A Tale of Two Sisters

by Anna Maxted

  However, the most damning evidence I have on Barnaby is that he’s written two really boring books (in between helping the homeless and lecturing and setting up an e-mentoring scheme for lawyers to help prison inmates, and baking cakes for his local bring-and-buy sale). Both are on Family Law, and available on Amazon, each a snip at eighty-four quid.

  His first reader review was a peach: ‘An undiscriminating cut-and-paste job . . . prose style inelegant and tedious . . . This is an area of law that begs for an interesting and thoughtful guide. This isn’t it.’

  However. The second, third and fourth reader reviews were violent in their praise. ‘Sexing-up of the legal publishing world!’, ‘As a family lawyer myself, I was delighted to stumble upon this thoroughly enjoyable read. Written by the talented and wise Barnaby Alcock in a wholly accessible style whilst covering the legal points in sufficient depth to be helpful to even the most expert in the field. If only more law books could be so enjoyable and interesting!’ And – wait for it – ‘A new standard in legal writing has been set!’

  How curious that these glowing testimonies all hailed from the mysterious ‘A reader, London’.

  God, he was annoying.

  I wanted to have sex with him so much I felt sick thinking about it.

  Chapter 19

  ‘How are you doing?’ said Barnaby. I always felt he was a whisker away from adding, ‘little lady.’

  ‘Great,’ I said, exhaling a cloud of smoke, watching him wince. ‘Although, I have to ask, when is your client going to get real? I must tell you, there’s absolutely no point in negotiating, given your position. I assure you that your client will not want to be in the witness box when I ask her—’

  ‘Cassie, Cassie!’ Barnaby placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘Relax! Enjoy your evening! Threaten me when you’re on the clock!’ He grinned. ‘So what’s going on?’

  I bit my lip. The man had the effect of making me talk rubbish. I had a nasty feeling that I was going to have to face him in the High Court in the next few months, and I so didn’t want to. Because I was going to lose. It was Hubert Fitzgerald’s fault.

  Hubert Fitzgerald had decided to formally end his marriage to his wife, Alissa, after twenty years, just as his business began to make money. There had been some monkey business between my client and the au pair. Hubert didn’t seem to think that Alissa deserved anything. Within a week of demanding a divorce, Hubert had moved three hundred grand out of his account, in bits. (‘Oh, two of that was to pay back Dad for the money he lent me to buy the house twenty years ago.’) He claimed his annual turnover was fifty Gs, when their lifestyle – his ’n’ hers four-wheel drives, kids at private school, holiday cottage in Cornwall – suggested it was four times that.

  I’d warned him the judge would find him an unreliable witness if he came up with that crap under oath, but he’d persisted. Hubert was a businessman who stretched the truth like knicker elastic and he didn’t understand that he couldn’t do the same in court. I’d talked a lot to him about full and frank disclosure, but he just sat there with a blank face and I had the distinct feeling that I could have been talking to a dog.

  Barnaby and I were obliged to encourage the Fitzgeralds to settle out of court, but it was like trying to force children to concentrate on broccoli when there was ice cream for dessert. The trouble was, Hubert was angling for a fight. ‘I want you to cross-examine her,’ he said, ‘about her holiday costs. Two grand, my arse! She and the kids go to Brittany with her parents every year, she only has to pay for the ferry.’

  I fought to hide a shudder. ‘We should go gently,’ I said. ‘There’s no point laying into her, saying that’s an outrageous budget, because it’s not.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘Do it. I’m paying you.’

  ‘Hubert, I’m expensive,’ I told him.

  He said, ‘I’d rather give it to you than that cow.’

  What I saw in Hubert was a formidable reserve of black hatred towards a person he had once loved – the result of many years of unspoken resentments, unfinished arguments, petty disagreements, fundamental differences, miscommunications, emotional inarticulacy, selfishness, immaturity, dissatisfaction, disappointments, envy and disrespect. The law said he couldn’t hit her. He hoped the law would hit her for him.

