“Saz?”
“Yeah? What? Who is it?” Still nervous, not trusting the familiar female voice on the other end of the line.
“Saz, it’s me, Claire. What kind of a greeting is that?”
Relief, anger, annoyance, adrenalin flooded through her body and out her mouth. “Claire? What the fuck are you calling at this time of night for? Where are you?”
A pause, then, “Oh yes. It’s night there, isn’t it?”
Saz looked at the green glowing clock on the oven. “Midnight, after midnight.”
“Right. And you always answer your phone that nicely?”
“Yes. No. Are you OK? Why are you calling so late?”
“Sorry. Didn’t think. It’s only about six here. I’m at work.”
“And I’m not. What do you want?”
“I want you to do a job for me. Just a one-off, someone I need to check on in London, for a client.”
Saz sighed. Claire Holland, old friend, big party queen, very successful solicitor, had left for New York several years ago, moving from one department of her sprawling firm to another, finally giving up business law and settling in the only slightly less lucrative but way more interesting area of family law. Divorce her speciality. Nasty, messy, huge financial dispute divorces her special speciality.
“Claire, I’m not working. I’m being Mummy.”
“Still.”
Claire didn’t get it. She didn’t want to get it either, she wanted Saz to work for her.
“Yes, still. Permanently. For a while, for the foreseeable future. She’s only nine months old.”
“Yeah, but the money would come in handy, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, no … Molly’s earning enough for three of us for now. We’re lucky, and then again, we’re not quite as high maintenance as you either.”
“True. Last time we met I thought you could do with a manicure.”
“Yeah, and I thought you could do with two less martinis.”
“That’ll be after the four each we’d already had?”
“Claire, please, it’s late. You know I don’t want to work anymore, I gave up. I’ll get another job when Matilda’s a bit older, when I work out what the hell I want to do.”
“Don’t you mean what the hell you can do?”
“Yes, that too. Right now I’m very happy living a nice quiet peaceful life.”
Safe life. Saz wanted to say safe life. But she didn’t want to tempt the gods who had so generously given her Claire on the phone instead of someone she really didn’t want to speak to.
“Ah, but this is a nice quiet peaceful job.”
“No such thing.”
“No really, just listen. It’s this new client of mine. His marriage is over, she left him, he’s been the carer for years, she’s the one with the big career and all the money. She’s refusing alimony, says she can’t afford it, and we don’t believe her. I need someone over there to have a look, check her out.”
“Yeah, and even if I wanted to do this job, she’d just let me into her house and the office and her bank account, would she?”
“Doubt it. But she’s saying she can’t afford to run her car or pay her bills, let alone the expenses my client’s been left with for their home here. She says she can’t even manage to eat out once a week. And my client happens to know this exwife spends every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon at a very expensive girlie lunch with her college mates, then on to one of those pretending-to-be-New-York spas – though God knows why, no one really cares about the state of their body in London anyway.”
“I do.”
“Not extending to weekly pedicures, you don’t. And even if you did, you wouldn’t follow it up, as this woman does, with a nice speedy shag-fest, getting herself seen to by one of the harder working boys in town.”
“Does that mean hard working or working boy?”
“The latter. Of course. Though he probably works hard at it too.”
Saz was pulled in despite herself. “God, different world, isn’t it? Is that why they broke up?”
“Nope. My client’s gay, the wife’s known all along and it suited them both, she had the money, he looked after her and escorted her and saved her from having to admit to being yet another single woman in New York. Except now he’s fallen in love and finally decided it’s time to come out, and she’s being difficult about money because she’s pissed off with him.”
“Right. So when does she find time to earn all this money if she’s off being pampered all the time?”
“I think, sweetie, when you’re as wealthy as she is, it’s more about investments and handling portfolios than anything as crude as actually having a job.”
“So they’re rich?”
“Filthy.”
“Then what’s his problem? Can’t your client just go to work himself?”
“Parity, darling. We can’t say a dumped wife deserves alimony for taking care of the husband for thirty odd years if we don’t offer the same for the men too, can we? All I need is proof that she’s still doing any one of those things, though all three would be best, and then my client puts in his final claim. On Friday afternoon. When the wife flies over for their next meeting. Hence the urgency. If we present her – and her lawyer – with proof that she’s still spending loads on the silly stuff, then she can’t keep saying no to my bloke.”
