‘Must you have the heating so low? It’s freezing in here,’ I said, sweeping into the office of my nemesis unannounced.
Unable to find Jack at the Old Bailey, I’d tracked him down to his Chambers. I inhaled the aroma of dusty furnishings pomaded with cigar smoke.
‘I employ a company called “Stiff Nipples Air-conditioning”. Excellent, isn’t it?’ Jack said, dropping his eyes to my chest. ‘So, I hear you’re representing the ball-blaster?’ He smiled wryly. ‘Why does that not surprise me? Your “practice”, and I use that term loosely, does so metaphorically, already. You’re always giving men a bollocking.’
‘The reason my mother and I set up Pandora’s is because women make up 51 per cent of the population, do two-thirds of the work . . . earn 10 per cent of the money and own 1 per cent of the property. In other words, it’s still a man’s world. The only reason you blokes let women off sinking ships before you is so we’ll check the strength of the bloody lifeboats.’
Jack laughed warmly. ‘Let me just check . . .’ He placed a hand on his heart and cocked his head for a moment. ‘Yes, I still avidly adore you. And not just because your nipples are on high beam.’
‘Sorry, but I obviously left my spontaneous quips in my other handbag. Something to do with the fact that I’ve just been visiting a little girl in hospital who was brutally raped by two heartless thugs.’
‘Allegedly.’
‘Your chronic scepticism is the very reason why we need to try my client first, before their rape trial. If the poor girl doesn’t give a good account of what happened – and who could, under the circumstances, she’s just turned sixteen, for God’s sake! – the rapists will get off and my gran will go down. In your position as Treasury Counsel, it’s the only humane and just thing to do.’
‘Ah, so you’ve come here to make a plea bargain.’ Jack Cassidy’s eyes narrowed with keen interest. ‘I hear the plea. But what’s the bargain?’ He gave me a playful smirk. ‘If I do this favour for you, what’s in it for me?’
‘Professional decency. Something you know nothing about, of course.’
‘I’m having rather indecent thoughts about another professional right now actually . . .’
I wrapped my arms across my chest. ‘So, enlighten me. Don’t your Narcissists Anonymous meetings somewhat interfere with your dating life? Now, will you help me or not? Can we agree her case should be tried first?’
‘Why don’t you charm me into it?’ Jack suggested. He gave a wide smile, which increased his resemblance to the Cheshire Cat. ‘Use your feminine wiles.’
‘Sorry. Can’t. I whiled away my feminine wiles while dating complete assholes in my youth,’ I said pointedly.
‘I think it would be beneficial to discuss this dilemma over dinner, don’t you? I could wine and dine you by candlelight. What would life be without the occasional swing from a chandelier?’
‘A chandelier is just a lightbulb with a big ego,’ I countered. ‘Something you do know all about.’
‘Then after dinner,’ he went on, ignoring my comment, ‘you could slip into something more comfortable . . .’
‘Yes, like a coma.’
‘Why are you always so defensive, Matilda? I could be the perfect boyfriend for you. I’ve improved since we were students, you know. I’ve learnt to be so much more considerate . . . When you’re hungover, I will use only little words. When you fall over, I’ll point and laugh for a while, but will always give you a hand up. When you’ve got the flu – stay the hell away from me if I have a case. But I will make chicken soup. Why won’t you give me a second chance?’
‘Because I am not your type.’
‘You’re not anyone’s type. You’re a total original. That’s why I like you so much . . . You’re the human version of a platypus.’
‘I vowed when I went to the Bar never to date a lawyer. A male lawyer is in love with one thing – the sound of his own voice.’
‘Really?’ Jack gave a slow smile. ‘I find that talking is excellent exercise for the mouth’s all-important oral-sex muscles.’
‘You really are delusional. We wouldn’t make love, Jack. We’d make war.’
‘Yes, but with two winning sides.’
I tried to ignore him, but his gaze was like the touch of a hand on my arm.
