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journey.
    I hadn’t been to the City for years, but it was as I remembered, the modern mixed in with the ancient, and everything redolent of money. Everywhere I looked people were hurrying from place to place, all of them smartly dressed and about half of them talking into mobile phones. It was hard not to feel a little awed, but the way I’d planned my life I’d be doing the same soon enough, and hopefully earning as much as the best of them, perhaps even as a partner of Montague, Montague, Todmorden and Montague.
    By the time I turned into the Minories I’d constructed a wonderful fantasy world, in which I would be a partner before I was out of my twenties, with an office in the top floor of their fine old building, only to have my dreams crumble around me as I searched for the address. The top of the road was much like those I’dalready followed, but it quickly changed, first to great low concrete buildings like something from a council estate, and then to dirty red brick where a railway bridge crossed the road in a broad span, with a tiny shop built into the wall. Next to the bridge, and also made of red brick, although perhaps a fraction less dirty, were the offices of Montague, Montague, Todmorden and Montague.
    The only part of my mental image that was at all accurate was that the office was old and surrounded by taller, newer structures, only not so much nestled in as loomed over, with a vast concrete and glass building casting the whole area in a somewhat dank shadow. Nor did it look particularly busy or efficient, with the huge black door firmly closed and the windows open against the July heat. A single buddleia had managed to insert itself into the corner beside the railway bridge, to send up long shoots tipped by deep purple flowers nodding lazily in the sun.
    I tried to put my disappointment aside, telling myself that they would no doubt be handling all sorts of fascinating cases and that the experience would be far more valuable and interesting than anything I could gain from a firm dealing with financial matters. There was at least a brass plaque, although it looked as if it had last been polished around about the same date the firm had been founded – 1852. I rang the bell and waited, my hands folded in my lap and my face frozen in a smile, which had worn off long before the door opened to reveal a man who looked like a lizard.
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜I’m Philippa Bassington-Smyth,’ I told him. ‘I have an interview.’
    â€˜Come right in,’ he said, his initial look of perplexity vanishing to be replaced by a toothy smile. ‘I’mMark, by the way, Mark James. Anything you want to know around here, just come to me.’
    â€˜I have to be accepted first.’
    â€˜Oh you’ll be accepted,’ he assured me, pushing open a door. ‘Maggie, this is Philippa Bassing . . . er, something double-barrelled, our new trainee.’
    Maggie, or Miss Phelps as the sign on her desk read, looked as forbidding as Mark James had been welcoming. She was a thin, middle-aged woman, very precise in her crisp white blouse and with her dull blonde hair wound up in a bun. The look she gave me over the top of her glasses as she turned away from her computer wasn’t exactly unfriendly, more irritated, as was the tone of her voice when she spoke.
    â€˜Your name is?’
    â€˜Philippa Bassington-Smyth.’
    She moved back to her computer, frowning as she examined the screen and employed her mouse with brisk, exact motions.
    â€˜Catch you later, doll,’ Mark James addressed me and he had left.
    â€˜You have an appointment at three-thirty,’ Miss Phelps said after a while, her tone suggesting that by being twenty minutes early I was making a thorough nuisance of myself.
    â€˜I thought it best to arrive a little early,’ I began but trailed off as she reached for the telephone on her desk.
    I waited as she spoke into the receiver,