by Gill Mather
CHAPTER 2
Two months earlier - November
ALI TRUDGED ALONG the seemingly never ending drive through the deep snow as it curled gently away from Baker's Lane. The silence was unnerving and the high hedge on one side and the wood on the other had already cut off her view of the road. She started to feel vulnerable and scared but at least it wasn't too dark. The moon was up and illuminated the snowy landscape visible through the gaps in the hedge.
Just as she was wondering seriously whether to abandon her mission as a fool’s errand, the big Georgian house at last came into view. It looked inviting and Ali immediately felt reassured. There was a fir tree near the front door with Christmas lights wound around it but they weren't on. A warm glow came from some of the windows. Thank heavens someone was at home. She heard a faint hum coming from the back of the house.
Just as she was reaching out to knock on the door, it opened and she nearly fell into the hall. It was Graham Spellings showing someone out.
“Hello?” said Mr. Spellings.
“Oh. I…I’m…”
“Goodnight Graham,” said the older woman leaving the house and she nodded to Ali as she stomped past. Graham Spellings turned his attention to Ali, smiling enquiringly.
“Hello. I’m Ali Barratt….from Patterson Watts? We’ve spoken on the `phone. I just came to t…”
“Come in. Please,” offered Mr. Spellings, “You can't stand there in the cold.” And he led her through the cavernous, unheated hall into a large kitchen at the back. The kitchen was much warmer and it all looked wonderfully cosy after her two mile hike in the freezing dark evening.
“Do sit down.” He had a definite cockney twang despite the smart clothes and gentlemanly manner.
What was she thinking. Gentlemanly manner indeed! Ali mentally scolded herself. Just because she was re-reading Pride and Prejudice for the umpteenth time, she didn't have to think like a fictional Georgian heroine. Graham Spellings sat down at the table and took up a glass of wine. He offered some wine to Ali but she shook her head.
“Sorry I can't. I have to get home Mr. Spellings…”
“Graham, please.”
“OK. The thing is Graham, your purchase can't go ahead tomorrow. We’ve been trying to get hold of you all day. The sellers’ removal firm won't move them tomorrow. Obviously because of the weather. So I just wanted to let you know that you won't be able to go and collect the keys tomorrow. As I was passing on the way home, I thought I’d call in and tell you. If you want to claim interest and anything else, you’ll have to talk to Mr. Watts tomorrow.”
“Oh no. I wouldn't bother with making a claim. A few days won't make any difference. It’s not their fault after all and it’s only a buy to let.”
“Oh well, good. Mr. Watts’ll be relieved….Er there’s a lot on at the moment what with the weather etc.,” she added laughing slightly nervously. “Anyway,” she stood up, “we’ll keep in touch with you. Well. If we can? There was no reply from any of your numbers today.”
“Yeah,” he sighed, “the `phone lines are down, and the mobile phone mast and there’s no electricity.”
Ali looked around her questioningly.
Graham laughed. “The Aga’s solid fuel and I’ve got a generator in the yard at the back for the lights. It’s a bit of a relic though. I just hope it lasts until the power comes back on again.”
He stood up too and loomed over her. As she’d heard, he was stunningly attractive, dark-haired with an upturned mouth that made him appear at ease all the time without looking smug. And not that old either. He looked maybe late twenties, early thirties. The firm were dealing with his divorce as well and hoping the pre-nup would hold up. She couldn't think why Petunia Spellings had run off with a fat banker. Ali had sneaked a look at his file and Graham’s statement said he was devastated, especially as they had been trying for a baby.
“I’d better get going or I’ll be late.”
“Right. I’ll pop into your office tomorrow to see how things are going if the `phones are still down,” he said. “Oh, um, how did you get here? I didn't see a car. The roads are virtually impassable anyway aren't they?”
“Yes. I’ve been walking into work the last few days. I live in Braiswick. It’s not that far, about two or three miles. I’m quite enjoying it.”