‘Date me, or it’s no deal,’ he said simply, rocking back on his chair. ‘And your gran will have to contemplate a very long sentence—’
‘At least she won’t put a proposition at the end of it,’ I cut in contemptuously. ‘What happened to you, Jack? When we met, you wanted to work for Human Rights Watch.’
‘Yes, but that was before I realized it would mean spending my days with gruff, bearded men poking their gun barrels through my car window to demand bribes before stringing me up by the testicles anyway and beating me senseless with copies of their misanthropic manifestos.’
‘Really? For a chauvinist pig like you, I can see many upsides to spending time in the developing world. For one thing, sexual-harassment suits are an unknown luxury,’ I said, switching off his air-conditioning unit.
‘True. And it probably does take a lot off your mind when the average life expectancy is, oh, thirty-four minutes . . . making it pointless to give up cigars, Martinis and carbohydrates. All of which talk is making me hungry. So, where shall we dine on our date? The Fat Duck? The Ritz in Paris? . . . Or shall we catch a private plane to a tropical resort so exclusive not even the tide can get in?’
I shook my head at him. ‘You didn’t change the world, Jack, you bought it.’
‘The way I see it, if I can’t subtract from the planet’s sum of suffering, do I have to add to it personally? It’s one of the questions I mean to take up with God if I ever get religion. Some people worry about the difference between right and wrong. I worry about the difference between wrong and pleasure. And it would be very pleasurable to get to know you again, Matilda.’
‘Come on, Jack. We’d claw each other’s eyes out before the waiter could say “Do you want fries with that?”’
‘I think the River Café . . . I’ll make a reservation, shall I?’
Why had I wasted my time? Jack Cassidy doing something altruistic is as likely as a Taliban with a bar tab. ‘How can I put this so that you’ll understand it? Going out with you would be only slightly more enjoyable than abduction by multi-headed aliens hell bent on death by anal probing.’
‘. . . Oh, well, I’m sure your client will find a few distractions in prison. She can always join a writing workshop full of lesbians reading poems about bleeding, death and endless rivers of Satan’s semen.’
‘When did you get so cynical? It’s as though you found out as a child that there’s no Santa and just never got over it. Unlike you, I have the guts to stand up to evil-doers.’
I employed a tone of crisp reprimand that effectively closed the conversation, along with the door to his office. Striding across the cobbled cul-de-sac of Gray’s Inn and through the ornate iron gates on to a Holborn lane, I vowed from now on to be less like my cowardly father and more like my principled mother. Brave. Heroic. Stoic. I was no longer going to let life walk all over me!
Ironically, life was about to grant me an opportunity to prove my new Wonder Woman credentials. I had just got into my car and fired the engine when I noticed a man lurking suspiciously outside the mini-market. As I buckled my seatbelt, I watched a security guard walk out of the store swinging a case, evidently full of money, towards a Securicor van. The young bloke I was observing then pulled out a gun, seized the case and leapt on to the back of a getaway motorbike driven by an accomplice. They veered off towards the main road, right past my car. Sensing a high point in my crime-fighting career, I threw my little orthopaedic shoe into reverse and backed into their path. The two villains were thrown on to the bonnet of a nearby car. They staggered, dazed, to their feet and stared at me, aghast.
Aghast also were the director, the sound man, the cameraman and everyone connected with Crime Stoppers, a hugely popular TV programme, who were reconstructing an earlier robbery in the hope of helping the police to solve it . . . Or so the director explained to me as he emerged from the bushes. He pointed to the signs I somehow hadn’t seen, posted on all the lamp posts, stating that filming was taking place.
I glanced up over the old stone walls of Gray’s Inn to the first-floor window of Regal Helm Chambers to see Jack Cassidy bent double with laughter, having watched me perform the least successful citizen’s arrest known to humankind.
What more could I do to embarrass myself? Possibly cartwheel into court, yodelling. I turned the car towards Camden and skulked homeward . . . via the hospital to have my toes surgically uncurled.