Courting Trouble Read Free Page A

vine-entwined arbours, fragrant rose gardens and graceful, four-square sandstone buildings with their arched windows and Juliet balconies belie the cut-throat struggles that go on within these ancient walls.
    Word of my morning’s performance had spread like – well, like the genital lice which no doubt plagued the pious churchmen who once practised here. My Head of Chambers asked to see me the moment I had shed my coat, gloves and hat. I’d been on probation for a while now. Because I am nothing if not an amazing businesswoman, I’d actually made a loss in the last quarter. This was mainly due to the fact that I’d taken on too much work for free. As far as my Chambers is concerned, the terms ‘pro’ and ‘bono’ should be used only when referring to a penchant for the lead singer of an Irish rock band and not when working for free on Death Row cases in the Caribbean. My breast-implant-ownership case was supposed to have been a step towards landing more lucrative cases. But Judge Jaggers’ call, threatening to report me to the Bar for unprofessional behaviour, proved the final nail in my commercial coffin.
    Of course, my Head of Chambers, who has the sort of face you wouldn’t wish on a bull terrier, didn’t call it ‘getting the sack’. Mr Phibbs, which was a perfect name for a lawyer so adept at bending the truth, referred to his request that I vacate Chambers as a ‘career-alternative-slash-enhancement opportunity’ and a chance to ‘vocationally relocate’. Whatever way you looked at it, with my legal practice kaput, to continue with his euphemisms, I was now ‘economically marginalized’ and, with mortgage payments to be met, soon to be ‘under-housed’. Unless my husband started to pull his financial weight, that is. Not only was Steve into his second year of researching some academic tome which would never sell, but he’d inherited his father’s old Porsche and was spending a fortune fixing it up. He was committed to that car, in sickness and in health. I would go straight home and insist that he put his opus on hold and take on more clients. ‘You have responsibilities now,’ I would say. ‘You have an unemployed wife and a car to support!’
    I was halfway out of Phibbs’s room when I turned back to throw myself on his mercy. I approached the large mahogany desk and the cold stare of its occupant in the hope of winning a stay of execution. But, if I really
had been
a spy, my code name would be ‘Bloody Idiot’, because my Head of Chambers interrupted my plea bargaining to remind me brusquely of the calibre of former members of the Inn, from Sir Thomas More and John Donne, to Prime Ministers Pitt the Younger, Disraeli, Gladstone and Thatcher . . . Was it any wonder that my boxes had to be packed? I was two months behind in Chambers rent and had until the next day to move out. A high-earning barrister who had applied from another Chambers was moving into my room forthwith.
    Numb with disbelief, I descended into the fuggy air of the Tube. No more taxis for me. On Holborn platform, I just stood staring into the black tunnel waiting for the myopic eye of the train. A mouse twitched along the track. I momentarily envied his busy, purposeful little life down there in the semi-dark.
    As the Tube hurtled me home to Islington, I steeled myself not to sob until I was wrapped up in the warm, protective arms of my husband. After all, the man was a professional. He knew how to cope with a person in psychological crisis. Despite everything, we had always taken comfort in each other’s arms. I’d come home hurt from the small humiliations I’d endured in court to find Stephen burdened down by patients’ complaints, and we’d somehow turn all that emotion into desire. Stephen’s office is in the front room of our tall terraced house in Cranbrook Crescent. I knew from the communal calendar we keep in the kitchen that preparation for the Anna Freud event had required him to cancel that day’s