‘That sounds like a great plan, Mum,’ said Tom. ‘Definitely, like, just ask a guy who’s been convicted of stabbing his mate to death with a kitchen knife . . . to stop it? Plan. Purrr-lan.’ He swallowed, though, his eyes flicking from his mother to his father.
‘This is not acceptable,’ said Davide. ‘You must do something. If you don’t, I’ll call the police. Or Ashok, is that the solicitor? Get a cease and desist, you call it?’ Their eyes met; a spring breeze, sharp and bold, rushed through the open window behind her, ruffling the papers, making the hairs on Catherine’s arms stand up. ‘You must act. Catrine.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, definitely – yes. I’m sorry.’
Davide’s voice was terse. ‘What are you sorry for?’
‘Everything.’
Tom came up the stairs, gesturing to go into the study and Catherine stepped past him out onto the tiny landing. But she underestimated the width of the door frame and stumbled slightly, hitting the side of her foot hard against the door. She had no shoes on and the pain of her little toe against the edge of the wood was greater than she’d have imagined.
‘Jesus,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Jesus effing Christ, that hurts. What next?’
‘Are you OK?’
‘It’s fine. Banged my toe.’ In fact she had felt a tiny crrack on impact, but she didn’t say anything – Davide was, in a very Gallic way, a great lover of a health complaint and would insist on her calling 999. Instantly the toe throbbed, as hot pain seemed to glow through her feet, up into her chest. She felt sick with the pain, then shook it away again. A toe! A tiny toe.
Behind her, she could hear Carys, talking to Tom. She was whispering something.
‘Why wasn’t the glass all over the study? Why is it on the roof? If you break a window from the outside it goes inside, right?’
‘What?’ Tom was saying, still dazed, and she saw him glancing at her.
‘Talk to Grant Doyle,’ said Davide, shortly, turning and walking downstairs. ‘Promise me, my love.’ She nodded, still wincing. ‘It isn’t right.’
Catherine looked back in at the study. She gazed down the stairs, into the warm light of the hallway, the collection of shoes, the photographs lining the walls, the notices on the cork board. She closed her eyes, then opened them again. When she did, everything had changed.
Chapter Two
The café windows were steamed up with the heat from warm workers’ bodies. April rain streamed along the narrow lane outside which, at lunchtime, was rammed with Central London workers in black and grey, buying noodles and tacos and phos.
‘What can I get you, bella?’
‘The soup, please, Frankie.’
‘Certo. One soup coming up. That foot, it is still painful? Franco! Una zuppa, pronto!’
Catherine gave a faint nodding smile and shifted the weight off her feet. The rain drummed down ceaselessly, and she frowned. Her colleague Jake Ellis who had done his pupillage the same time as her, twenty-five years ago now, was known to come in and cajole her, protesting, out into the fresh air for lunch.
‘You’ll turn grey if you stay here, Catherine. No one else works this hard. Get a life.’
‘I don’t want a life. I like this life,’ Catherine would say, resisting him, sometimes seriously. But some days, today, she would come with him to buy sweet-and-sour noodles, or fried chicken, and sometimes they would walk down through Aldwych towards the river, the same walk they had done for decades now, feeling the pumping rhythm of the city, its fumes, its grey pavements and buildings, and every time she was reminded, just a little, of why she loved it here, never wanted to live anywhere else.
Fulton Chambers, where she and Jake worked, was in a tall Georgian building on Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the Gothic fairy tale bulk of the Old Hall of Lincoln’s Inn itself in the background, Narnia-like lamp posts on the corner. Catherine’s narrow office, on the third floor, had one tiny window looking out over Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a public park with a café, a tennis court and views of lounging tourists, lawyers and lunch-break workers, whatever the weather.
Catherine had probably spent more time in that close little office than anywhere else, working till 2 a.m. before she had the children, poring over papers, taking notes, on the phone, then later gathering up box files and dashing out to make it home for tea and a bath after the children. She had been there on Sundays, birthdays and several times on New Year’s Day.
