Waking up is never going to be much fun when you went to bed half dressed, still made up and steaming drunk. And a supper of vodka tonics certainly isn’t famous for a restful night’s sleep at the best of times, or for helping you get out of bed the morning after without side effects.
All of which had exploded like a supernova in her head as soon as she placed one foot on the bedroom floor.
“Oh my God…” she had barely managed to whisper before racing into the bathroom to throw up.
If her mother had seen her at that moment she would have disinherited her on the spot. Her grandmother might have laughed, but Jackie was a one-off, unfortunately. Amalia’s grandmother always laughed at her mishaps, and the ability to laugh things off was one talent Jackie’s granddaughter would have liked to possess herself that morning. Too bad that the situation made it extremely difficult, if not actually impossible, even to smile without wincing with pain.
When she finally emerged from the bathroom several minutes later she felt absolutely awful – so awful that she was forced to admit to herself that she’d never be able to drag herself to work in that state. Never. And so, for the first time in a long while, she had to call Michelle to tell her that, yes, she would be coming in, sooner or later. But that it would be later rather than sooner.
In fact she would see them in the afternoon. She couldn’t take the day off, because she would never, ever have picked up the phone to change that appointment with Ryan. He would have presumed that it meant she was backing down – that she was afraid of a confrontation, or was making an attempt to play for precious time – and Amalia had no need at all for an extra day to put him firmly in his place. That was why she would arrive on time for that appointment even if it meant having to crawl along the floor like a lizard to make it. And just at that very moment, she was overcome with a sudden spell of dizziness which hinted that there was a pretty good chance she might actually have to do just that.
She lurched over to the bathroom mirror and looked tentatively at her reflection.
“This is all your fault, Ryan,” she said angrily to her bedraggled image.
She was in such a wonderful mood that she could have blamed him for anything: cancer, the war in Syria, drought… She took off her makeup and cleaned her face, freezing in shock when she saw that under all that dried foundation her natural color was currently a pale green. And not a nice pale green, always given that a nice pale green was even possible. No, it was a very unpleasant greyish green…
Was there any hope of regaining a bit of color in the next few hours? She doubted it, and began to hunt around for the thickest foundation she had, which wasn’t easy, because lately she’d started using only blusher. Eventually she found an old tube that only usually came out in the summer, so it was no surprise when she started applying it that it was a more brownish color than she usually wore.
Never mind, a tanned complexion would make her look healthier, she said to herself as she continued to spread it over her face with conviction. The end result was far from ideal, though: the combination of the greenish base and overly dark foundation looked anything but reassuring.
She stood looking at herself for a moment, uncertain as to what to do, but in the end the pounding headache prevailed and she realized she couldn’t face starting over again from scratch.
She absolutely had to finish getting made up, she decided, and then she would lie down for a while. Anywhere – even on the bathroom floor.
As soon as she’d finished in the bathroom, Amalia gulped down something like a gallon and a half of coffee and made her best attempt to dress smartly: black pants, grey jacket and high heels. At that point, all that remained was to venture out and pray that she managed to find a taxi before she collapsed to the ground. Which, this being New York, would be a problem, because people tended to just step over you as you lay there half dead. Not that there was anything particularly strange about that in a city where most people would struggle to identify the face of their next-door neighbour. The knowledge had never really bothered her – at the end of the day, those were the rules of the game for anyone who chose to live in a big city.
But she was sick and her head was spinning, and she knew she was on the verge of tears.
She would never drink again. Never.
*
Michelle was talking on the phone when she saw Amalia walking through the main office door. It took her about a second to guess that something was wrong: not only had she turned up practically at noon – which had never happened before – but her face was a strange brownish color, despite being as naturally pale as usual when she left the office yesterday. The mystery thickened.
Had there been a screw-up at the tanning salon? Weird – Amalia had never been one for that kind of stuff. Her eyes were hidden behind large sunglasses too, despite the fact that it was raining heavily in the Big Apple and there was no sign even of the shadow of a sunbeam. For the next day they were even forecasting snow. No one would have thought of putting on a pair of sunglasses with such dark lenses.
“You okay?” Michelle asked with concern, watching Amalia approach with difficulty. She was walking more or less normally, but there was a strange sway in her gait, as though she was fighting to stay upright.
Amalia gave a sort of sigh and managed to utter “I’m fine,” in a very hoarse voice and with obvious difficulty. The sunglasses were firmly planted on her nose and she clearly had no intention of removing them. Michelle was starting to get quite alarmed.
“Do you want me to re-schedule the meeting this afternoon?” she asked her boss. “You don’t look too well.”
