‘Words to live by,’ replies Belinda, as she makes us coffee like a trained barista. ‘You should get it printed up on a T-shirt.’
Michael is inspecting the small incense cones in ashtrays on the windowsill, the thank-you cards pinned to a noticeboard alongside ticket stubs from gigs and torn out newspaper articles and local takeaway menus.
The desk is surrounded by haphazard piles of files that are heaped on the floor, small cardboard avalanches waiting to happen, and the back of the open laptop is also decorated with a random selection of different-sized googly eyes, like strange and invisible animals are keeping us under cartoonish surveillance.
He’s clearly fascinated by the whole place, which probably doesn’t look much like any law office he’s ever visited or even imagined.
His father’s practice is one of those sedate and stuffy places full of leather-backed books and blotter pads and ominous silences, all chatter viewed as frivolous and wasteful of both time and energy.
Here, the restful tones of some kind of Nordic death metal band were shaking the walls as we entered, Belinda thankfully lowering the volume for our more delicate ears. It’s still playing, though, and I see Michael’s eyes widen as he hears the word ‘Satan’ repeatedly screamed at throat-tearing levels.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, noticing his expression. ‘I do hope my religious beliefs don’t offend you?’
‘Oh! Um … no, of course not! Satanism is … well, they always seem to have good cloaks?’ he splutters, taking the offered coffee and immediately spilling it over his hands.
‘She’s messing with you, Michael,’ I say, sitting down, hoping I’m right. For all I know she might have converted to the left-hand path in the years since I’ve seen her. A lot of time has passed.
She somehow looks the same yet different. She’s a little chunkier, or maybe just seems stronger, and the cornrows have been replaced with a close-cropped natural look that’s chopped her curls so close to her scalp it almost looks shaved.
‘I am, Michael,’ Belinda confirms, sitting opposite me and casting her eyes over me in much the same way I’ve just done to her. ‘Messing with you. But the cloaks would be a big draw for me, too.’
He hovers behind us, as though still undecided as to whether he’s staying or not. Belinda points at a chair and he sits in it immediately, like a well-trained puppy. I try not to smile as I realise that he’s actually terrified of her – just like I was when we first met.
‘So,’ he says, his tone slightly more high-pitched than usual, tinged with an edge of fevered self-awareness as he tries to adjust to this new environment, ‘what does the BLM in BLM Associates stand for?’
‘Black Lives Matter,’ she replies seriously, derailing any of his attempts to find a comfort zone.
‘Right. Yes. Of course!’ he says. ‘They do. Very much.’
‘You don’t sound convinced,’ Belinda responds, narrowing her eyes at him.
Before he can literally explode with white guilt and indignation, I cut in: ‘She’s still messing with you, Michael.’
‘I am, Michael,’ she says, snorting with laughter at the look on his face. I really want to join in – it’s an infectious sound, Belinda’s laughter – but I know from experience that when her barbed humour is aimed at you, it isn’t anywhere near as amusing.
‘It actually stands for something a bit embarrassing,’ she admits, perhaps realising exactly how awkward she’s made him feel. ‘It stands for Belinda Loves Malachi. Mal is my son, and when I started this place up, it was in a grotty office over a pound shop, and he was only little, and I definitely had no associates. I thought this made me sound grander, and more likely to be taken seriously. I’m sorry for winding you up. You’re hard to resist, just like Baby Spice here used to be.’
‘Well, you’re definitely Scary Spice,’ he retorts, then thinks about it for a beat, and adds: ‘And just to be clear, that’s not because you’re black – it’s because you’re scary.’
‘Accepted,’ she says, granting him one of those killer smiles that were always so disarming when they caught you unawares. She turns her gaze back to me, and the smile fades from her eyes.
‘So, Jess – it’s been a long time. I don’t really know where to start – when you called, I was so surprised I almost stopped pretending to be my own receptionist.’
‘You pretend to be your own receptionist?’
‘Yes, I can’t afford a real one. The pretend one is lovely though – a very efficient lady called Kate. I just use a slightly posher accent, and the world is fooled! But … why are you here, really, Jess? I’m assuming it’s not for legal advice.’
‘No, it’s not,’ I say, feeling a sigh escape my lips. There is so much to say, so much to explain, and I’m struggling with it all. I decide to start with the most important part.
‘My mum died recently, and on the day of her funeral, Michael and I discovered a box of letters from Joe hidden in the attic. They – my parents – told me he’d moved on. They told me he’d had enough, that he couldn’t cope any more, and that he’d left me to start over in London.’
‘They told you that?’ she replies quietly, tapping the table top with short fingernails, flared nostrils the only sign of emotion. ‘That Joe … abandoned you?’
‘They did. I have no idea why, and as neither of them is around to ask, I’ll never know. But you remember how they always felt about him.’
‘I do. I hated it then, and I hate it now. So – I’m guessing the letters told a different story?’
‘They did,’ I answer, trying to stay calm, matter-of-fact, objective. I imagine I am in a court of law giving evidence, not talking to one of my oldest friends about a lie that shaped my adult life. ‘And now I know he didn’t leave me. And I also know that he spent all that time wondering if I was the one who’d left him, or at least didn’t want him any more.’
Belinda is scratching at the skin on the palm of her hand, viciously and rhythmically, and the music in the background is splattering the room with a tortured guitar solo. She looks at the window. At the door. At the table. Finally, back at me.
‘This is a lot to process,’ she says, ‘and I think I’m going to need a little assistance from my special drawer.’
She strides over to a filing cabinet and pulls out a bottle of brandy. She sploshes a solid amount into her own mug, then mine, then Michael’s, without even asking.
‘Fuck,’ she says, after a large gulp. ‘What a mess … what happened then, Jess, to you? I tried not to hate you, over the years. I reminded myself that you’d lost your daughter, and Lord knows I’d want to bring down the moon if I ever lost Mal. I reminded myself that you were ill. That you were broken, and you hadn’t chosen any of it … but it was hard, seeing him like that, you know?
‘At first he stayed strong – said he had to, for you. But as the time passed, he started to disintegrate. They kept him shut out, and you know what he was like about the legal process – he could never bring himself to trust anyone because of … all the stuff, when he was a kid. So I saw him slowly rotting from the inside out … he talked about you all the time. About how much he loved you, and how everything would be all right in the end, and about how he had faith.’