The humid warmth of the café was soporific. Jake was further down the lane now, queuing for pho, but Catherine had wanted soup, something comforting. She blinked, feeling she could just fall asleep here, in the warm fug. Her toe throbbed with a hot, urgent kind of pain. She imagined she could feel it growing, swelling inside her trainer. Briskly, Catherine took out her phone and scrolled through her emails.
St Hugh’s School
Notice for parents on upcoming school trip to Swanage
Boden
Enjoy 25% off this weekend with offer code G4G8!
Jenny Timms Cello Academy
Overdue invoice
Christophe, Davide
Weekend away?
Boden
Enjoy 45% off! Offer code H5H7!
Anna Murphy
invoicing Herbert Smith
Jake Ellis
Lunch old bean?
Anna Murphy
HMP/YOI Tavistock visit to Grant Doyle – PLS review ASAP
Boden
75% off this weekend only with exclusive offer code BUMS!
It was three days since they’d got back and her toe hurt most of the time. Catherine had strapped it up with some washi tape from Carys’s scrapbooking phase, and she’d iced it, and wore trainers, but it was getting worse, not better. Thank God she wasn’t in court that week; no way could she have worn her black heels. She couldn’t walk in to work so had to take the Tube, and was tired of the manspreading, the tinny music, the crowds. She was tired of it, most of all tired of the pain. It was embarrassing and silly. It was a toe, not an eye, or an ovary. It wasn’t important. She knew she ought to do something about it, and yet she didn’t.
The door of the café opened, the bell jangling, and Jake Ellis stuck his head in.
‘Catherine? Hey! Catherine Christophe! You ready?’
Catherine’s eyes snapped open. ‘Oh.’
Jake came into the café. ‘Were you . . . asleep?’ he said, mock-horrified.
‘No! I was closing my eyes. Bit tired.’
‘Why?’
Catherine rubbed her eyes. ‘Oh . . . nothing much. Stuff.’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Jake, with an exaggerated shrug. ‘I was at dinner last night with this woman . . . honestly, Cat, it was a tasting menu and it went on for hours. I didn’t get to bed till about two.’
‘You poor man,’ said Catherine, easing herself off the stool.
Single Jake was the same age as her and lived ten minutes away from her in Camden, but his life seemed wildly different to hers. His was a bachelor existence, where he fell madly in love with unattainable women who wore long, multi-layered skirts and silver jewellery. Usually, they abandoned him to live with wild horses in Patagonia. For a while Jake had been a little in love with Catherine, which had been awkward for both of them, until he’d fallen for a Russian countess called Sasha and gone back to coming into her office with a long, mooning face. ‘She said she loves me,’ he’d told her once. ‘But then she said seeing the Plain of Jars in Laos was more important. I don’t know what to think.’
Now Jake looked at her in concern. ‘Are you OK to walk on that foot?’
‘God, the fuss. I’m fine. Just a bit stiff.’
‘One soup, here you go,’ Frankie said. ‘Hey! Sir! Get her to see a doctor about that toe. Crazy woman,’ he muttered under his breath, with a wink at her as she left.
Rage prickled across Catherine’s scalp, the rage she kept tamped down all the time. She smiled at them both. ‘Let’s go.’
They walked slowly back. She didn�
�t need to over-explain things to Jake; they’d known each other so long now. There were children who’d been born and graduated from university in the years since she’d joined Fulton.
Two years ago Jake had been made a QC before her. ‘When for you?’ Davide had said, furious on her behalf; he was outraged when Catherine was passed over but never liked to consider it might be sexism for that was all lies, he said, lies to make women angry and demean men and women together. Davide believed in love, he said, not hatred. How easy it must be, she’d think sometimes, being a man. Being Davide. When she had taken silk the following year he had been so proud, but she noted he was also relieved – as if he didn’t have to worry about the idea that sexism might exist. As if all was well ordered in his life again.
‘Want to sit in the square?’
‘I ought to get on,’ Catherine said, and, as she spoke, heavy dots of unpredictable April rain splattered the paving stones and they both laughed.
‘How did you do it?’
‘What?’
‘The toe.’
‘Oh. The frame of our bed sticks out. I wasn’t wearing socks and I hit it against the edge. So annoying.’
