Courting Trouble (11 page)

‘Professional decency. Something you know nothing about, of course.’

‘I’m having rather
in
decent thoughts about another professional right now actually . . .’

I wrapped my arms across my chest. ‘So, enlighten me. Don’t your Narcissists Anonymous meetings somewhat interfere with your dating life? Now, will you help me or not? Can we agree her case should be tried first?’

‘Why don’t you charm me into it?’ Jack suggested. He gave a wide smile, which increased his resemblance to the Cheshire Cat. ‘Use your feminine wiles.’

‘Sorry. Can’t. I whiled away my feminine wiles while dating complete assholes in my youth,’ I said pointedly.

‘I think it would be beneficial to discuss this dilemma over dinner, don’t you? I could wine and dine you by candlelight. What would life be without the occasional swing from a chandelier?’

‘A chandelier is just a lightbulb with a big ego,’ I countered. ‘Something you
do
know all about.’

‘Then after dinner,’ he went on, ignoring my comment, ‘you could slip into something more comfortable . . .’

‘Yes, like a coma.’

‘Why are you always so defensive, Matilda? I could be the perfect boyfriend for you. I’ve improved since we were students, you know. I’ve learnt to be so much more considerate . . . When you’re hungover, I will use only little words. When you fall over, I’ll point and laugh for a while, but will always give you a hand up. When you’ve got the flu – stay the hell away from me if I have a case. But I will make chicken soup. Why won’t you give me a second chance?’

‘Because I am not your type.’

‘You’re not anyone’s type. You’re a total original. That’s why I like you so much . . . You’re the human version of a platypus.’

‘I vowed when I went to the Bar never to date a lawyer. A male lawyer is in love with one thing – the sound of his own voice.’

‘Really?’ Jack gave a slow smile. ‘I find that talking is excellent exercise for the mouth’s all-important oral-sex muscles.’

‘You really are delusional. We wouldn’t make love, Jack. We’d make war.’

‘Yes, but with two winning sides.’

I tried to ignore him, but his gaze was like the touch of a hand on my arm.

‘Date me, or it’s no deal,’ he said simply, rocking back on his chair. ‘And your gran will have to contemplate a very long sentence—’

‘At least she won’t put a
proposition
at the end of it,’ I cut in contemptuously. ‘What happened to you, Jack? When we met, you wanted to work for Human Rights Watch.’

‘Yes, but that was before I realized it would mean spending my days with gruff, bearded men poking their gun barrels through my car window to demand bribes before stringing me up by the testicles anyway and beating me senseless with copies of their misanthropic manifestos.’

‘Really? For a chauvinist pig like you, I can see many upsides to spending time in the developing world. For one thing, sexual-harassment suits are an unknown luxury,’ I said, switching off his air-conditioning unit.

‘True. And it probably does take a lot off your mind when the average life expectancy is, oh, thirty-four minutes . . . making it pointless to give up cigars, Martinis and carbohydrates. All of which talk is making me hungry. So, where shall we dine on our date? The Fat Duck? The Ritz in Paris? . . . Or shall we catch a private plane to a tropical resort so exclusive not even the tide can get in?’

I shook my head at him. ‘You didn’t change the world, Jack, you bought it.’

‘The way I see it, if I can’t subtract from the planet’s sum of suffering, do I have to add to it personally? It’s one of the questions I mean to take up with God if I ever get religion. Some people worry about the difference between right and wrong. I worry about the difference between wrong and pleasure. And it would be very pleasurable to get to know you again, Matilda.’

‘Come on, Jack. We’d claw each other’s eyes out before the waiter could say “Do you want fries with that?”’

‘I think the River Café . . . I’ll make a reservation, shall I?’

Why had I wasted my time? Jack Cassidy doing something altruistic is as likely as a Taliban with a bar tab. ‘How can I put this so that you’ll understand it? Going out with you would be only slightly more enjoyable than abduction by multi-headed aliens hell bent on death by anal probing.’

‘. . . Oh, well, I’m sure your client will find a few distractions in prison. She can always join a writing workshop full of lesbians reading poems about bleeding, death and endless rivers of Satan’s semen.’

‘When did you get so cynical? It’s as though you found out as a child that there’s no Santa and just never got over it. Unlike you, I have the guts to stand up to evil-doers.’