“Look I can't let you walk back on your own in the dark. I’ll get the car.” He walked off towards the back door. “I’ll meet you at the front of the house,” he said, glancing back at her and then he was gone in a wave of cold air as the back door opened and shut.
The journey home in Graham’s Range Rover didn't take long. Ali had been wondering where the older woman had gone on foot but as they travelled along the drive, she saw a small house set back in the wood not far from the main house. The lights were on now but it must have been in darkness before which is why she must have missed it on the way up to the house. Following her gaze, Graham told her it was where May lived. He said she worked as his housekeeper. “Unfortunately she hasn’t got a generator. She’s having to use Tilley lamps. But she’s got her own Rayburn and a wood burning stove. And I’ll look after her for anything she needs.”
Other than that there wasn't much conversation.
Graham dropped Ali off at her house, again said he’d come into the office if the `phones were still off and, with a brief wave, he drove off.
CHAPTER 3
IT WAS ANOTHER freezing day. The snow and ice showed no sign of abating. Ali’s younger brother Ed and his mates had laid their hands on snow boards from somewhere or other and had made off to terrorise the smaller children in the park. School was off. Boilers not working, teachers huddling at home, icy conditions making slipping accidents too likely.
Ed was being particularly obnoxious since Ali had come back to live at home after finishing uni. He didn't like Ali’s boyfriend Rob whom she’d met at Bristol and he had hoped that the larger second bedroom would become his. But his hopes were dashed when Ali came home as Rob had decided to stay on and take a fourth year. Otherwise the plan had been for Ali and Rob to get jobs and live together.
And now, apparently, Rob needed to stay on for a fifth year to study for a PhD. Ali had argued with him about that. Who needed a PhD in management accountancy?
Ali herself wasn't delighted by the turn of events and was having trouble living at home. The weekends she sometimes spent in Bristol with Rob were bliss but becoming fewer and farther between. And the difficulty getting a job, any job, came as a bolt out of the blue. She’d been to university for a law degree and had incurred huge debt (she didn't like to dwell on that too hard) in anticipation of hooking a good job, not exactly automatically but without coming to the end of her tether about it all.
She must have written seven or eight hundred letters to firms of solicitors everywhere seeking a training contract. Although there was no longer a minimum salary for trainee Solicitors, it seemed that firms still weren't keen to take on trainees. Probably too much bureaucracy. When only rejections or silence resulted, she’d lowered her sights to clerical fee earning jobs. Still nothing and so she’d written countless letters asking for work experience. When she reviewed the ads, there were far more for legal secretaries than fee earners. She started to consider the police or the courts service or councils. But they were all cutting back. This had gone on for fifteen months without a sniff of a job of any kind. Her parents started to get tetchy and demanded she handed over almost all of her waitressing wages.
Then suddenly about five weeks ago on her afternoon off, she’d made her weekly round of `phone calls to all the firms in Colchester and, completely unexpectedly, Patterson Watts & Trimble’s receptionist had put her through to the senior partner Mr. Victor Watts’s senior secretary Sandra. Later in the day she’d attended a five minute interview with Sandra, apparently on meeting a cross between a rugby forward in drag and Mary Poppins. Sandra looked her up and down and, when it appeared that Ali could string a sentence together, offered her an “internsh
ip”. This, it was explained to her, disappointingly was to be an unpaid position with maybe a small travelling allowance assisting Mr. Watts who was himself too busy to see her after his assistant had left to have a baby.
Within a day or two of starting, Ali learned that the baby was possibly fictitious and that the assistant had walked out without warning the day before Ali telephoned due to pressure of work. Sandra had smoothed down her flared skirt. The woman, she said, had been work-shy and, having previously been with a council, wasn't up to a full day’s work. Ali asked in reply when she was going to get to meet Mr. Watts and start the promised training which was the only justification for losing her waitressing income, donning her more or less best working clothes, turning up every morning and putting in a full day’s work mainly consisting of taking telephone calls from sometimes apoplectic clients and trying to calm them down.
Sandra pointed to several unsteady piles of finished case files in the corner and suggested Ali read through them for a start and they’d show her what happened in the average conveyancing transaction.