Saz sighed again, heard the wails of her increasingly irritated daughter, Molly losing patience down the hall in Matilda’s room.
“Maybe she can’t, Claire, but I can. I’m not doing it. I’m going back to sleep. If Matilda will let me. If you’ll let me. Goodnight?”
A pause then, Claire thinking of the best way to try one more time, and leaving it just too late.
“I’m hanging up now Claire. ’Bye.”
Saz put down the phone. Heart rate returned to normal. Screaming baby, not happy Molly. Home returned to normal.
Matilda was still wailing on Molly’s lap. Saz took her from Molly.
“Sorry.”
Molly offered a questioning look. Saz shook her head.
“Claire. Offered me a job. I said no.”
“Good. Cup of tea?”
Tea drunk and it was now one thirty in the morning, Matilda wasn’t the least bit tired, Saz and Molly were both grumpy. After half an hour trying to pacify Matilda, they took her to bed with them where she promptly fell asleep, hot arms and legs spread as far as her nine-month-old body would allow, pushing Saz and Molly to the far edges of the mattress. A truck drove past outside their ground floor flat, shaking the house from the foundations up.
“These houses weren’t built to have that kind of traffic going by.”
“No.”
“One day the whole bloody place is going to fall in on top of us.”
“Yeah.”
“And Matilda’s room is way too small for her now. It’s so full of stuff.”
“Yes. I know.”
Saz didn’t care. She couldn’t stop thinking about her visitor from the day before, trying constantly not to, glad of the distraction Claire’s phone call had provided. Glad and already interested and trying not to think that Claire’s offer sounded like fun. An easy day’s work, a simple day’s work. Matilda sleeping soundly now, Molly wide awake and not enjoying it.
“Saz, please don’t look like that.”
“Like what? What look? How can you see anyway?”
“Because I know how you think. You’ve got your I-can-solve-the-world’s-problems look.”
“Didn’t know I had one.”
“Well, you do. And anyway, you know what I mean.”
Silence then. Molly worrying on her edge of the bed. High wind blowing about the trees that made up their back fence, hundred-year-old house creaking out the stories of middle-of-the-night floorboards.
Saz forced to break into the dark. “What?”
“It’s different now.”
“Yes. I know.”
“You’ve always put your work before me … ”
“No, you have. And in a way it was OK, before. My work was really important to me too.”
Saz’s whisper turned hard. “I haven’t done anything for well over a year. Year and a half. I’ve been here for you ever since I came out of hospital, I’ve been supportive with all the stuff about your dad, I’ve taken care of you.”
“I’m grateful. But you just said it … ”
“Since you came out of hospital. You promised you wouldn’t do anything again that might harm you. We have a child now, it’s different.”
“I know it’s different, that’s why I feel it so much more. I look at all the shit things in the world and I can’t help being terrified that any one of them might happen to Matilda. And I still want to make things better.”
Molly sniffed, “Right, and Claire’s work is about making things better? So she’s left that job where she makes money out of rich people’s misery and is now saving the world?”
“No, but she is trying to make little bits of justice, in her own way.”
Molly was silent again. Turned over. Then carefully back to Saz, Matilda undisturbed between them.
“I start work fulltime this week. You know I can end up working late sometimes, there’s always something they need one of us to stay late for. If you take on this job for Claire, what do you intend to do about Matilda? Because there’s no way you’re taking her out with you on a wild goose chase.”
“Of course not.”
“I find it hard enough leaving her, Saz. I don’t think I can stand the idea of neither of us being with her.”
“Moll, it’s irrelevant. I told Claire I wouldn’t do it. You’re going on about this for nothing. I already said no.”
“But you’d like to.”
Another silence, acknowledged truth slipping out into the dark.
“Maybe. You wanted to go back to your work.”
“My work doesn’t always seem to involve people trying to hurt me. At least not since I last worked nights in A&E. I just want to keep my family safe as well … what’s left of it.” Molly added slowly, “I don’t care if that sounds selfish. I want to put us first, all three of us, always.”
“Yes. I know.”
They stopped then. Quiet and dark. Listening to Matilda’s easy breathing between them, the wind outside ripping unready leaves from the trees. In agreement and not at all.