  So Barnaby and I had exchanged fairy stories – sorry, financial statements – but a lot of issues had remained unresolved. Barnaby and I had met an hour before the first appointment hearing, and he’d presented me with a list of company interests that I didn’t know Hubert had.

  ‘Where did you get all this?’ I’d squeaked.

  ‘My client inadvertently opened your client’s post,’ he’d replied.

  ‘Did she inadvertently go through his bins, as well?’ I’d said.

  Barnaby’s eyes had widened, and he’d said, ‘I couldn’t possibly advise such a course of action. However, if she happened to pass the bins, and . . .’

  I’d bristled and spluttered, as I knew that Barnaby had me over a barrel (oh, I wished). Everyone, including me, had suspected Hubert of concealing assets. A decent judge would accept that Alissa had had no choice but to burgle documents.

  ‘Awfully sorry,’ Barnaby had murmured. ‘Bit of a smoking gun, I’m afraid. But my client has only just provided me with the information.’

  Now, in the real world, I scrutinised his face. Was he laughing at me? I couldn’t tell. ‘So,’ I said, summoning all the sarcasm I could into one syllable. ‘Baked any cakes recently?’

  ‘Cakes?’ said Barnaby. ‘I did bake a vanilla cheesecake for my mother’s birthday last week. And a strudel. How did you know?’

  ‘Guessed.’ I clenched my fist and pictured Barnaby whipping cream cheese naked, stop, save it for later . . .

  ‘And who’s this then?’

  Lizbet’s booze-shiny face inserted itself between us.

  ‘Oh, hi.’ They both stood there, waiting, so I added, reluctantly, ‘Lizbet, my sister. Barnaby –’ I was going to say, ‘fellow barrister, eminent author, rowing blue, philanthropist,’ but my brain stalled on ‘philanthropist’ and what came out was – ‘pompous.’

  ‘A friend of Cassie,’ said Lizbet.

  ‘Colleague!’ I said.

  She looked thoughtful, and my heart skipped. I couldn’t have mentioned him. On occasion, Lizbet would hold up a copy of heat, with a photo of, perhaps, Benicio Del Toro, and say, ‘Yes? Yes?’

  She was happy to broadcast her U-certificate fantasies, even in front of Tim, and I’d reciprocate with, ‘Er, Harrison Ford was nice in, er, Witness.’ However, serious fantasies remained private.

  ‘Your name sounds incredibly familiar,’ cried Lizbet. ‘I’m sure Cassie’s mentioned you. Oh, hang on, you’re the one who she first met when you visited a friend at her college. You had a drunken snog, then you disappeared like Cinderella, reappeared in an Exeter court three years later, and she’s hated you ever since!’

  ‘Elizabeth,’ I said, ‘you need to get that brain virus checked out.’

  ‘Do you often talk about me?’ said Barnaby.

  ‘Never,’ I said. ‘I know what it is. She must have read your books. Ha ha!’

  ‘You’re a writer too!’ exclaimed Lizbet, lurching towards him. ‘Oh my God, so am I! What are you doing now? You must join us!’

  Barnaby made a big show of checking his watch. It was a diving watch, because as everyone knows, there are lots of diving opportunities in London.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Casualty doesn’t start till nine.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but Medical Incredible is on at eight.’

  Was he joking? Why didn’t he ever smile and give me a clue? I thundered ahead to our table. Barnaby and Lizbet showed off behind me. (Barnaby: ‘Love the dress. Givenchy, right?’ Lizbet: ‘Oh my God . . .’ etc.)

  George had never met Barnaby yet, in a display of an uncharacteristic intuition, greeted him as one might greet a decaying hyena carcass brought to one’s dinner table.

  Tim wa
s his usual affable self. Unlike my own dear husband, Tim didn’t bite until bitten. His relationship with Lizbet was so peachy that no man was perceived as a threat, not even Total Penis. Tim was very robust, like me. He bounced back.

