Courting Trouble Read Free

UN. Instead, the man had developed a talent for rushing to the defence of the winning side. He was charming, debonair, lazy; his colleagues referred to him as ‘Sir Lunchalot’.
    ‘Why don’t I take you out to lunch and give you some tips on how to manage your anger,’ Jack suggested, loosening a few buttons at the top of his shirt.
    ‘I wouldn’t need to manage my anger, Mr Cassidy, if people would learn to manage their idiocy. That judge is a misogynistic cretin. He rejected every reasonable point I made while favouring every inane argument you dredged up.’
    As I shed my robes, I felt his gaze running up my legs and body. I turned to meet his eyes just as they locked on to mine.
    ‘Do you know the difference between a good lawyer and a great lawyer?’ Jack said to me, smiling wryly. ‘A good lawyer knows the law. A great lawyer knows the judge. Judge Jaggers is so far back in the closet, you can see Narnia, a white witch and snow. I just batted my lashes at him – in a manly way – and he was mine.’
    This kind of cynicism sums up everything I loathe about Jack Cassidy . . . That and the fact that he’s seen me naked.
    ‘What happened to you, Jack? I . . . well,
we
all thought you were going to stride the globe, righting wrongs, liberating underdogs from their kennels . . . But you haven’t exactly taken the world by storm. I think your “storm” got downgraded to “light drizzle”.’ I picked up my stack of files. ‘
You’re
the one who should be accused of contempt of court, for the contempt with which you view your profession and your talent.’
    I executed a pretty formidable flounce from the room, considering I was wearing high heels. Despite the fact that high heels make me walk like a dressage horse, I wear them in court to enable eyeball-to-eyeball contact with opposing, condescending male barristers.
    ‘I like your shoes, Matilda . . . Of course, the reason men created stilettos is so that women feel good lying on their backs no matter what,’ my narcissistic nemesis called after me.
    Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Fall flat on your face, and the whole world laughs – whether you’ve grazed your knees and snapped one heel or not. If ever I’m a contestant on
Mastermind
, ‘Humiliating Moments Witnessed by Jack Cassidy’ will be my specialist subject. As I swivelled to zing back a stinging retort in his direction, I’d lost my balance in my stupid shoes and was now spreadeagled on the landing, halfway down the stairs.
    The law of probability states that the likelihood of being watched is directly proportional to the embarrassingness of your action. Jack skipped lightly down the stairs to pick me up off the floor.
    ‘You would be watching, wouldn’t you?’ I grumbled.
    ‘Do you know what’s behind every great woman? A man checking out her peachy posterior.’ Jack winked.
    I was very restrained. After all, I didn’t stuff my broken stiletto up his nose. But, gathering my scattered papers, I was beginning to feel that the whole world was against me – which was totally irrational and paranoid. I mean, Sweden is neutral, right?
    ‘Have a good day,’ the security guard commented as I limped by. To say I was
not
having a good day was like saying that the members of the National Rifle Association are sane, rational, peace-loving liberals. But I should have stopped then and there to strap on a bulletproof bra, because, on this particular day, fate was clearly using me for target practice. It was only October, but London was already in the grip of a deep, early winter, with the sun hanging low among the bones of the trees.
    Too dejected to take the Tube, I splurged out on a taxi. Alighting near Chancery Lane, I changed back into flat shoes before trudging through the rain to my Chambers. Lincoln’s Inn was built in 1422 by churchmen, who were the lawyers of their day. This explains why the picturesque squares and cobbled courtyards resemble medieval cloisters. But the