by Tess Stimson
“Oh, Kit, don’t be difficult.” Malinche sighed. “Mr. Lyon, this is Kit Westbrook, my oldest and apparently crossest friend, and one of those very weary guinea pigs I was telling you about. Kit, Mr. Lyon just saved me from being squashed by a runaway unicyclist, and tore his very smart coat in the process. Help me persuade him to come back with us for dinner; he’s being far too polite about it all.”
“Nicholas, please.”
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Kit said, clearly meaning it very much, “but Mal, you don’t know this man from Adam. You can’t just go round inviting strange men home for dinner, even if they do rescue you from certain death by circus performer.”
“Your friend is right,” I concurred regretfully. “You really shouldn’t take such risks, although I’m not actually a psychopathic serial killer, which suddenly makes me feel rather dull—”
Malinche pealed with laughter. “See?” she said, as if that settled everything. In the end, of course, it did.
I realized right from the start that Kit wasn’t a rival for Malinche in the usual sense of the word. He was always too flamboyantly dressed to be anything other than homosexual—in the midst of the dress-down, austere nineties, he sported velvet frock coats and waterfall lace cravats and knew the names for a dozen different shades of beige. But as far as Kit was concerned, Malinche was his best friend, and even now, after a decade of marriage and three children, he still hasn’t quite accepted that she possesses a husband who has first call upon her. And then there was the matter of Trace Pitt, of course.
Nothing is ever quite as it seems with Kit. He is, after all, an actor. In fairness, though, I must admit he’s been a conscientious godfather, always remembering birthdays and the like. And the girls adore him. Not necessarily my first choice; but there we are.
My secretary ushers my four o’clock appointment into my office. I wish I’d thought to remind Mal to bring William’s retirement gift with her. In her current mood, she’d quite likely to bake it and wrap the birthday cake instead. For the life of me, I can’t recall what she said she’d bought, but I’m quite certain it will be eminently appropriate. Mal’s gifts always are; she just has that feminine knack. I always leave Christmas and birthdays entirely to her, even for my side of the family. She’s just so much better at it.
Firmly putting personal matters out of my mind, I pull a pad of paper toward me and unscrew the lid of my fountain pen. It’s not as if Kit could ever do anything to undermine my marriage. We’re far too strong for that.
Mr. Colman is a new client, so I take detailed longhand notes as he describes the unhappy route that has led him here, to the grim finality of a divorce lawyer’s office. He’s aptly named, with hair the color of mustard and a sallow cast to his skin. Once we have established the basics, I explain the bureaucratic procedure of divorce, the forms that must be filed, the documents supplied, the time and the cost—financial only; the emotional price he will soon discern himself—involved.
“We want it all to be amicable,” he interrupts brightly. “There’s no need to run up huge bills arguing over the plasma TV; we’ve both said that. We just want to get on with it, make a clean break of things. For the children’s sakes.”
I refrain from telling him that it’s not about the plasma television, it’s never about the television; at least to begin with. It’s about a husband dumping his wife of twenty years for a younger, bustier model. It’s about a wife jettisoning her balding husband for a Shirley Valentine affair with the Italian ski instructor. It’s about disappointment, hurt, banality, and betrayal. But because you cannot quantify any of these things, in the end it does come down to the television, and the spoons, and that hideous purple vase Great-aunt Bertha gave you as a wedding present that you’ve both always hated, and which you will now spend thousands of pounds fighting to own.
All but a handful of my clients—the hardened marital veterans, repeat customers who’ve been divorced before—sit before me and tell me they want their divorce to be amicable. But if they were capable of resolving their differences amicably, they wouldn’t be in my office in the first place.
“And the grounds for the petition?” I ask briskly.
Always a revealing moment, this. For the first time, Mr. Colman looks uncomfortable. I know instantly there is another woman in the wings. I gently explain to my client that if his wife has not deserted him or committed adultery—he responds with almost comic indignation that she has not—and will not agree to a divorce, as the law stands he will either have to wait five years to obtain his freedom without her consent, or else cobble together a charge of unreasonable behavior.