I employed a tone of crisp reprimand that effectively closed the conversation, along with the door to his office. Striding across the cobbled cul-de-sac of Gray’s Inn and through the ornate iron gates on to a Holborn lane, I vowed from now on to be less like my cowardly father and more like my principled mother. Brave. Heroic. Stoic. I was no longer going to let life walk all over me!

Ironically, life was about to grant me an opportunity to prove my new Wonder Woman credentials. I had just got into my car and fired the engine when I noticed a man lurking suspiciously outside the mini-market. As I buckled my seatbelt, I watched a security guard walk out of the store swinging a case, evidently full of money, towards a Securicor van. The young bloke I was observing then pulled out a gun, seized the case and leapt on to the back of a getaway motorbike driven by an accomplice. They veered off towards the main road, right past my car. Sensing a high point in my crime-fighting career, I threw my little orthopaedic shoe into reverse and backed into their path. The two villains were thrown on to the bonnet of a nearby car. They staggered, dazed, to their feet and stared at me, aghast.

Aghast also were the director, the sound man, the cameraman and everyone connected with
Crime Stoppers
, a hugely popular TV programme, who were reconstructing an earlier robbery in the hope of helping the police to solve it . . . Or so the director explained to me as he emerged from the bushes. He pointed to the signs I somehow hadn’t seen, posted on all the lamp posts, stating that filming was taking place.

I glanced up over the old stone walls of Gray’s Inn to the first-floor window of Regal Helm Chambers to see Jack Cassidy bent double with laughter, having watched me perform the least successful citizen’s arrest known to humankind.

What more could I do to embarrass myself? Possibly cartwheel into court, yodelling. I turned the car towards Camden and skulked homeward . . . via the hospital to have my toes surgically uncurled.

The 20-stone prison officer eyed me as though I was lunch. She had a face like a bottled foetus that had escaped from its formaldehyde jar. ‘Youse just have to wait, like all the uvers.’ She emphasized her decision with a slam of the sliding window in front of her.

Roxy and I were standing outside Holloway women’s prison with a scrum of shivering people waiting for visits with loved ones. The prison had been home to feminists like Christabel Pankhurst and fascists like Diana Mosley. Moors murderer Myra Hindley was once incarcerated here, and five women were executed, including Ruth Ellis, their bodies buried within the prison walls in unmarked graves. Oscar Wilde was also interned here, obviously perceived as a woman by the judiciary. It was now also the temporary home of our client, Phyllis O’Carroll, infamous testicle markswoman.

‘But we are here for a legal visit,’ I said to the bulletproof glass. ‘We have priority.’ The warden just hunched down lower over the food she was eating in order to quicken its journey between plate and mouth. When she did glance up, I noted a speck of gravy in her eyebrow.

‘You’ve clearly never been to a prison before. Welcome to the wonderful world of legal aid. The prison staff are like snails with attitude,’ my mother commented drily.

‘It’d be faster to move things telekinetically.’ I banged on the warden’s window once more, to no avail.

‘Clearly, she’s not going to admit anybody until after lunch,’ said Roxy. ‘We might as well have a nosh as well.’

‘We have an appointment!’ I waved our authorization documentation at the officer, who showed me no more concern than she would a gnat.

Roxy checked her watch. ‘With no mood swings at Security, it should only be about another, oh, hour and a half before we get in.’

‘That’s outrageous! It’s freezing out here.’ While I continued to thump the window and make blustery, barrister-type noises, my mother crossed the road to a greasy-spoon café, the sort of eatery that serves salmonella on toast. She returned shortly afterwards and thrust a cardboard container at me. ‘Jellied eels. A North London delicacy. Would you like a bite?’

‘Sure . . . If I wasn’t worried about an imminent attack of death.’

‘It was quite clean, actually, for a greasy spoon.’

‘Oh, what? The cockroaches were wearing hair nets?’ I whiffed the grey slime on offer.

‘It’s better than the food in prison,’ Roxy said. ‘Last week, an inmate got hit in the face with a piece of mincemeat. Some of it got in her mouth and she died instantly. The food’s so bad, if there’s dental floss in the cells, the mice hang themselves.’ She plonked herself down on the grassy bank in a patch of watery January sunshine by the bustling Seven Sisters Road, then pulled her miniskirt a little lower on her chubby thighs.