The files weren't very reassuring. In almost all of the cases, something unsatisfactory had come up and had dominated the correspondence. Moreover some clients had been told that the initial quote couldn't be adhered to because of the extra work and an argument had ensued about the costs. Accordingly Ali learned as much about dealing with client dissatisfaction as she did about the routine steps in a conveyancing transaction. But she did learn about the routine steps in a conveyancing transaction and after only a week she was set to work doing the actual conveyancing. And still she hadn't met Mr. Watts.
October wore on and, although Ali didn't mind the work, conveyancing wasn't what she’d imagined she’d be doing. Truth to tell, ever since she was a child she’d been riveted by legal dramas on the television. She’d dreamed of being involved in rich peoples’ divorces, striding into court to successfully defend those (obviously innocent) accused of a heinous crime, wrapping up complicated company cases and achieving record damages in personal injury claims.
She’d followed civil rights issues in the media and considered the police to be bullies and thugs. That was until her older sister Jan married a detective sergeant, the divine Matt, who’d turned out to be one of the nicest men Ali had ever met and she was only too pleased that he’d turned inspector recently. This however only strengthened Ali’s resolve to go into the law.
Being awarded her law degree had been the most wonderful experience of Ali’s life. She spent the day floating on air. And not even Ed’s jibes about her looking like a witch in her hired academic gown, or Rob being unavoidably unable to attend the ceremony, could penetrate her euphoria. It was like a dream.
It took a while to come down to earth. She kept in touch with people with whom she’d been at uni and they were all having a hard time getting on the next rung of the ladder with the exception of a few whose families “knew someone”. Contacts seemed to be everything and Ali hadn't got any.
After three weeks at Pattersons, Ali had knocked on Mr. Watts’s door and asked him if she could possibly spend some time with some of the other partners, say one or two days a week, seeing other areas of the practice. She’d barely spoken to Mr. Watts before and he turned out to be fairly OK, just a touch harassed.
Mr. Watts looked up at her from his desk, then down at her details he had in front of him and said what she’d heard at least a million times before:
“Hmm. Aluisha Clayton-Barratt. I’m surprised you didn't get a job at the BBC with a name like that.”
Ali laughed anyway. “Yes. My parents named me specially.”
Mr. Watts clearly wasn't that thick as he seemed to realise he’d got caught out making a very obvious remark.
To cover the moment, Ali sat down and asked again about spending time with other partners.
Oh dear, he said, Ali had turned out to be quite good at drafting documents and dealing with the clients and honestly the conveyancing department needed her. Prepared for this, Ali pointed out that she had lost her earnings from her previous employment by coming to work for the firm and couldn't carry on any longer without pay and would have to leave unless there was a good reason to stay on. She wanted to get some experience in civil and criminal litigation, or company law, not just ordinary residential conveyancing. If necessary she’d do some extra conveyancing work at home if she could just spend a couple of days a week with another partner.
Mr. Watts sighed and said he supposed it was only fair. And, since Mr. Trimble the corporate partner was far too busy doing “fucking great takeovers” according to him to drag a wet-behind-the-ears law graduate around with him, and Alison Atkins the family law and civil cases partner was working on a big money divorce at the moment and couldn't risk upsetting her “finely balanced team”, Ali started to spend Mondays and Tuesdays with Hugh Sutherland. There was also a Wills and Probate department but Ali hadn't asked about that.
Hugh Sutherland was a mainly criminal solicitor. He had an HRA award certificate. That meant he had rights of audience in, that is he could appear in, higher courts than Solicitors normally could. There weren't so many solicitors who had an HRA certificate. It was a significant accolade.
Hugh was quite remote and professorial. But he taught Ali a lot. He was a superb advocate and very much sought after by the dubious characters who practised and plied their trades all over Essex and the adjoining counties and indeed increasingly further afield. He was also in demand by the company directors who got caught speeding. And in other fixes.
