I did. But now, knowing he doesn’t want to introduce me, I wonder if he truly deserves to know anything at all? I look at him, his features set somewhere between interrogation and concern.
‘Maybe later.’ I chase the straw in my cocktail around and take a large sip.
‘Oh,’ he says, surprised. ‘It seemed rather important, is all.’
‘Yes, that’s why I wanted to tell you during the week,’ I simper.
His brow folds into a valley. Even I’m surprised at my response. I hadn’t meant to bite. Well, not so hard, but it’s been one hell of a week and, really, is a few hours of his time too much to ask? As it turns out, I can answer that question: yes, it is. Everything I wanted to say slips back down into a quiet place and I say nothing. We’re called into dinner, which is when I catch Adam slipping into the function. Solo.
I wish Sophie were here. She would be a friendly face and someone to talk to over the chorus of shoptalk that settles onto our table. Adam explains that she’s working late in Hampstead but said to say hello. Conversation quickly turns to rulings and precedent, difficult clients, and ones they wanted to laugh out the door. While I don’t mind listening to Adam occasionally, a whole table of people starts to be too much. I’m grateful for the sight of dinner.
Food steals away conversation and stops me having to answer awkward questions from someone to my right. Because, for all my excitement about being invited tonight, I’m painfully aware I have no answers to those questions couples are asked.
How we met is harmless enough, but what about the rest? Do we have plans? I suspect not, and I’m not keen on lying to people, either. But I must, because if I start telling everyone about my new venture, then everyone finds out before the man sitting beside me. Being here tonight is not high up on my list of good ideas. I breathe a sigh of relief when John directs my attention away from a question and towards the front of the room.
‘I don’t think this next award will come as a surprise to anyone in the room tonight.’ Rupert March looks down his nose, past the podium and towards me. He winks as John, who gives my thigh a gentle squeeze as his eyes crinkle up in the type of blissful happiness that should only be reserved for post-coital moments.
‘The In House Counsel of the Year award. Or as I like to call it, most billed hours,’ Rupert continues over the sound of friendly ribbing at our table. ‘I could go on about how everyone’s contributions are equally valued, and I can assure you they are. However, I’ve seen the notes from the cleaners after having kicked this one out the front door in the last dying hours of the evening. John Harrison, you have by far outstripped anyone in this room with your ridiculous eighty-hour weeks. I’m not sure if I should congratulate you or quietly weep at my own ineptitude. And I’m the one who owns the place!’
Derisive laughter combines with enthusiastic clapping to propel John towards the front of the room, not entirely as embarrassed as he should be. For every overworked week, I could guarantee there was an apology in my inbox; a missed date, a cold dinner, or a restaurant I’d been sitting in on my own waiting for a man who’d never arrive.
John takes hold of the heavy glass statue and reads the etching on the base before peering out at the rest of the room. ‘Next partner, right here,’ he mumbles into the microphone as he waits for the noise to die down.
Still, no matter my annoyance at all those cancelled plans and late nights, I could never begrudge him his ambition. We’re all entitled to work towards our own ideal and, watching him stand before everyone in his crisp suit and perfectly coiffed hair, I am oddly proud of him. It’s in total conflict with every other emotion fighting for space inside me right now, but he is brilliant at his job and he deserves this.
‘I fear I must admit though, it’s not solely my work that has resulted in my being up here tonight. It’s a combination of all of you.’ He pauses. ‘The last-minute emails, thanks, Sarah. The random queries from Michael, you’re a champion, and the memes that come from our bastion of good taste, Nicholas. It’s Adam sending me to the photocopier because I’m standing by the door and I’ve somehow looked like I’ve had nothing to do for thirty seconds. And, by some means, in between that, I get to hang out in court and do my thing for the people.’
He stops talking long enough to take in the adulating laughter that rises above the sound of chinking cutlery and mummering of waiters delivering more wine.
‘Now, there is someone I desperately need to thank, someone I’m forever indebted to and who will put salt in my coffee instead of sugar if I don’t mention her.’
Adam reaches across and gives my shoulder a brotherly punch. Pride puffs me out like a seagull, and, for once, all those cancelled dates and cold dinners begin to feel worth it.
‘The most important woman in the room. Natalie, my secretary.’
I hear mumbles at the edge of our table. I can’t look away from the stage, though I catch Adam cupping a hand over his eyes. I blink a few times and feel the tide recede in my mouth. I’m drier than a sandpit in summer and the taste it leaves behind tells me a cat’s been using that sandpit as a litter tray.
‘You are the reason the boat is upright when it could have run aground so many times already this year. From organising, chopping and changing meetings, taking all those little calls I don’t have time for, suggestions on case notes, and for your first-class attention to detail. I could not have achieved any of this without your knowledge and support. You will always be more than just a secretary.’
My stomach decamps and claws its way across the function room floor, leaving entrails in its wake. Every single set of eyes at our table are fixed on me, waiting for my reaction. The worst part is, I can’t do a thing except applaud along with everyone else and give Natalie a watery ‘I swear I’m not about to pop’ grin. She’s offering profuse apologies, but I’m not about to make a scene and ruin everyone’s night, as much as I would love that.
Because it’s in this moment I realise that, even though I may get my discussion later tonight, we will never amount to a thing. Despite promising me repeatedly that he was open to the idea of a full and proper relationship, against everything I had hoped, he is never going to change.
There’ll never be family dinners, engagements, weddings, or a family of our own. I suspect, for John, it was never going to be that in the first place. While the room calms and everyone finishes congratulating both him and Natalie, I sit at the precipice of the table counting a laundry list of ways the last nine months have been a waste of my time. This is why we’ve never introduced family, why he wanted to keep it ‘exclusive, but casual’, why he does everything he can to avoid all those hard discussions I want to have.
Now, as I watch him traverse the room, I wonder how I’d never seen this for what it was, how I’d been so epically blind to it all. I am an idiot. While Natalie, bless her, gives off a glassy-eyed beam, everyone else at the table wears a look of awkward expectation. John enters my line of sight, looks at me and freezes.
Finally, he realises his error. His mouth bobs about, a fish in its last gasping breaths. It’s not as if he’s going to take those words back either. There’s no way he’ll say, ‘Actually, sorry, Natalie, what I meant to say was Katharine,’, because imagine being the man who tells a woman she’s not actually that important after all.