“I can’t wait five years!” he exclaims. “I’ve only been married to the bitch for four! I call that un-fucking-reasonable.”
The path from amicable to Anglo-Saxon has been even shorter than usual.
“Mr. Colman, please. Let us be calm. It is my experience that the wife can usually be persuaded to divorce her husband, if there are sufficient grounds, rather than face a charge of unreasonable behavior. Are there such grounds?” He nods curtly. “Then I feel sure we can persuade her to divorce you.”
“Going to cost me, though, isn’t it?” he says bitterly. “She’ll take me to the fucking cleaners.”
“It’s more a question of weighing up what is most important to you, and focusing on that,” I say neutrally.
It is with relief that I finally bid the intemperate Mr. Colman farewell some fifty minutes later. Working at the grimy coal face of marital breakdown is never pleasant, but usually I draw comfort from the thought that my interposition makes palatable what is unavoidably a very bitter pill for most of my clients. At five o’clock on a bleak November Friday, however, after a very long week dealing with the Mrs. Stephensons and Mr. Colmans of this world, it’s hard to feel anything other than despair at the intractable nature of human relationships.
The better part of two decades as a divorce lawyer has brought me no closer to fathoming how people find themselves in these painful imbroglios. I know that old-fashioned morality is very passé these days, but having witnessed the destruction and misery that infidelity wreaks—and adultery is invariably the rock upon which the marital ship founders—I can say with some authority that a quick how’s-your-father in the broom cupboard is never worth it.
My view is skewed, of course, by the scars of my own childhood. But an inbuilt bias toward fidelity is, I think, a good thing.
I realize, of course, how lucky I am to have a happy marriage. Mal firmly believes that Fate meant us to be together—her bashert, she calls me. Yiddish for “destined other,” apparently (she spent a summer on a kibbutz with a Jewish boyfriend when she was seventeen). I’m afraid I don’t believe in that kind of superstitious Destiny nonsense, any more than I do horoscopes or tarot cards; but I’m only too aware how rare it is these days to attain your fifth wedding anniversary, never mind your tenth.
Reminds me. Ours is sometime around Christmas—the eighteenth or nineteenth, I think. I must remember to find her something particularly special this year. She’ll kill me if I forget again.
I spend the next hour or so absorbed in paperwork. When Emma knocks on my door, it is with some surprise that I note that it is almost seven.
“Mr. Lyon, everyone’s going over to Milagro’s now for Mr. Fisher’s party,” she says. “Are you coming with us, or did you want to wait for Mrs. Lyon?”
“I believe she said she’d get a taxi straight to the restaurant from the station. But I need to finish this Consent Order tonight. You go on ahead. I’ll be with you as soon as I’m done.”
Emma nods and withdraws.
Quietly I work on the draft order, enjoying the rare peace that has descended on the empty office. Without the distraction of the telephone or interruptions from my colleagues, it takes me a fraction of the time it would normally do, and I finish in less than forty minutes. Perfect timing; Mal should be arriving at the restaurant at any moment.
I loosen my suspenders
a little as I push back from my desk, reflecting wryly as I put on my jacket and raincoat that being married to a celebrity cook is not entirely good news. I rather fear my venerable dinner jacket, which has seen me through a dozen annual Law Society dinners, will not accommodate my burgeoning waistline for much longer.
Bidding the cleaner good evening as I pass through reception, in a moment of good resolution I opt to take the stairs rather than the lift down the four floors to street level.
As I come into the hallway, I find a young woman in a pale green suit hovering uncertainly by the lifts, clearly lost. She jumps when she sees me and I pause, switching my briefcase to the other hand as I push the chrome bar on the fire door to the stairwell.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Fisher Raymond Lyon. Am I on the right floor?”
“Yes, but I’m afraid the office is closed for the night. Did you want to make an appointment?”
“Oh, I’m not a client,” she says quickly. “I’m a solicitor. My name’s Sara Kaplan—I’m starting work here next Monday.”
