Babyface. Elizabeth Woodcraft

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘OK, put him through, but if it’s someone selling insurance you might find yourself with a thirty-year premium round your neck.’

      ‘No thank you,’ she said primly, ‘I’m already fully covered.’

      ‘Get you,’ I said. ‘OK, put him through.’ The phone clicked. ‘Frances Richmond speaking,’ I murmured cautiously.

      ‘Mmm,’ said a husky voice, ‘what a nice telephone manner you have.’

      ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Who am I speaking to?’

      ‘Didn’t she tell you? It’s Yolande.’

      My heart fluttered. I did not want to speak to this woman, it meant grief all the way down the line, I knew it. ‘So, Yolande, how are you?’

      ‘I’m fine. How’s the inquiry going?’

      ‘As well as can be expected.’

      ‘I saw you on TV. You looked very nice.’

      I snorted. But perhaps I had looked nice.

      ‘Compared to the others,’ she continued, with a short laugh. ‘Come and have lunch with me.’

      ‘Where are you?’ I said.

      ‘I’m on Fleet Street,’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely day, we could get a cab across the river. We could sit and look at the water.’

      It sounded rather nice, with or without Yolande. But I couldn’t. She was blonde and left-handed and she was the girlfriend of a very dangerous man, if his record was to be believed. Which it was. Plus there were professional issues. They were in the grey area of murky to say the least. On the one hand neither Danny nor Yolande was my client, but on the other, in a way I still was Danny’s counsel, since I hadn’t endorsed my brief or told Simon what had happened. Or even rung Kay, my instructing solicitor, I realised with a lurch of guilt. And Yolande was bound to want to talk about him, and Yolande was his girlfriend.

      ‘I’m really busy,’ I said, half-heartedly. ‘I’ve only just got into chambers.’

      ‘Why don’t I come to you then?’ she said. ‘I’ll bring some sandwiches.’ Even over the phone I could tell she was left-handed. And there was that item on my list of things to do. Solve the mystery of Danny’s case. I hate leaving things undone. ‘Everybody has to eat lunch,’ she whispered. That was just so true. I was starving I realised. It was at least an hour and a half since I’d had toast. What else could I do? And somehow if she came to chambers I was … containing things. But what if Simon saw her? That might mean trouble. I remembered that Simon wasn’t in today. He was at the hospital, having his foot seen to, which is why it was all his fault anyway.

      ‘OK,’ I said.

      ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes,’ she cooed. ‘We’ll need a few plates and two glasses.’

      I shivered with anticipation.

      She was sitting on a sofa in the waiting room, reading a copy of the Financial Times, one of the papers Jenna spread out daily on a small coffee table. She was wearing more of those clothes that only blonde, lightly tanned women can get away with. Today it was a gold-beige, probably cashmere, sweater; a gold-beige straight skirt that revealed her long legs, but only discreetly from the knees down; slim beige high-heeled shoes. And a thin gold chain around her neck. They were very expensive clothes and I wondered who had paid for them, Danny or her unhappy husband. Or maybe she had bought them herself, I could hear Lena sternly asserting, from her wages from the shop. Remembering her relaxed approach to opening hours and the absence of any customers during the two hours that I was there, I doubted that the shop could fund that level of sumptuousness.

      Yolande stood up, swayed towards me and I leaned to kiss her on the cheek.

      I had found some dusty, non-matching plates at the back of the cupboard in the small kitchen area at the far end of the clerks’ room and, optimistically, had taken two matching glasses from the chambers box of champagne glasses. Now the plates were spread across my desk, piled with sandwiches made of interesting bread. ‘I like picnics,’ she said. ‘And this is almost a picnic.’ She gestured at the food with her left hand, the diamonds glinting heavily. ‘There’s a BLT, something with houmous and peppers, and a chicken thing. Oh and water.’ She pulled a blue bottle out of her plastic bag, twisted the lid and poured out two glasses of fizzing mineral water.

      ‘Sometimes you don’t need alcohol to get a buzz,’ I would have said, but couldn’t summon enough enthusiasm.

      As I ate seriously through every flavour, she nibbled at a triangle of chicken salad. She made conversation about Somerset House and the Courtauld Gallery, which she had just visited, she talked about fountains and cobble stones and ice rinks. I talked about Somerset House when it was part of the Family Division, and the hours I had spent sitting in narrow corridors, proposing compromises to angry people who thought they were preserving their dignity when their sadness was blinding them to an easier way forward.

      ‘Coffee?’ I asked, screwing up my serviette and putting it on the empty plate in front of me.

      ‘How nice,’ she smiled. ‘I’ll amuse myself looking out of your window.’

      I flew along the corridor to the kitchen.

      As I returned with two unchipped mugs of coffee, I could hear voices in my room. My heart shrank. Simon must have limped bravely back from the hospital and Jenna must have told him Yolande (or someone like that) was here. He would be furious that I was entertaining a defence witness in chambers. I wondered if I could leave the coffee outside the door, just give a tap to let her know it was there – Simon could have mine, I thought generously – and then I could leave the country and start a new life with a new identity.

      ‘Courage,’ I said to myself, and then I said it again, with a French accent. A new life in France was an option. I would think about it later. I could say she had come to see how Simon’s foot was, to wish him luck for the trial. She was just sitting in my room to wait.

      But it wasn’t Simon, it was Marcus. I would much rather it had been Simon. Marcus was another member of chambers and he and I didn’t get on. And it wasn’t just because, unaccountably, he earned a lot of money and had a very nice new car. It was deeper than that. He was a slimeball. You only had to look at his hair.

      And there was the smell of cigarette smoke in the room. Bastard. I hate smoking, I won’t have it in my room. Yolande stood by the window, her arm half hanging out. She was the smoker. Oh. OK. But, I noticed, Marcus was chewing. He was eating our picnic.

      ‘Hello Frankie,’ he said, as if we were the greatest friends in the world. ‘I just came in for a word, but I see you’re … in conference?’ His eyes flicked mockingly over the half-empty plates.

      ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘absolutely.’

      ‘Catch you later then,’ he said with an easy smile. ‘Great sandwiches.’ He picked up half a BLT which I had been looking forward to taking home. He bit deeply into it. Even Marcus wouldn’t eat the sandwiches if he thought he was interrupting a conference. ‘Very nice meeting you … ?’

      I wasn’t going to tell him Yolande’s name and nor was she, so Marcus backed out of the room, grinning and chewing.

      Yolande flicked her СКАЧАТЬ