Amalia immediately snapped to attention. “Absolutely not!” she said in an almost normal voice. It was not quite her usual tone, but something very much like it. “I mean, there’s no need. See, I’m much better already.”
Although she did raise one eyebrow to indicate her doubt about this, Michelle dared say no more, so Amalia felt authorized to take refuge in her office, where she began to read through the notes the interns had left for the appointment that afternoon. The young trainee lawyer, Sarah, had done a good job and had written her arguments in a concise, schematic way. Exactly what she wanted. Not that she needed some kind of trick: Liz Stubbs was eighteen years old, spoiled but with no criminal record and divorced parents who were very rich and totally uninterested in her life. All in all, Liz had just done exactly as so many of her peers had before: she had got drunk, got into her car, crashed into a police car – without hurting anyone, luckily – and then tried to resist arrest. Small-time stuff. Well, it would have been, if it hadn’t been for the police car she’d taken out. That had been a touch of genius, to tell the truth.
Amalia wondered, not for the first time, why none of these kids ever decided to take the less obvious route – in her day, Amalia had the good sense to throw herself into the law to escape from invisible daughter syndrome, and had managed to unload into it much of the pent-up frustration of many years of daughterly anonymity.
On paper, her parents weren’t divorced or even separated, but they led their own lives. Her mother was always off organizing charity events and fundraisers for unlikely causes like saving the Vietnamese hamster, or some other animal completely unknown to most of mankind, from extinction, while her father was principally devoted to three things: his hedge fund, his golf course and his mistress. In that order. Not only was this well known to all and sundry, it was also accepted. Amalia would have made a fuss, but high society folk found scenes so very distasteful, so she had decided that if her mother didn’t mind then she wouldn’t mind either. She would be as indifferent to it as she was to the weather forecast.
She slumped back into her chair, raised her sunglasses from her nose and put them on her head, because the day was just too grey to try and read through darkened lenses. She’d have been better off wearing a mask.
She sat there preparing herself until three in the afternoon came around and, as punctual as midnight, Mr Assistant District Attorney appeared. Would it have been too much to hope that he had fallen down an open manhole on the way? After all, she had heard of it really happening to people – they were crossing the street and just vanished down into the network of drains never to be seen again.
Through the window of her office, Amalia was able to watch the astonishment that spread over Michelle’s face when she saw Ryan walking towards her: her normally unflappable secretary seemed to break out in a blush. In fact, all the other female eyes in the office were already glued to him. Objectively, he was annoyingly attractive, she thought in disgust: clearly, men like him could age and still manage to look like fashion models. It was so unfair that guys like that never seemed to get paunchy or lose their hair. He still had all of his: curly, messy, rebellious and chestnut brown. Nowadays, Ryan wore it slightly shorter than he had back in their university days, when a few longer locks would form mischievous curls at the nape of his neck. But the highlight was the eyes: he would stare at you from those pools of light green and it was impossible to break his gaze, especially because they were quite obviously brimming with intelligence and he did nothing to hide the fact. Amalia had avoided having too much to do with those eyes after having been so abruptly turned down, but she still remembered that way he had of looking at her – or rather, of looking through her – as though attempting to hypnotize her. But now it was Michelle’s turn to play his victim, and in fact she was visibly intimidated by the assistant D.A. Amalia almost laughed. He never changes, she thought bitterly.
Michelle managed to hold it together just long enough to take Ryan and the young blond man accompanying him into the meeting room, close the door behind her and race over to Amalia’s office. Her cheeks still flushed, she burst in, completely forgetting to knock. “The Assistant District Attorney has arrived,” she informed Amalia breathlessly.
Amalia barely had time to put her sunglasses back on.
“So I see,” she said in a calm voice, seeking refuge behind the dark lenses. “Unfortunately.”
But her secretary was no longer listening – she was completely lost in her own thoughts. “I had no idea that he was so…” she began, before stopping, undecided on which word to use.
“Oh, yes,” Amalia confirmed indulgently, guessing where this was leading. Sometimes silence was more effective than words. “But don’t worry about it, “she reassured Michelle magnanimously, “that’s the effect that he has on everybody.”
“Well anyway, he’s in the meeting room. Shall I call Sarah for you? Probably better not to be outnumbered.”
Amalia nodded. “Thank you, Michelle, that’s a very good idea.”
The trainee appeared, pleased as punch to be able to attend the meeting.
“Remember, Sarah,” said Amalia, “we let them speak and we don’t lose our cool. The first thing we have to do is unravel their plans.”
