Did You Miss Me? Read online

  It was quiet when I arrived today, the only noise my trainers squeaking across the marble floor of the reception. I took the stairs two at a time up to the third floor, where Gideon and I shared an office.

  I say share; Gideon took up most of the space. He wasn’t in yet. He never arrived until at least ten. When he did, he’d collapse at his antique desk, which was the size of a dining table and decorated with pictures of his five children and the third Mrs Fotheringham, before spending the day barking orders at me. Behind his desk, hanging on the wall, were sporting photos of Gideon from his school days. It was the same for all the partners at Spinks. While working there, I’d learned that public-school men, no matter what age, needed to have their team photos on public display at all times to prop up their egos.

  My own, more modest desk was hidden behind the door, but at least it faced a wide window overlooking the square beneath us, which I often flung open in protest at the noises and smells that wafted from Gideon’s desk to mine.

  I showered and changed in the bathrooms down the corridor. It was always a suit in this office. Years ago, I’d braved a floral dress but Gideon had asked if I was ‘off to a tea party’ with a disapproving look, so it was back to muted colours after that. I didn’t mind so much. Having inherited my mother’s pale colouring, anything too bright washed me out. I’d learned it was easier to blend in with the grey suits at Spinks if you wore one yourself, especially as a woman.

  I scraped my curls into a low ponytail, rubbed a layer of tinted moisturizer over my freckles, added a lick of mascara, then folded my damp running clothes into my rucksack and returned to my desk. While tapping at my mouse to kickstart my computer, I reached for my phone to ring downstairs for a cafetière of very strong coffee.

  That was another perk of working here – in the basement was a kitchen which produced breakfast, lunch or supper on demand from a new menu that was emailed to all staff every Monday morning. It was presided over by a sixty-something Filipina called Queenie and her niece, Carmelita, who were the most adored people in the office.

  Then I sat at my computer, going over the file I’d started compiling on Linzi. Much of my time was spent concentrating on intricate divorce contracts as thick as hardback books, or combing through our clients’ multiple bank statements and tax returns. But since our clients were usually high-profile, I also spent a good deal of my day scrolling through the Daily Mail website, trying to gather as much information as possible about who we were defending – or who we were up against.

  ‘Good morning, Eleanor,’ boomed Gideon, when he swept into the office a few hours later.

  ‘Morning,’ I muttered from behind my screen.

  ‘Isn’t it a marvellous day? The sun’s shining, the sky is blue, the birds are doing whatever the birds do.’

  I looked up as he dropped his overcoat on the stand. ‘You’re in a good mood.’

  Gideon flashed his incisors. ‘Of course I am. A new client, fresh blood, fresh meat.’ He rubbed his hands together and dropped into his seat. ‘Could you ring Queenie and get her to send up my usual?’

  This meant a cappuccino and a full English which he would eat noisily at his desk while I tried to concentrate. It was like watching a seal use a knife and fork, and he normally dripped egg yolk down his tie, which meant a trainee was dispatched to go and buy a new one.

  At such moments, I told myself that when I became a partner, I’d move offices and work beside someone else. No longer would I have to listen to the crunching of Gideon’s jaw, or see him cup his crotch and rearrange himself every time he stood up. I wasn’t sure that he washed his hands after visiting the loo either, so I tried to avoid picking up his phone or using any of his pens.

  Please please please could I make partner, I prayed, as I called down to the kitchen using my own phone. They were announced at the start of September, which meant that since today was the fifteenth of March, I had just over five months to go. Five and a half months of sitting next to this blond amoeba. I could do that. I’d been doing it for two years, ever since my last promotion. What was another five months?

  Carmelita arrived with his breakfast tray twenty minutes later and Gideon grunted his thanks.

  ‘I’ll do the talking in this meeting,’ he said once she’d left.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, without looking away from my computer. This was the routine with new clients: Gideon welcomed them to Spinks and, as if a dentist probing a sore tooth, asked gently about the circumstances surrounding their separation. My job was to sit quietly and write notes.