‘Mother, now you’re in your fifties, do you think it might be time to lower your hems just a little? I mean, just to ensure that whenever you sit down complete strangers don’t cop an eyeful of your primary sex organs?’

‘Well, at least mine are in use.’ She patted a patch of grass next to her. ‘There is life after marriage, you know, Tilly. Is there still no man on your hormonal horizon, hon?’

I would have said no, but I was concentrating on manoeuvring myself on to the grass next to my more agile mother – except the grass was slippery and wet and I was in heels . . . which is why I heard his voice before I saw him. After I had slid rather spectacularly down the slimy slope as though I were wearing invisible skis, his calm, reassuring voice was asking me if I was okay. I opened my eyes to say hello – to his feet first (brown, scuffed biker boots), then his legs (strong, muscular, encased in faded blue denim), followed by a big hello to his bulge (he’d obviously thoughtfully packed lunch for two). My eyes then travelled upwards across a tight abdomen and then further up to a chest broad enough to be rented out for advertising space. And then on up into an amused face. The glint in his eye couldn’t just be because of my comedic topple down the embankment, because his mouth was bracketed by deeply etched smile lines.

‘S–s–sorry, I’ve been a little sleep deprived since the baby was born.’

‘Sure. No problem.’ He offered his hand to pull me up. ‘How old is your baby?’

‘Twelve,’ I answered.

The tall, tousled stranger smiled at me and I felt as though I’d passed some kind of minor test. As he gently hauled me to my feet, I took note of the remnants of a summer tan which was so lightly toffee-coloured I felt the urge to lick it. As he held my shoulders to steady me, I caught an aroma of limes and salt and possibly cinnamon.

Now that I was face to face with him, I could see that he had inquisitive eyes, a mane of gold-flecked hair and an aquiline nose which gave him the look of a Roman god. I controlled an overwhelming urge to cry ‘Take me to Apollo!’ His caramel skin and hazel eyes fringed with curly eyelashes made him centrefold handsome, in a slightly bohemian, aristocratic, world-weary way.

‘Why thank you, kind sir,’ I said in my friendly, flirty voice, which sounded slightly false from disuse. It was a ridiculously Jane Austenesque comment, since my dress was covered in grass stains, my knees were smeared in dirt and I possibly had dog turd in my hair.

The stranger then did the most surprising thing. He kissed my hand. Or, rather, breathed hotly on to it, head slightly bowed. The Sir Lancelot gesture made me laugh out loud, but it was also irrationally pleasing.

‘Sorry. But you don’t often encounter behaviour like that on the capital’s prison forecourts.’ I laughed, a little flustered.

‘Sometimes I forget to hide my dark secret – a private-school past. Bryanston . . . Alternative boarding school for pampered poshies,’ he explained, in case I didn’t know. ‘I think I saw you the other day. On the Tony Benn Estate.’ He looked me up and down, quite slowly. ‘Not your natural habitat, I’d say.’

‘Absolutely. My mother says that a London council estate is not a good place to go if you have money, jewellery or a vagina on you. Oops.’ The man had so unnerved me that the words had just blurted out of my mouth. Why did I only ever feel in control in court? I needed my wig and gown urgently. Perhaps I could have them surgically attached? But the glance he gave me was amused and, if I wasn’t mistaken, a little titillated.

The stranger then dusted off my knees – an activity which sent electric currents from my tonsils to my toes . . . and quite a few places in between. He next bent to pick up a motorcycle helmet, giving me a ringside view of his tightly muscled rear. I watched as he wiped grass off his hands on to the back of his jeans. Oh, lucky hands, I thought. He gave a warm smile, his whole face in it, especially his eyes. The smile made me want to touch his arm – or, better still, slide my hand over the delicious contours of his derrière.

He straddled a motorbike, which spluttered into life and vroomed away while he was still adjusting his helmet strap with one hand. As he was giving me an insouciant wave with the other hand, it could mean only one thing – he was steering with his genitalia.

‘Yowzah!’ my mother commented as the pulchritudinous Good Samaritan departed. ‘At the very least, I’d like to pash that man until there was nothing left but his helmet. How hot was
he?
’

‘Really? I didn’t notice.’

My mother raised a dubious brow. ‘Tilly, if you were a dog, you’d have been sitting on your hindquarters and hanging your tongue out.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Roxy. He saw me on the estate. He’s obviously some drug-dealer pimp type visiting one of his upper-class hookers in Holloway.’