. Her face is still turned away from me.
“Robin, look at me. Are they telling people not to talk to you?”
“Promise me you won’t go into school.” Her tone is pleading and I give up.
We don’t speak again until we’re around the corner from school. Robin strides away from me without even saying goodbye. I’m left blinking, concern seeping up through my bones.
I take my phone out of my pocket, hoping to find that there’s been a message from chambers about the trial, when two women walk past me, one of them catching my elbow so hard I drop my phone. As I bend to pick it up, I hear one of them laugh, another making a hushing sound. I get to my feet and stick my phone straight into my pocket, ready to blow up. The two women have turned to face me. One of them is Jessica from the party.
“There’s a coffee morning tomorrow to discuss the Christmas Fair, amongst other things. But I don’t suppose you’d be interested,” she says, “as you hate volunteering.” The woman to Jessica’s left giggles.
I feel heat rising in my cheeks. I want to tell them to piss off, but the thought of Robin comes into my mind. I know she wants me to make more of an effort. “I’ll be there. Where is it?”
Jessica and her friend look at each other, raising their eyebrows.
“Good of you,” Jessica says. “I’ll email. It’s not fair on Julia that she has to do everything.”
And without another word, the two women walk away. I stand on the corner, a little dazed, my hands clenched tight
in my pocket. It’s only when I feel a sudden pain in my palm that I realize that the glass of my phone must have shattered. I look at my hand—there’s a small ooze of blood, nothing more. I need to be more careful.
By the time I’ve had the screen of my phone mended and tidied up the house, it’s almost time to collect Robin from school. I’m getting my coat on when my phone starts to ring.
“Miss Roper? It’s Kirsten Glynn. From chambers.”
“Yes, this is Miss Roper. Hi, Kirsten.”
There’s a pause.
“The details are all sorted now, miss. Zora Gaunt has been in touch. Not sure how much you’ve been told, but you’re going to be junior in this trial to Barbara Carlisle, QC—you remember her from your time in chambers?”
“Yes, I do.” I can feel the tension drain out of me, my shoulders sinking down from where they were hunched tight up to my ears. At least one thing is going right.
“Well, she’s doing an abuse of trust case. Defending a teacher accused of having a fling with one of his pupils.”
“How old is the pupil?” I say.
“Seventeen,” Kirsten says. “Barbara was going to do it on her own, but there’s been a recent disclosure of a lot of extra material and someone needs to go through it. It’s a good case. Starting next week.”
“Yes, Zora filled me in a bit. That sounds great.”
“Good. You OK to come tomorrow morning? About ten?”
“Yes. That’s absolutely fine. I’ll see you then,” I say.
I sit at the kitchen table, triumphant. It’s work. A proper trial. I’m going to be back in chambers. Back in court. From this case, other cases will follow. Maybe things are going to fall into place.
This positive feeling lasts me all the way through from picking Robin up, the journey home, and a basic meal of pasta and tomato sauce. It even survives Robin’s silence, which lasts for the entirety of the evening, keen to avoid any conversation about her day as she hides in her room, only emerging to scoop the food up quickly from behind her hair before disappearing upstairs again. I know I should try to talk to her, but she so clearly wants to be left alone that I don’t have the heart to force the issue. I stand outside her room and listen to her chatting on FaceTime to her old school friends, little chirps of noise with the occasional laugh, the worry fading from my mind.