My mobile beeped. Luke had called and left a message, checking on Arjun, such a thoughtful boy. What would I say to him? Nothing had been confirmed and yet it felt everything had changed. I forget how much loss Luke has seen already, and yet he has this incredibly joyful air about him – perhaps that is part of the reason why.
I know I need to head back into the hospital, back to Arjun. He’ll need me, hopeless as I am. I know it might not all be doom and gloom and a grim prognosis, but the optimism I used to have about these things has extinguished since you.
I love you, Cora. I miss you and I love you and I wish you were here so I could hold you and stroke your hair and you could give me the strength to be the kind of friend I need to be.
Teddy x
Chapter 18
Love is not always found where you were looking
SAMUEL, 77
‘Remember we have an evening of parlour games tonight,’ Luke called as I pounded down the stairs for the third day of a trial that was sucking all the energy from me. A complicated case with a never-ending stream of witnesses, none of whom seemed to have witnessed the same event, all watched under the hawk-like eyes of family members in the public gallery, every tut and huff echoing round the court.
Parlour games. Inwardly groaning, I fiddled with the collar of my jacket. It was possibly the last thing I would feel like after today. It had been a gruelling couple of weeks and I hadn’t seen Grandad since the drama of the Monopoly evening. I knew Arjun had stayed in hospital overnight but was home now, one leg propped up on his sofa. Grandad and I had barely spoken. I felt guilty as I remembered another missed call from him last night when I was working late in chambers.
‘Great,’ I called back, not absolutely sure Luke could hear me as I had already shut our front door and was heading down the street.
The Tube was rammed and sweaty, the sound of a thousand people sighing, chewing and tapping on phones. It set my teeth on edge as I unfolded the Metro. The front cover was a picture of misery and a scandal in Westminster that everyone in chambers had been talking about yesterday. Something about a politician and an escort and a pumpkin or a courgette, I wasn’t absolutely sure. I didn’t have my usual curiosity to find out. Today everyone annoyed me. Particularly that guy over there who had pushed his oversized suitcase into me as he wheeled it in. I hoped the next time he went to a bowling alley they didn’t have any of the right weight balls and he spends a miserable evening straining his wrist trying to play with the ones that are too heavy.
My morning in court came to an unexpected close when the trial cracked because my client suddenly decided to plead guilty to the charges against him in the hope of receiving a reduced sentence. It transpires he had rammed his car into his ex-wife to try and break her legs deliberately, and not because the car had been accidentally shifted to Drive.
I should have been happy. I was free and it wasn’t even midday, and yet all the work we had done, all the earnest pleadings of the client, left a bitter taste. I left the court feeling flustered and fed up, the judge prickly about the wasted day.
Leaving the courthouse I discovered one missed call from an unlisted number and six missed calls from Amy. My pulse started to race as I fumbled to press on her name. Six missed calls. What had happened? Was she OK? She wasn’t one for a dramatic gesture. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her since the night of her hen do and I felt a new surge of guilt for how much time had already passed. We used to speak regularly on the phone, daily sometimes, but over the last few months when I went to return her calls I often realised it was too late, that she’d be in bed for a new school day, and sent an apologetic text instead. My palms were slippery as I gripped the phone. The last missed call had been less than half an hour before.
‘Lottie.’
‘Oh thank God.’ I was so relieved it was her voice, having imagined a paramedic or a doctor in a hospital desperately trying to get through to a friend. ‘Amy, what’s wrong, what’s happened?’ I turned away from the traffic under the awning of a shop so I could hear her properly.
‘It’s the brooch,’ she said.
I thought I’d misheard, the worry and panic subsiding as I tried to understand what had happened.
‘Are you working in central London today?’ she asked.
‘I was just in court but I’m heading back to chambers.’
Amy took a breath. ‘Right, is there any way – you know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, but I have to run the inset here on Assessment for Learning and I can’t get out of it and the woman in the shop is threatening that if I don’t pick up the brooch after 3 p.m. today but before 5, I can’t pick it up at all . . . ’
Words were running into other words and I was distracted by someone moving past me into the shop, a toddler bucking and crying in a pram at the same time as text messages were making the line momentarily freeze.
‘I can’t believe she’s sprung it on me this last-minute, it’s ridiculous. I should have used someone else.’
‘Right, sorry, Amy, you need me to do what?’
A motorbike roared past in the street, the smell of diesel in the air, the sound fading into the distance.
‘Do you remember – my mother gave me that brooch that Grandma wore at her wedding and it’s this tradition within our family, and I went to have it repaired with this antique dealer, and she is suddenly going to visit family for weeks on end that she failed to tell me about and is just shutting her shop so if I don’t get it today then it’ll be too late. I can send you the address on an email.’
I caught sight of my reflection in the shop window, two deep lines in between my eyebrows as I tried to follow Amy. ‘That’s fine,’ I said, widening my eyes so that the lines became a little shallower.
‘Can you really? Oh, that would be lifesaving . . . ’
Were those lines new? I wondered, moving my face again and staring intently at my reflection.
‘Thank you so much, Lottie.’
‘Of course,’ I said, frowning again as I noticed another call on the line. ‘Amy, I have to go, there’s a call waiting . . . ’
‘That’s fine, I’ll email now, thanks again, I need to go anyway, inset starts in ten minutes, God I hate teaching teachers things . . . ’
‘Oh, poor you,’ I said, biting my lip as the other call continued to distort her voice.
The toddler in the pram emerged from the shop clutching a rice cake in his fist. I smiled distractedly at the mother as she set off down the pavement. The other call ended.
‘Right, thanks so much, bye.’
Amy had hung up and I frowned at the other missed call. It must be one of the clerks in chambers – they always called me on an unlisted number.
The text message was from Toby, the solicitor who had given me the brief. Heard how today ended, c’est la vie. Drink sometime soon? My finger hovered over the Reply button but I felt an unease nudge at me, something about him making me think I could be walking a fine line. Was this purely professional?
An email popped up, the address from Amy, which I opened and scanned. Another email followed, a clerk in chambers wanting me to check in immediately, the tone bolshie, commenting on the recent missed call. I felt the usual frisson of panic and immediately phoned them back.