Just Between Us. Cathy Kelly

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       CHAPTER SIX

      Stella’s fellow solicitor and colleague, Vicki, was insistent that she suffered from SAD. ‘Seasonal Affected Disorder,’ she repeated for Stella’s benefit. ‘It means I suffer from depression caused by not enough light. And look,’ Vicki gestured out of the office kitchen window where a square of foggy January sky could be seen through the grubby glass, ‘look at that weather.’

      ‘It’s called winter,’ Stella said, taking the milk from the fridge. Full fat, she realised, putting it back and reaching for the skimmed. Why had she eaten all those chocolates over Christmas? Her camel trousers, normally slightly loose, were biting into her belly reproachfully.

      ‘I hate January,’ Vicki moaned, pouring hot water onto her low-calorie chocolate drink. A statuesque redhead who was five foot nine in her fishnets, Vicki was always on a diet until about noon, when the thought of nothing but crispbread and low fat yoghurts made her abandon hopes to slither into a size fourteen.

      ‘Join the club,’ Stella said with a sigh.

      Vicki looked at her friend in surprise. Stella was normally so cheerful. Nothing got her down: not torrential rain when they were rushing back from lunch with no umbrella, not clients from hell who demanded double attention and were late paying their fees, not even Mr McKenna, one of the senior partners and a creep who could put even Vicki off her food for a week with one lascivious leer down her blouse at her 38DDs.

      ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked.

      Stella shook her head. ‘It’s just January blues,’ she murmured, moving aside to let someone else into the kitchen. A mere cubicle tucked away beside the post room on the ground floor, it was barely big enough for two, never mind three people. Of course, the partners never ventured into it: they had tea and coffee delivered by their assistants whenever they felt like it. Stella, who was the most senior of the conveyancing solicitors, Vicki and another lawyer named Jerry Olson all shared an assistant and, theoretically, could have ordered tea and coffee with abandon. But Lori was run off her feet as it was answering their phones, without making them coffee as well. Or at least, that was Lori’s excuse.

      They took the lift up to the fourth floor which was where the property department was situated. Property or conveyancing wasn’t seen as the sexy part of law: the hot favourite at the moment was the family law department and Lawson, Wilde & McKenna handled many of the highest-profile divorces around. The family law offices were huge. ‘Lots of space for exes to scream and hurl things at each other without actually injuring an innocent bystander,’ explained Henry Lawson whenever anybody remarked on the vast conference rooms on the second floor.

      Conveyancing, which ‘earns LW & M a fortune’ as Vicki said furiously, was relegated to the less prestigious fourth floor, in the grand-looking but unmodernised part of the building where draughty windows, elderly heating and prewar plumbing reigned.

      The fourth-floor conference room was the nicest part of their floor and was decorated in some style with a vast pink-veined marble fireplace, a mahogany table almost big enough to play tennis on, and exotic Indonesian silk wallpaper that had survived decades of cigar smoke. The staff called it the Gin Palace because the maroon-coloured walls made it look like the sort of room where colonial types would have sipped gin slings and moaned about the natives.

      ‘Two calls holding for you, Vicki,’ announced Lori cheerfully as they emerged from the lift into the 1930s splendour of the fourth floor. ‘I told them you were yakking in the kitchen and would be along later when the mood took you.’

      ‘Ha ha,’ said Vicki, who was used to Lori’s sense of humour. She picked up her messages with one hand and, holding her coffee in the other, shoved open her office door with one stiletto-ed foot.

      ‘Bad news, Stella,’ Lori added, ‘Jerry’s wife has just phoned. He’s been on the bog all night. Dodgy prawn vindaloo. He’s got two meetings today and they can’t be cancelled. Sorree.’

      As the second most senior person in the department, which included five lawyers, three legal executives, a law clerk and a panel of apprentices, Stella merited the biggest office. (The Partner in charge had a large office on the third floor and a golf handicap in single figures.) In return for her big office, Stella also got the flak when anything went wrong and had to juggle appointments when somebody was ill. Jerry had an apprentice named Melvyn working with him for the year, and while Melvyn might be able to keep an eye on things in Jerry’s absence, he wasn’t qualified to deal with serious issues on his own.

      ‘What time’s the first meeting?’

      ‘Half ten. The second one’s in the afternoon. I’ll get the files for you.’

      ‘Thanks,’ said Stella sighing. That was all she needed. It was only half eight and already she was behind. And she was feeling miserable, although she’d lied to Vicki about it being January blues. It was the Missing-Amelia-Blues. Glenn was home from the Middle East and Amelia was staying with him in his mother’s house in Cork until Sunday night, five whole days away. It wasn’t that Stella begrudged Glenn a week with his daughter, or even that she worried about Amelia when she was there: Glenn’s mother, Evelyn, was a marvellous granny and would take the best care of Amelia. It was just that Stella missed her daughter so much.

      Her interoffice line buzzed. ‘Oh Stella.’ СКАЧАТЬ