  For all his (many) faults, Gideon was efficient in these first meetings. He had an authoritative air and conversational patter which meant clients instantly trusted him, and he knew that if he got them to divulge personal information to us, they’d be more likely to instruct Spinks rather than go through the pain and hassle of running through the same details with another firm afterwards.

  ‘The delicate touch today, I fancy,’ he continued, as he sawed through a rasher of bacon. ‘Get Rosemary to send her up here.’

  I frowned. This made me nervous. First meetings were more usually held with new clients in the boardroom in an effort to impress them with the old-school gravitas of Spinks and Co. Its walls were covered in priceless Chinese wallpaper which the townhouse’s first owner, Earl Macartney, who led England’s first ambassadorial visit to China, carried back with him in 1782. A vast antique table stretched down the middle of the room, oil portraits of past partners gazed down on it, the carpet was as spongy as cotton wool and the whole room was so soundproofed that Gideon liked to joke the prime minister could have held meetings in there.

  ‘And who’s to say he hasn’t visited us before?’ he’d tell a new client, winking.

  But occasionally we met clients in our office on the third floor instead, especially more high-profile ones. Or the weepy ones. Women often cried in our meetings and I wished they wouldn’t. It wasn’t a lack of sympathy; I felt huge sympathy towards anyone who came into our office crying about their marriage, especially women if they’d been badly hurt. We’d all been there. Well, most of us, although my own dose of heartbreak hadn’t involved any courgettes. It was years ago, when I’d sobbed for so many days that my entire face swelled red and Mum tried to make me go to the doctor, insisting that I’d developed a new allergy. My swelling was nothing to do with an allergy; I just felt like a lumberjack had taken a swing at my chest. But it was a useful pain in the end, because it spurred me on, encouraging me to help other people going through it, particularly women. It was the spark that drove me towards family law.

  So no, the tears of the female clients didn’t alarm me because I understood those. It was more Gideon’s behaviour towards them. He took advantage of their vulnerability. At the slightest sign of a wobbly lip or a watery eye, he’d shift closer on the sofa and pull an initialled handkerchief from his breast pocket like a magician.

  ‘Here, please, take this,’ he’d insist.

  Having made this chivalrous move, he’d gone on to sleep with the odd one. ‘Part of the service,’ he’d boasted once, after the wife of a Goldman Sachs banker forgot to remove me from a cc’d email to us both, and announced that she could ‘still taste’ Gideon. I had to go for a long walk outside that afternoon.

  ‘In here, really?’ I queried across the office.

  ‘Yes, why not?’ A small fleck of food – could have been bacon, could have been egg or a tomato pip – flew from Gideon’s mouth and landed on the carpet in front of my desk.

  ‘No, no reason. Fine. I’ll call down and tell Rosemary now.’

  Rosemary was the receptionist who’d worked at Spinks for over forty years, treated the male partners like naughty schoolboys, and was the size of a battleship. Nobody, not even Gideon, messed with Rosemary.

  At eleven, Linzi arrived and was shown into our office by a trainee. She had thick blonde highlights, eyelashes as big as butterfly wings and a chin that was already wobbling.

  ‘Mrs Lemon, wonderful to
meet you,’ said Gideon, leaping up from behind his desk. ‘I’m Gideon Fotheringham, senior partner in the family department here at Spinks, and this is my associate, Eleanor Mason. Why don’t you come in and have a se—’

  He was interrupted by a noise like a whale in childbirth as Linzi burst into tears.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear, I’m so sorry, Mrs Lemon,’ said Gideon, rushing over and circling an arm around her. He guided Linzi towards the cream sofa in front of his desk and flicked at the trainee with his other hand as if she was a mosquito.

  As Linzi lowered herself on one end of the sofa, audibly sobbing, he widened his eyes at me and inclined his head towards our door.

  ‘Here, please, take this,’ he added, retrieving his handkerchief from his suit and holding it out to her. ‘I assure you it’s perfectly clean, ha ha!’

  Linzi took the handkerchief and smiled at him through watery eyes; Gideon beamed back before sitting on the other end of the sofa; I closed the door.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, before blowing the contents of her nose into Gideon’s hankie.