And so saying, she flung open the door to the meeting room and strode confidently in. There was no point wishing she was somewhere else – the best thing to do was just get this rotten tooth yanked out once and for all and have done with it.
She had long since learned that timing was everything in the legal world and that it was better to address problems head on instead of trying to put them off. Ryan and his assistant were standing at the big table set in the middle of the room, deep in discussion. They froze as soon as they saw the two women enter.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Amalia greeted them in her most professional tone. The day before the situation had definitely got out of hand, she thought, but today things would go quite differently. Now she was playing on her home ground.
Ryan turned round smoothly, his gaze pausing on the sunglasses. He stood immobile for a moment, watching her with curiosity, his lips curving into a predatory smile. “Wow, are the lights in here that bright?” he asked sarcastically, casting a worried glance at the lamp hanging from the ceiling.
“Not quite bright enough to blind you, unfortunately,” she said, sitting down as though she was completely unruffled and gesturing to them to do the same. All that mattered was staying calm and getting a decent agreement in the bag.
But Ryan wasn’t ready to let the matter drop.
“I always prefer to see the eyes of whoever I’m dealing with. It’s a bit rude to wear sunglasses in a meeting, don’t you think?” he insisted.
“What’s the matter, worried that you won’t be able to read my expressions well enough to turn them to your advantage?” asked Amalia, with a calculated hint of reproach in her voice.
Ryan shrugged.
“You just have such lovely eyes… It would be a terrible waste, that’s all,” he said, lowering his voice so as to turn his words into a sort of caress. A poisoned one, certainly.
So he’d decided to bring out the heavy artillery immediately, had he? Well, she wasn’t going to be outdone.
“Oh, please, don’t make me laugh,” she retorted instantly.
“Either you take off your glasses or we don’t start,” he threatened, crossing his arms over his chest and displaying an intransigence that seemed slightly over the top.
Amalia seriously contemplated the idea of telling him where to get off, but doing that would not be in her client’s interest and would mean having to organize another meeting with this idiot, who for some reason seemed to think that he had the upper hand.
“Very well, seeing as I want to get on with this and don’t intend to waste another three hours discussing my sunglasses, there.” And so saying, she removed the offending item of eyewear and put them down on the table. “Are we happy now?” she asked, defiantly looking straight into his eyes.
Ryan sat there in stunned silence for a moment, his eyes flicking from Amalia’s face to the sunglasses and back again: it was obvious that he had noticed how red and swollen her eyes were. And they weren’t the only odd thing…
“If you’ll permit me to say so, I would throw out that foundation as soon as you get home. Or give it to a friend with a much darker complexion,” he suggested. “It really doesn’t suit you.”
Amalia was unperturbed. Only the way she blinked might have given away the effect that his words had on her. But then, on the other hand, it was only to be expected: Ryan had always known how to cause the maximum damage with the minimum effort. It came naturally to him.
For a moment she’d thought that the sight of her in that state might have softened him up a bit, but obviously she needed to re-think her ideas. Ten years could change a person, but not that much.
“Did we come here to talk about makeup or to try and hash out a new settlement?” Amalia asked in a bored tone, opening the folder in her hand. “I hadn’t realized you took such an interest in women’s cosmetics – clearly I underestimated you…” she said sarcastically. To her right she heard an amused chuckle from Alex, extinguished swiftly following a glare from Ryan.
“I thought it was ok for old friends to talk about that kind of stuff,” said Ryan.
Amalia looked at him for a long time before answering.
“We are not old friends. Anyway, let’s get on with the settlement,” she said aggressively, cutting straight to the chase. “Why the hell did you decide to tear up the previous one?”
Good job she’d decided to remain calm.
“Because it was ridiculous. How exactly did you manage to talk my predecessor into it?” he asked seriously. “Not that he was particularly well-known for the wisdom of his choices,” he added, alluding to the scandal that had caused his resignation.
“It was a good deal for both parties: a few hours of community service for Liz and a bit of good advertising for your office. I thought that was what the D.A.’s office was all about nowadays.”
Ryan didn’t bite, though. “And a clean record for your client,” he pointed out.
“Liz is a young woman of eighteen with no previous convictions. What the hell do you want to do? Throw her in jail?”
The Assistant District Attorney’s expression seemed to confirm that it was exactly what he wanted.
“She crashed into a police car!” Ryan reminded her, his voice rising.
“A parked police car,” Amalia pointed in the same tone.
“So what if it was parked? There were two cops inside it!” Ryan remained seated but his hands began to fidget.
“Come on, they weren’t hurt,” she said, annoyed. “Not even a scratch.”