  I sighed. It was difficult, working with Barnaby. Previously, I’d avoided him. If ever I spotted him around the Inns of Court, I’d whip past him quick smart. I’d feared that if anyone saw us together for more than a second, my infatuation would be headline news. I felt that the lust emanated from my pores. Around chambers I was quick, sharp, and crisp, but when Barnaby showed, I turned into molten caramel. So as not to alert Barnaby to this fact, I was snappy with him, always. He must have thought – to quote my husband – I was permanently on the rag.

  I sat, listening to Lizbet rattle on, wondering (no offence to George) what it would be like to pin Barnaby to the wall and tear off his clothes. I liked to look expensive in court, but Barnaby’s suit was scruffy with a slight sheen, and almost certainly from a high-street chain. This was unusual at the Bar – at his level, anyway. Very few male barristers that I know can resist having their suits a bit sharper when they start to make some money. When Mr Hershlag came to see me at work he was agog. The linings are often quite bright – peacock blue, fuchsia, yellow. Barnaby was odd.

  Tim picked at his food. Lizbet was necking champagne like it was about to be made illegal. Her nails were long and pink with diamante stars in the varnish. In her former life they were chewed raw. She laughed at something Barnaby had said (probably a joke about briefs) and clutched his sleeve, her talons digging into the material. Barnaby reached for his water glass, gently forcing her to remove her claws.

  I’d noticed, round and about, that if another woman approached Barnaby, a growl started of its own accord in the back of my throat, but just then I felt sorry for Lizbet. She was a bad flirt. Even though she was pretty, her belief in her own attraction didn’t convince.

  Tim hadn’t said much. He looked as though he needed his face squashed in a big maternal bust.

  George was staring at Lizbet as though she’d sprouted a second, very ugly, head.

  I kicked him, under the table. What – couldn’t he tolerate the sight of a woman having fun? It wasn’t as if she was flirting with intent. She only required validation. (Which is why I am not a flirt, whatever Lizbet might have told you. I get validation from myself. I don’t need it from some squit with a penis.)

  My brain felt like congealed spaghetti. My sister had strayed so far from her normal self. Was it the baby? Could you contain a thing like that? Or had she let it tarnish everything? You had to fight it, and Lizbet’s trouble was, she wasn’t used to fighting. Don’t tell me something was wrong with The Relationship. Impossible.

  Meanwhile, I was annoyed with Barnaby for existing, furious with George for having the nerve to marry me – and I could have throttled myself for letting him.

  Having been brushed off Barnaby’s sleeve, Lizbet curled up like an earwig. She muttered, ‘I feel sick.’

  George snapped a breadstick in two and bit off one end. He must have been riled – he was off wheat. He pointed the shortened breadstick at Barnaby. ‘Your cuffs are fraying.’

  Barnaby grinned, and I nearly fainted in my seat. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s probably time for a visit to Marks.’

  ‘Marks & Spencer?’ asked George, incredulous. ‘You’re standing up in the High Court! My wife –’ he jabbed a breadstick stub in my direction – ‘spends a fortune on bespoke.’

  Barnaby shrugged. ‘It’s for work.’ He pulled at his lapel. ‘You have to look smart but ultimately, it’s like a McDonald’s uniform.’

  Lizbet giggled and covered her face. ‘I feel ill.’

  ‘I’ll take you home,’ said George, standing up. ‘And you.’ He nodded at Barnaby. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Thank you. I have transport.’

  Barnaby was one of those people who are so genteel that when they disagree with you, half the time you can’t actually tell.

  Tim stopped pushing his red onion ravioli around his plate. ‘I can call Lizbet a taxi,’ he said. ‘There’s no need for us all to go. It took Cassie months to book this place.’

  George got an uncomfortable look on his face that meant he was annoyed. ‘It’s no trouble for me to drive Lizbet home,’ he said. ‘Actually, some guys from work are meeting a few actor pals. Helena mentioned that she might pop in, and I think the pub’s only down the road from your place. It might be wise to show my face.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ said Lizbet, and sniggered. She linked arms with George, and said, ‘Joke. Come on then, Pudding. Bye, Barny, lovely to meet you. Bye, Cass. Tim, here’s two fifties.’