  ‘Not at all, not at all,’ he replied smoothly. ‘It’s a distressing situation.’ Then he glared at me and made a scribbling gesture.

  I fought the urge to throw my stapler at his head. I knew my allotted role in these meetings, to scribble down what was said so we could start getting a picture of the case, and yet Gideon still bossed me around as if I was a graduate. I sighed while reaching for my notepad from my desk, then sat in the small armchair opposite them.

  ‘Can we get you a coffee, Mrs Lemon?’ Gideon was using his seductive voice, the one he deployed on shaky female clients.

  Linzi wrinkled her nose across the sofa. ‘Don’t have any vodka, do you?’

  He clapped his hands to his knees and barked with laughter. ‘I’m sure that can be arranged.’

  ‘You’re all right. Only kidding. And it’s Linzi, please, no Mrs. It reminds me of that creep I married.’

  ‘Right, yes, about that,’ Gideon said, shifting slightly in his seat, before his voice went up an octave. ‘I think what might be helpful is to run through your situation to clarify a few details.’

  Linzi sniffed, looking anxiously from him to me. ‘I don’t know what you’ve read?’

  Gideon flicked his hand in the air. ‘Please don’t worry about the rubbish the papers print. We want to hear what you’ve been through, your story.’

  ‘I thought we’d be together for ever,’ replied Linzi, before she glanced at her hands and tugged one corner of the handkerchief between her fingers. ‘We were childhood sweethearts, see?’

  Gideon nodded.

  ‘I s’pose we were pretty young when we got married, both twenty-three. But we were so happy, or I thought. Then came the kids.’

  ‘Two children, correct?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘Lewis and little Liberty. Poor things, they’ve got no idea about all this, that their dad’s a cheating bastard!’

  She let out another wail and Gideon shifted closer on the sofa.

  ‘I’m so deeply sorry, Mrs Lem— Linzi. I do understand how difficult this is.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, blowing her nose again. ‘I just never thought he’d hurt me. You can’t imagine that when you’re in love with them. You never think they’d do anything to hurt you, do you?’ She glanced across at me, seeking female solidarity.

  ‘No,’ I murmured, ‘you don’t.’

  ‘So you’ve been married for ten years, is that right?’ pressed Gideon.

  ‘Ten years, yeah. Ten years and he goes and does that! And it’s probably not the first time either. It’s just the first time that I’ve caught the lying toad.’

  Again, Gideon’s voice reached a higher register. ‘Yesssss, if you don’t mind, can we briefly discuss that? I believe you discovered him with somebody else at his television studio, is that right?’

  ‘In his dressing room, with some girl from the audience. He was…’ Linzi dropped her voice to a whisper, ‘he was using a… a… a cucumber.’

  I crossed out ‘courgette’ on my notepad and wrote ‘cucumber’.

  ‘Most unsanitary. I’m so sorry, Linzi. A terrible incident to witness. I do hope he wasn’t intending to cook with the cucumber afterwards?’

  Gideon grinned, expecting a laugh, but Linzi and I stayed silent so he cleared his throat and moved on. ‘What we should do now is discuss the timeline you might be facing and the settlement you’re after, custody arrangements and so forth, if that’s agreeable?’

  ‘I mean, how could he do it?’ Linzi continued. ‘How could someone I love that much, and who I thought loved me, do something so… so… so cruel! How could he do it?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, I do know how this feels,’ I offered, deciding to jump in. ‘And it’s so unfair, and hurtful, especially after all your support of his career. But that’s why we’re here, to help you move forward from this as painlessly as possible.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Nell,’ Gideon said swiftly, his eyeballs bulging at me in a silent reprimand before he turned back to Linzi. ‘Please be assured, you’re in excellent hands. I myself am exceptionally good at divorce because I’ve been through it twice, ha ha! Now, if we could just concentrate on the settlement for a moment, that would be splendid. The sooner we get started, the sooner we can have you out of this situation. Down to business: am I right in saying you jointly own three properties?’