“Ah, yes, of course.” I let the fire door swing shut and extend my hand. “Nicholas Lyon, one of the partners. I’m afraid I was detained on a difficult case in Leeds when my colleagues interviewed you; I do apologize. I understand you come highly recommended from your previous firm.”
“Thank you. I’m very much looking forward to working here.”
“Good, good. Well, welcome to the firm. I’ll look forward to seeing you on Monday.”
I hesitate as she makes no move to leave.
“Miss Kaplan, did you just want to drop off some paperwork, or was there something else?”
She fiddles nervously with her earring. The uncertain gesture suggests she’s younger than I had at first thought, perhaps twenty-five, twenty-six. “Um. Well, it’s just that Mr. Fisher invited me to his leaving party, and I thought it might be nice to meet everyone before Monday—”
“Oh, I see. Yes, of course. It’s not here, though, it’s at the Italian restaurant across the road. I’m just going over there myself.”
Eschewing the stairs for the sake of courtesy, I summon the lift and we stand awkwardly next to each other, studiously avoiding eye contact, as it grinds its way up four floors. She’s tall for a woman, probably five ten or so. Short strawberry blond hair, wide swimmer’s shoulders, skin honeyed by the sun, and generous curves that will run to fat after she’s had children if she’s not careful. Her nose is a little large, but surprisingly it doesn’t ruin her appearance—quite the contrary. Its quirky route down her face leavens otherwise predictable, glossy good looks. I suspect a fearsome intellect and formidable will lurk behind those clear mushroom gray eyes. Attractive, in a magnificent, statuesque way, but absolutely not my type at all.
Although she does have a certain earthiness. A just-fallen-out-of-bed air.
Christ, I want her.
2
Sara
Amazing, isn’t it, how an intelligent, street-smart woman who has the rest of her shit together can be reduced to a gibbering splat of emotional jelly by a man? And not even a lush hottie like Orlando Bloom—as long as he keeps his mouth shut—or Matthew McConaughey. No, our Casanova is fifty-one, short, bald—and married.
So, he’s a bastard. This is news?
“He promised he’d leave her,” Amy says again. “As soon as they’d sold their house, he said he was going to tell her about us. He promised.”
Clearly no point reminding her he also promised he’d be faithful to his wife, keeping only unto her in sickness and in health twenty-four/seven and all the rest of that crap. If promises have a hierarchy, I’m guessing the sacred vows you make to your wife before God and congregation come a little higher in the pecking order than drunken pillow-talk to a bit on the side young enough to be your daughter.
“How long have you been shagging him?” I ask.
“Four years,” she says defiantly.
“And how long has he been promising to leave his wife?”
“Four years,” she says, slightly less so.
In fact, her boss, Terry Greenslade, has so far sworn to leave his wife just as soon as—and this is in no particular order—(a) he gets his promotion (b) his wife gets her promotion (c) his eldest child starts college (d) his youngest child leaves school (e) his dying Catholic mother finally wafts off to limbo or purgatory or wherever it is these incense-freaks go; and (f) the dog (FYI, a golden Labrador; how smug-married is that?) recovers from, wait for it, a hysterectomy. I suppose his latest selling-the-house excuse is an improvement on canine wimmin’s trouble, but it’s all still Grade A bullshit. Every milestone has come and gone and surprise, surprise, he’s still with his wife. Like, hello?
It’s not that I have a particular moral thing about affairs with married men, though it’s not something I’d shout about from the rooftops either. But at the end of the day, they’re the ones cheating, not you. A brief, passionate dalliance with someone else’s husband is almost a feminine rite of passage; no girl should leave her twenties without one. And married men are usually great in bed—it’s the gratitude.
But it’s one thing to have a quick fling and send him back home to his wife, self-esteem restored, wardrobe re-invigorated, renewed for another ten years of married bliss with a couple of new bedroom tricks up his sleeve (really, the wives should be thankful). It’s quite another to take an unbroken marriage and deliberately turn it into eggs Benedict.