‘Is it broken?’
‘Hardly. I’m sure it’s not. It’s just bruised.’
‘Shouldn’t you get it looked at?’ said Jake, in a tone she found patronising.
‘I will. How’s the Turleigh case coming along?’
‘Pre-trial hearing next week,’ said Jake.
‘Who’s the judge?’
‘Wilkinson. Not hopeful.’
‘Wilkinson’s all right,’ said Catherine. ‘Don’t smarm, that’s all. He can spot it a mile away. Hide your deference. And he’s very hot on trial by jury, the role of the juror in democracy and all that. So don’t disparage the jury, even if some of them make you want to throw your chair at the bench.’
‘Mm,’ said Jake. He was silent, then said: ‘How’s your last client, by the way?’
‘Grant Doyle? I’m supposed to be fixing up a visit.’ She screwed up her nose. ‘I don’t want to go.’
‘Will he appeal?’
‘Unlikely. I just don’t think he has grounds.’
‘Why are you going to see him, then?’
Catherine shrugged. ‘He’s eighteen. He’s in prison for murder. I couldn’t get him off. He asked to see me – Ashok rang me last week,’ she said, trying to sound cool about it, ‘and it’s a day trip to Rochester, isn’t it?’
‘I think the judge misdirected, Cat,’ said Jake. ‘I’m sure you have grounds. Self-defence. He was a punchbag for that group of boys. Hammersley, was that the name of the victim? He sounds like a thug.’
‘He was.’
‘Arrogant little shit with a millionaire dad who thinks he can buy his way out of anything.’
‘He couldn’t buy his way out of his son being murdered, to be fair.’
‘Didn’t they say he locked Grant Doyle in a cupboard overnight at school, with a rat?’
‘They did. Hammersley paid someone to catch the rat for him. He really did spend a lot of time thinking about how to terrorise him. But –’ She narrowed her eyes, thinking of the days in windowless rooms spent with Grant, staring at her, never blinking, just smirking slightly. His mother’s whining voice, his sweet, furious younger sister’s anger. You were useless. Anyone else would have got the jury to understand what they did to him. What it was like for him. She grimaced. ‘Let’s not talk about it.’
‘Look,’ said Jake, at his most patronising now. ‘I’m just saying, ignore what you read about it. And if you want me to –’
Her phone rang, shockingly loud. With some relief, Catherine answered it.
‘Hello?’
‘My chérie. How are you? How is the toe?’
Catherine raised an apologetic finger at Jake and moved under a portico out of the rain. ‘Fine. I’m just with Jake. What do you want, Davide?’
‘Want? Oh, my. First –’
‘I’m busy, darling –’
‘Sorry.’ She knew what he’d be doing – making a dramatic facial expression to one of his co-workers, for he had carefully curated the brand of Catherine to them, his fearsome, sexy, world-striding, ball-breaking English lawyer wife. Davide worked for an insurance company that specialised in transporting valuable works of art across the world: Banksys hewn from youth club walls and flown to Miami, gigantic equestrian portraits of Renaissance European kings precisely installed on white gleaming walls in desert palaces in Saudi Arabia. ‘Our discussion the other day leads me to ask you, Catrine: are we doing anything over the bank holiday weekend?’
‘Bank holiday? Nothing. Why?’
‘Ah bien. Are you available to go away that weekend, Mrs Christophe? Just you and me? An early anniversary present?’
Jake was leaning against a newsagent’s window, studiously staring at his phone. ‘Oh . . . I’m . . . not sure. We’ve just got back, it’s only a couple of weeks away . . . Leaving the kids so close to exams –’
‘Bof. Those children must learn self-discipline. They will cope for a weekend. Cousin François can visit and check all is well.’
‘Well, we can discuss that.’ Catherine’s mind began whirring with what would need to be organised if she left them for a weekend. ‘And . . . I was going to go to the care home for a visit then. I can’t go the previous week or the week after.’
‘This Eileen.’ Davide made a dismissive sound. ‘You have done enough for her already, Catrine.’