  Linzi nodded and I bent my head back to my notepad. Just over five months, I reminded myself. After that, I’d make partner, be able take on my own clients and no longer have to sit mute while being talked over by a man who had roughly the same attitude towards women, and indeed wives, as Henry VIII.

  I didn’t get home until nearly eight o’clock that night, having spent most of my afternoon writing up our meeting with Linzi and drafting a letter of instruction for her, while Gideon asked when the letter would be ready every three and a half minutes until I dropped it on his desk for approval. Until she’d signed the letter, we weren’t officially representing her.

  Finally, letter sent, I’d crammed myself on the Northern line and slunk south, back to our flat in Clapham.

  Gus made a face when I called it a flat and insisted that it was a ‘maisonette’ because we had two floors. Whatever. I’d never heard anyone say, ‘Come over to the maisonette for dinner.’

  I hadn’t loved the idea of living opposite Clapham Common, queuing in Sainsbury’s behind Australian twenty-somethings and men whose permanent uniform was rugby shirts. I’d fancied somewhere closer to the river but he’d won that battle (‘it’s on the Northern line, Nell, great for the City’).

  And yet even though it was in Clapham, and even five years after buying it, every time I put my key in the door I felt a little spike of pleasure that it was ours. It took up the top two floors of a terraced house: on the first floor was the open-plan kitchen and sitting room, above it was our bedroom, bathroom, and what we referred to as the ‘spare room’ but was the size of a shoe cupboard. It could, just, fit a single bed but there wasn’t room for anything else apart from a wastepaper basket. Gus was always talking about turning this room into his study but it was one of those things – along with mole check-ups and visits to the dental hygienist – that we never got round to.

  I found him in his favourite position: crouched in front of the wine rack.

  ‘Hi, my love,’ I said, dropping my rucksack on the floor, comforted by the safe, familiar scene after such a day.

  Gus swivelled his head and smiled. ‘Mein engel is home! Now, important question, do you feel more like a French Pinot Noir or a very nice Chianti?’

  ‘Neither,’ I replied, collapsing on the sofa. ‘I feel like a human beanbag who’s been sat on all afternoon by a mad dictator.’

  ‘Ah, something stronger, in that case.’ Gus stood and came over to the sofa. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, leaning to press his lips to my forehead.

  ‘Thank you,’ I murmured from my horizontal
position, smiling up at him. My kind, supportive boyfriend. I couldn’t imagine Gus ever cheating on me. He was too honourable. He not only had strong opinions about recycling bins, but also cyclists who jumped red lights and people who drove in bus lanes even when it was technically allowed. I’d never even heard him swear.

  ‘Plumber’s been,’ he added, returning to his wine collection. ‘Charged £236 to squeeze a tube of toothpaste around the shower tray but says that should do the job. Although we can’t use it tonight while it dries. We should have gone into plumbing instead of law. How was your new client, by the by?’

  ‘Not official yet. But I think she will be. Poor woman didn’t stop crying while Gideon crept closer and closer; I felt so sorry for her.’

  ‘Because of her proximity to him or her divorce?’

  ‘Both.’ I reached my arms above my head and yawned.

  ‘Lucky we’re never doing it then. Right, let’s give this Californian Zinfandel a whirl. That should do the trick.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I murmured, hoping Gus wasn’t about to embark on one of his lectures about the perils of marriage.

  One of the first things Gus ever told me was that he didn’t believe in marriage. The concept of romantic marriage, he explained during our second date, was a relatively new invention in the history of humankind. According to him, it was the Victorians who’d encouraged the idea of marrying for love, (instead of more practical or financial reasons like having children or making a strategic alliance), and this had encouraged society’s ‘obsession’ with finding our soulmate.

  ‘You don’t believe in soulmates?’ I’d asked in the Holborn pub, my enthusiasm for the bespectacled, fellow law student who asked such intelligent questions in our lectures dimming slightly.

  Gus shook his head and went on to say he believed in love and finding someone he could ‘build a life’ with; he just didn’t believe in the saccharine, idealised version of love that was promoted on the front of Valentine’s Day cards.