Sorry, but husband-stealing is a bullet-proof no-no in my book. It just wrecks things for everyone. Aside from the poor kids who’ll only get to see their dads alternate Saturdays in McDonald’s, in the long run it’s you who gets shafted. Leopards don’t change their two-timing spots: A man who cheats with you will cheat on you, so how are you ever going to trust him even if you do manage to prise him away from his sad-sack spouse? And let’s get real, the odds on that happening are microscopic, despite the friend-of-a-friend everyone knows who finally got to walk down the aisle with one husband, slightly used, after years of patient waiting. It’s an urban myth. If they don’t leave their wives in the first three months, they’ll never leave.
I slug more white wine into my glass. Bang goes all that hard work in the gym this morning. Screw it; I deserve it.
I scope the wine bar for talent over the rim of my drink, tuning Amy out as she witters on about Terry. I love this girl to death, but I have so had it with this conversation. For a tough, ball-breaking corporate tax lawyer, she has her head up her arse when it comes to men.
It’s raining outside and, depressingly, already dark, though it’s still not yet five; the bar smells of wet wool and dirty city streets and damp leather and money. It’s one of the reasons I became a lawyer, if I’m brutally honest, to make money; though as it turns out I don’t quite have the temperament to go all the way like Amy, and make some kind of Faustian pact to sell my soul to corporate law for sackfuls of filthy lucre. I’m ashamed to admit it—this isn’t a desirable trait in a lawyer—but I’ve discovered I won’t actually do anything for money. Hence the switch to family law. Less cash perhaps—though still enough to keep me in LK Bennett shoes when I make partner, which I fully intend to do before I’m thirty—but at least I won’t die from boredom before I get the chance to spend it.
The windows steam up as the bar fills with randy, rich lawyers kicking back for the weekend and predatory secretaries undoing an extra button as bait. Each time the door opens, there’s another blast of cold air and whoosh of noise as black cabs and red buses—even lawyers can’t afford to drive their own cars into London these days—swish through the puddles. Everyone’s body temperature goes up ten degrees when they come into the warmth; lots of red cheeks and moist noses.
Hello-o-o. Talking of moist. Look who’s just walked in. Dark blond hair, tall—by which I mean taller than my five foot eleven or I’m not interested—and very broad shoulders. Ripped jeans, but designer-trashed, not poor-white. Ripped pecs and abs, too. Not a lawyer,
obviously. Advertising or journalism, I’d put money on it.
I cross my legs so that my short mint green silk skirt rides slightly up my thighs, revealing a sliver of cream lace garter, and let one killer heel dangle from my toe. Gently I roll my shoulders back, as if to relieve tired muscles, so that my tits perk up—there’s plenty of nipple action thanks to the frigging draft from the door—and casually slide one hand up my neck to twiddle seductively with my long hair. At which point I grope fresh air and the silky prickle of my new urchin crop and remember I had the whole lot lopped off for the first time in living memory. Quickly I turn the gesture into a fiddle with my earring.
I count to ten, then sneak a quick peek at the target. Shit. Some skeletal blonde has skewered herself to his hip, and is death-raying the circling secretaries with a diamond solitaire the size of a Cadbury’s Mini Egg on her left hand. My fucking luck.
It’s not that I’m especially keen to acquire a husband, particularly when it’s so easy to recycle other people’s. But perhaps it might be nice to be asked. I haven’t even been introduced to a boyfriend’s parents yet (though I’ve hidden from a few under the duvet). Right now, such is my dire on-the-shelfdom that I’d settle for having a boyfriend long enough for the cat not to hiss when he walks in. Amy says—without any discernible trace of irony—that my chronically single state is my own fault for not Taking Things Seriously, Focusing, and Setting Goals. Personally, I blame my mother for allowing me to be a bridesmaid three times.
“—sometimes I think he’s never going to leave his wife.”
Amy, doll, he is never going to leave his wife.
“Honestly, Sara, sometimes I wonder. Do you think he’s ever going to leave his wife?”
There was a time I used to lie and tell her yes, love conquers all, it’s a big step, you have to give him time, you wouldn’t want a man who could just walk out on his children without a second thought anyway, would you?
“No,” I say.
“Yes, but Sara—”