  I picked up the notes to give back to her, but she waved them away. ‘Tim invented the Poo Patch,’ she cried. ‘We’re stinking rich!’

  Tim said nothing as she wobbled into the night.

  ‘Cassie,’ called George over his shoulder, ‘I won’t be home till late, but I’ll call at eleven to check you got back safely.’

  Barnaby gazed after Lizbet, and I knew he was going to elbow Tim and say, ‘She’s a wild one!’

  He said, ‘If you did invent the Poo Patch, and you are stinking rich, first, do you have a good lawyer, and second, why isn’t Lizbet happy?’

  Tim attacked his crème brûlée, and I thought if he was at drama school, and the improvisation was ‘Eat Cake Angrily’, he’d have received an ovation. He placed his silver fork in the centre of the bone-china plate, leaned back on the plush leather banquette, and said, ‘She realised money isn’t everything.’

  ‘True,’ said Barnaby, swilling his champagne in the glass. ‘But it is something.’

  ‘What!’ I said. ‘You don’t care about money. You’re in this for the intellectual exercise and the camaraderie of the Bar.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘According to your profile on the Bar Council website.’

  ‘Montgomery, you are obsessed with me!’

  ‘No, I’m not! Your profile was passed round on email to give everyone a laugh. All that stuff about “unparalleled opportunities for advocacy” and “helping with the day-to-day legal problems of ordinary people” . . .’

  ‘They edited the bit about naked greed?’

  ‘You—’

  ‘Sorry to butt in,’ said Tim, ‘but I need some air. I’m going for a walk. I’ll see you soon, Cassie. Thanks for this. I’m sorry. Barnaby, good to meet you.’

  ‘That was your fault,’ I said, as the door shut behind Tim.

  ‘You know,’ said Barnaby, ‘after all this time – and incidentally, I told you I had a train to catch that night, that it was my brother’s wedding the following day, but I suspect you were too inebriated and forgot – it’s interesting to see you in a non-work situation. You’re just as combative.’

  ‘No, I’m not, just the opposite.’

  God, I really was bad at arguing. You have to understand that, in court, one doesn’t just stand there making it up. A junior does a lot of the written work prior to the case, and constructs the skeleton argument. Obviously, I flesh it out, I do a lot of meticulous preparation the night before, but I know what the other side is going to say, more or less, before they say it, and all I have to work out is what I am going to say in response. So if Barnaby had faxed me a list of his proposed points before dinner, I’d be wiping the floor with him. Mm, which if you think about it literally—

  ‘What’s going on with you and your husband?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Barnaby!’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘You invite me for dinner, and I walk into a war zone. I’m not going to pretend everything is fine when it isn’t. That’s ridiculous!’

  ‘Yes, and all credit to you, but doesn’t it occur to you that some things are private?’

  ‘Montgomery, I’m a divorce lawyer. Tonight was practically a business meeting!’

  ‘I’m glad that
my life is a joke to you,’ I said eventually. ‘Do you find your clients’ failed relationships amusing also?’

  Barnaby leaned closer, with a serious look on his face. His eyes were long-lashed and dark blue. If God had taken me aside, explained that Barnaby actually saw through his nostrils, the eyes were simply decoration, I’d have understood.

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘that you like me.’

  ‘No I don’t!’ I said.

  Barnaby looked surprised and hurt.

  I snorted. ‘Don’t give me that. You’re like a trained killer. You know exactly what you’re doing and you don’t care.’

  ‘Cassie,’ he said, quietly, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve confused you—’

  ‘I’m not confused.’

  I stood up – and he grabbed my hand. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I didn’t ask about you and George because your life is a joke to me. I asked because it isn’t a joke.’

  I sat down.

  ‘I like you,’ he said. ‘I think.’

  ‘You think! Do you think, though, Barnaby? Do you?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘You see that George and I are no longer . . . . honeymooners, and you think it would be modern to come right out and just ask me if I fancy a bit on the side with you, in your spare time, in between all the good-doing!’

  ‘No,’ said Barnaby. ‘No. That’s not it. I’m not asking you to cheat on George.’

  ‘What are you asking?’