“Only because they were lucky. You’re not going to try and give your client credit for that, I hope? It’s not like she decided not to hurt them before she crashed into their car! She just crashed into them – causing damage to public property as she did so, I would like to point out.”
Of course he wanted to point it out: Mr Know-it-all always wanted to point something out. Amalia was starting to get bored of his smart-ass manners.
“Mr Stubbs has paid for all the damage, and I would like to point out that thanks to his unusual generosity, the police will be able to buy ten new cars, not one!” she said firmly. She wouldn’t normally have brought up the financial side of the case, but since he had mentioned it she felt justified in reminding him of that little detail.
But Ryan just laughed at her.
“Ah, so now it’s just a question of money, is it? Whoever has the richest daddy can do whatever they want and then just walk away, scot-free?”
And it was obvious that his accusation was not just referring to Liz.
“Just what the hell are you trying to insinuate, Ryan?” she asked in a threatening voice.
“Nothing! Why, what did I say?” he asked, well aware that he had struck a nerve. He had deliberately chosen his words to get at her.
Amalia leapt to her feet. Her face was dark, but this time the foundation had nothing to do with it.
“Sarah, would you please take the assistant D.A.’s colleague for coffee?”
The trainee didn’t need to be asked twice: Alex and Sarah vanished at the speed of light, leaving Amalia and Ryan glaring at each other.
“Just what the hell is it that you want from me?” she asked, planting her hands on her hips belligerently, now that she had got the witnesses out of the way.
The Assistant District Attorney remained immobile and sat observing her in silence, presumably trying to get her to lose her cool by simply keeping his mouth shut. Smart move, she had to give it to him. But if the mother of all hangovers hadn’t been enough to take her down, Ryan and his bag of two cent tricks certainly weren’t going to, so she stood there pretending to be bored enough to induce him to talk.
After a few seconds, he realized he had to change strategy and his lips curved into a hint of a smile which perhaps he hoped would make her angry.
“I don’t want anything from you. Except the proper sentence for a rich girl who thinks, wrongly, that she can do whatever she likes.”
“And what if she’d been poor, then? In that case, I’m damn sure you wouldn’t have objected to her doing a few hours of community service…”
The fact that Ryan didn’t deny it made her lose her cool. She felt like a volcano that was about to start spraying out molten lava, and it took all of her self-control to remember that this was not a personal matter and that she mustn’t just grab him by the neck and start shaking him.
“So tell me – after all these years, do you still have a problem with rich people?” she taunted. “And there was me thinking that it was just the impetuousness of youth.”
At that point Ryan jumped to his feet too and leaned menacingly across the table towards her.
“I have no problem at all with rich people. Only with arrogant ones. It’s just too bad that the rich ones are often the arrogant ones. What do you think, is it just an unlucky coincidence?” he asked pointedly.
Amalia gave a nervous laugh.
“Oh, my God! You really don’t even realize that you’re one of the most self-righteous people on the face of the planet, do you? Do you want to know something? You are far worse than any rich snob! Because you’re a poor snob, and a pretty damn pompous one at that. Is there some rule that a rich person is automatically worse than a poor one? What is it, some new federal law no one has told me about?” she asked, raising a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.
Back in their law school days, Ryan had been very good at keeping his cool – his self-control was famed on campus, and she imagined that he had probably cultivated it with care over the years – but at that moment Amalia realized that she had in her arsenal an extraordinary and unexpected weapon: there was something about her that made him completely lose his mind. Almost literally. For a moment she almost thought she could see smoke coming out of his ears.
Bye bye Ryan, you self-control freak…
“Hey, listen, little Miss my-family-funded-the-construction-of-the-Yale-library…” he hissed in what was, for him, an unusually agitated tone.
But Amalia immediately cut him off with a peremptory gesture. “Oh, you’d rather not have libraries, would you?” she asked sarcastically. “All those books not to your liking, huh?”
“Oh, don’t talk crap!” he spat back.
She made a further gesture of annoyance. “You’re the one talking crap, bringing all this up again! Centuries have gone by and we are still here discussing the damn library! Is it my fault that my great-grandfather chose to use his money to build it instead of blowing it all on women and booze? Would that have been more ‘ethical’ in your eyes, ‘Irish’?”
It was a nickname his friends at university had called him, and it had come out before she had been able to stop herself.
Ryan paused for a moment to observe her.
“Stop twisting my words, Amalia.”
“And you stop twisting my family’s money, then,” she answered. “It’s only money.”
Ryan let out a sigh.
“And that’s just where you’re wrong my dear – money is never just money. Never.”