This was all the more a tribute to him since there were plenty of larger firms in Colchester and other towns and cities who could have catered for this demand.
In fact, he was increasingly regarded as the local “Mr. Fixit”.
The Mondays and Tuesdays Ali spent with Hugh were either in Court, usually the mags and Crown Courts, where she took copious notes of the proceedings, or in the office with clients talking over the case or taking statements. He’d started to entrust to her taking statements which she found fascinating. Many people were evasive and difficult even though she and Hugh were on their side. She quickly learned to cajole the women and charm the men into relaxing enough to be more forthcoming.
When the stories didn't quite add up though she smiled nicely and moved onto another topic and filed the discrepancies away in her head to bring up with Hugh later and leave him to iron out. It didn't occur to her for a moment that this might be at all morally wrong. She was firmly of the view that solicitors should be impartial and that everyone was entitled to a defence. A view Matt, her brother-in-law, didn't entirely agree with. But, give him credit, Matt acknowledged that a good defence kept the police on their toes and prevented the odd miscarriage of justice.
BUT THIS WAS A THURSDAY and Ali wasn't shadowing Hugh today. She was working for Mr. Watts and, due to the weather and the delays it caused, nothing much was going down. Very little post had been delivered and Pattersons and other firms were seriously undermanned so that the `phone wasn't ringing and there was hardly anything to do.
As a result, Ali spent most of the day with the paralegals and secretaries (or PAs as the younger ones now liked to be called - the older secretaries didn't seem to care) who had made it into the office swapping but mainly picking up gossip.
She especially liked Samantha, a blonde-haired, green-eyed would-be model who had become pregnant and got married instead of heading for London and who now worked for Basil “Baz” Trimble. Married or not, Sam liked a girls’ night out and they regularly hit the town together. They also spent lots of lunch hours in a huddle together. It was nice to have an ally. Otherwise her relationship with the PAs, particularly the conveyancing PAs, was fairly fragile. The thing was, Ali wasn't a proper fee earner and she wasn't a paralegal or a PA. She didn't really fit in anywhere. She had a law degree, a good one, which the PAs and paralegals didn't have, but she lacked the practical knowledge the PAs had.
As it was so dead today, at lunchtime
they all piled over to the Sod `n` Shovel.
“SO HOW ARE YOU getting on with Hugh then?” said Amanda, Alison Atkins’ PA. Ali caught a slight sarcastic edge to her voice and Cathy, Alison’s paralegal sitting next to Amanda, nudged her so her drink spilled and they both started giggling.
Ali chose to take the words at their face value.
“He’s a brilliant lawyer. I think I’m really lucky to be able to work under him…”
More giggling.
“Sorry. What’s the joke?” said Ali in as straightforward a manner as she could muster.
Samantha broke in. “Hugh’s the archetypal eligible male and he’s pretty fit into the bargain. This pair of clowns can't imagine that he might be coaching you in anything innocent. Their minds are way below their navels most of the time.”
“But I only spend Mondays and Tuesdays with him,” Ali said realising as it came out how ridiculous it sounded, so as she finished the sentence she put her head on one side, raised one eyebrow knowingly and smiled she hoped enigmatically.
This seemed to take the wind out of their sails and they both looked thoughtful. Ali wasn't certain it was the right impression to have given but she couldn't have these two habitually teasing her. They were nice enough but cocky and a bit bitchy and she could see they could become bullies in the right circumstances.
Paul, a trainee solicitor working in Baz Trimble’s department at the moment, looked her up and down as well and Ali hoped she hadn't started the rumour machine going. She knew almost nothing about Hugh but he came over as serious and quite stern and she rather feared that he wouldn’t be at all understanding if any stories about their non-existent relationship got blown out of all proportion and found their way back to him.
“Sheila,” she said by way of a change of direction, “why hasn’t Hugh got LLB after his name? He must have a law degree. Even I’ve got an LLB.”
Sheila was Hugh’s slightly more mature secretary who had listened to the exchanges with detached resignation, like a mother dog watching puppies misbehaving.
