The Baby Verdict. CATHY WILLIAMS

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СКАЧАТЬ his activities had extended well beyond merely talking and that his charm, never applied to his wife, had been only skin-deep.

      ‘Now,’ he said, once Millie had disappeared out of the door, ‘you’re doubtless wondering why I’m here.’

      ‘It’s crossed my mind.’ After all, she thought acidly, it’s hardly been your policy in the past to fraternise. At least not with the members of this particular offshoot company, however hugely profitable it was.

      ‘Has Robert said anything to you about his health?’ Bruno asked, leaning forward with his elbows on the desk.

      ‘About his health?’ Jessica looked at him, confused. ‘No. Why? Is there something wrong?’ She knew that over the past three months he had been leaving work earlier than usual, but he had told her that a man of his age needed to wind down eventually, and she had believed him.

      ‘Have you noticed nothing about his hours recently?’ There was cool sarcasm in his voice and she stiffened.

      ‘He hasn’t been working very much overtime...’

      ‘And he’s been delegating quite a substantial amount of his workload onto you. Am I right?’

      ‘A bit,’ she admitted, wondering why she had never questioned that.

      ‘And yet you didn’t put two and two together? Hardly a very positive trait in a lawyer. Shouldn’t lawyers be adept at ferrying out information and making assumptions?’

      ‘I apologise if I didn’t see anything sinister in his behaviour,’ she said with equal coldness in her voice. ‘Believe it or not, cross-examining my boss wasn’t part of my job specification.’ She could feel her anger going up a notch and was alarmed more by the fact that he had managed to arouse such a reaction in her than by what he had said.

      Outbursts of emotions were not something that she was accustomed to dealing with. From a young age, as she had stood on the sidelines and watched the antics of her father and the misery of her long-suffering mother, she had learned to control her emotions, to keep them under lock and key.

      ‘Are you telling me that he’s ill?’ she asked tightly, worry in her voice.

      ‘Stomach ulcer. He’s on medication for it and has been for a while, but he’s now been told that he needs to have a sabbatical. At least six months away from the stress of a work environment.’

      ‘How dreadful. I wish he’d said something to me. I would have relieved him of far more of his workload.’ She thought of her boss—tall, grey-haired, kindly, always encouraging her and never backward in his praise when she’d done a good job at something—and felt a stab of guilt.

      Bruno was right. Why hadn’t she put two and two together and worked out that he was not well?

      ‘It’s unfortunate,’ Bruno said, watching her face and reading her reaction, ‘but it’s not terminal.’

      ‘I’m afraid I don’t know a great deal about stomach ulcers...’

      ‘I gathered that from the expression on your face.’ He raked his fingers through his hair, and she watched, half mesmerised by this simple gesture.

      ‘I’ve told him,’ Bruno said, ‘that the sooner he leaves the better. There’s no point jeopardising his health for the sake of a job. Which,’ he continued slowly, ‘brings me to you, and the reason I’m here.’

      ‘Right. Of course.’ She was still dazedly thinking of all the signs she had missed over the past few months.

      ‘You’re Robert’s second in command. I gather that you’re good at your job.’

      What did he expect her to say to that? ‘I do my best.’

      ‘I’ve read your CV. For someone who’s so young, you appear to have excelled in your previous job, and in your law exams.’

      Appear to have excelled? What was he trying to tell her? That he doubted what was in front of him?

      ‘Why didn’t you go down the line of barrister?’ he asked, not looking at her, still flicking through the sheets of paper in front of him.

      ‘I thought about it,’ Jessica said, still smarting from his tone of voice. ‘In the end, I decided that working within a company would give me more of a sense of stability and fulfilment Of course, I still have friends in the field of criminal law and I try and go to as many court cases as I can.’

      ‘As a hobby?’ He glanced up at her, his eyes unreadable, and she wondered whether there was an element of sarcasm there.

      ‘It’s as useful a hobby as any I can think of,’ she said a little sharply.

      ‘Useful...if a little solitary.’

      ‘Which is no bad thing, as far as I am concerned.’

      He looked at her fully then, not saying anything for such a long time that she began to feel uncomfortable. Then he pushed himself away from the desk and stood up, his hands in his pockets, and began pacing the room, finally ending up by the window, where he remained standing, resting back against the ledge.

      He was even taller than she had originally thought, and his body had a toned leanness to it that reminded her of something dangerous and unpredictable. Some kind of predatory jungle animal. Or perhaps, she thought, aware that she shouldn’t stare and therefore carefully averting her eyes to a point slightly to the side of him, that was simply the overall impression he emanated.

      ‘You’ll have to cover for Robert during his absence,’ he said, looking at her, his blue eyes calculating. ‘Naturally, you’ll be financially compensated.’

      ‘That won’t be a problem.’ She could hardly carry on talking to the upper-left angle of the window, so she looked him fully in the face, and felt that disturbing awareness again.

      Whatever was wrong with her? She didn’t even care for the man! He was about as jovial as a barracuda. Not the sort of man she went for at all. Her boyfriends, short-lived though they tended to be, were all fashioned in the same mould: easygoing, considerate, occasionally a little dull. But men she could handle.

      She had seen firsthand how debilitating it could be to live a life over which you exercised no control. She had watched her mother wither over the years as she had endured her husband’s brutal infidelities, tied to the house because she had been told repeatedly that she was incapable of doing anything on her own.

      Jessica had fashioned her escape from that stifling atmosphere with the precision of a military campaign. While her teenaged friends had spent their days swooning over boys and experimenting with make-up, she had buried her head in her books, working with the single-minded passion of someone who needed to furiously dig a tunnel before they could see the outside world.

      She had no intention of ever handing over control of her life to someone else. She had studied hard, worked hard and every step of her career had been built on determination and lessons learnt in the past.

      ‘I already work very closely with Robert, anyway,’ she said, snapping back to the present and focusing on the man standing in front of her. ‘I know most of his client base. The rest I can familiarise myself with easily enough.’ A temporary promotion. She СКАЧАТЬ