‘She’s Janey’s mother, Davide. She’s on her own. There’s no one else.’
‘You brought her back from Spain, chérie. You found her the home. Her stepchildren don’t email you once to ask how she is. Besides, she doesn’t even remember her own daughter, let alone you. It is . . . unforgivable.’
A jab of pain began between Catherine’s eyes as the rain started again, the pavements suddenly swelling with people walking faster, running. She pulled at the front of her hairline, a habit she had had as a child, and one which left behind a little baby-fluff fringe of dark hair. The truth was, Eileen probably wouldn’t notice if she didn’t come on a Friday. She wouldn’t notice if she never visited her again. ‘She doesn’t have anyone else.’
‘But it’s not your responsibility.’
Catherine looked down at her feet in the neon trainers, at the cooling soup in the soggy bag, the pockmarked newspaper. She closed her eyes as Davide said softly:
‘A weekend away. Just us two. We will walk hand in hand. Feel some warmth on our shoulders. Have a kir. Sit in a square, smell lavender, cigarette smoke, other places. Eat steak, ma chérie, chargrilled, rare steak, without Carys shouting at us about the baby cows.’
Imagine if she just relaxed, if she just gave in to it, for once?
‘You have been working so hard this year. Up all night, in the study, scribbling away.’
‘I’ve had a lot on.’
‘I know that,’ he said, as if she thought he was an idiot. ‘I know the case was thrown into your lap, my love. Have you contacted his solicitor yet? Warned him to leave you alone?’
‘No, Davide –’
His voice was soft, insistent. ‘You talk in your sleep, you know. Nursery rhymes. The same one, only I can never remember it in the morning. Do you know?’
‘I’m asleep when I’m doing it, Davide.’
There was silence, both of them not sure what to say. Catherine looked out over the square, at the huge red cranes, building yet more gleaming skyscrapers. She smiled at Jake, hovering a little way ahead, not wanting to listen. Davide said:
‘I have been worried about you.’ His voice came closer to the phone. She heard his hesitation. ‘You – ah. You must know you’re – you’ve not been yourself. A little, Catrine.’
She bit her lip. ‘It’s fine.’
‘It’s not fine.’
He knew her. Sometimes, it made her feel warm, waves of calm emanating from her. Sometimes it was being trapped, and she could not catch her breath
when she thought about what he did not know. Sometimes she told herself it was nothing. That if he knew he’d understand.
She had met him when they were both aged eighteen, in another country, in another life. He had been standing in a town square, arms folded, quizzical expression, watching as two of his friends played football with a screwed-up paper bag. It was late October, an early autumn evening in Toulouse. She had run away from her life in England, from tragedy, from the summer she lost all her family, her home and her best friend; he lived there. And he had looked up and said, in a voice of surprise: ‘Hello.’
She’d asked him later. ‘Why did you say hello? How did you know I was English?’
‘I knew you,’ he had said. And that was all.
‘You should drink Armagnac here, not cider, mademoiselle,’ he’d said, and she’d told him not to be ridiculous, that she was enjoying her cider, and he’d laughed.
‘OK,’ she said now. ‘Let’s do it. You’re lovely. Where will we go?’
‘Wait and see,’ Davide said, and his voice was lighter, and she knew he was pleased. ‘Don’t worry. It’s a place that’s OK for you. Will you try to look forward to it?’
Even in the midst of the rising panic she felt, she managed to smile at the idea the destination might be a mystery. It would be Paris, which was more than OK with her, but it was a family joke Davide never wanted to holiday anywhere except France. ‘Yes. I will.’
‘Liar.’
Catherine laughed, and peered out of the portico again. It had stopped raining. She looked around her, but Jake had gone. A lump formed in her throat, unexpectedly. ‘I’d better go,’ she said.
The lashing spring rain had suddenly eased, and a shaft of watery sunlight was hovering above the square, sewing silver seams onto the rainclouds. She was by the steps up to Fulton Chambers. Catherine stopped to check her phone again, to see if Grant Doyle’s solicitor had been in touch. There was a faint hum in the air, like an engine running. It grew louder and then louder.
The Beloved Girls Page 3