Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered. Kerry Barrett

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СКАЧАТЬ next day at work was mental. My boss, Maggie, almost tipped me over the edge because she was frantically preparing for a meeting with another Hollywood couple about the baby they were trying to adopt, and she couldn’t decide what to wear. I was trying very hard to tie up any loose ends and pass on the cases that I could pass on before I went to Scotland. And I was wrestling with a client who’d decided to start Tweeting vindictive messages to her cheating husband despite my desperate voicemails begging her to stop.

      I am a family lawyer. That sounds quite fluffy but believe me it isn’t. In my experience, family law is about as nasty as it gets. Especially the bit I’m involved with. Think cheating Premiership footballers, wronged pop stars and celebrities buying African babies and you’re pretty close. Still, it’s a living. And it keeps me very, very busy, which is the idea.

      Eventually, things calmed down enough for me to sit back in my chair and look at my phone. I knew I had to phone Mum and tell her I was coming up. Harry had emailed to say she’d passed on my flight details, but if I was expecting to stay it was only polite to call. It’s not like Mum and I never talk. We do, of course. But we’re not mates, not close like Harry and Suky are. I would never tell her about Dom, for example, or really fill her in on anything happening in my life – because the last time I did, when I was sixteen, it all backfired on me in the worst way and Mum and I had a major falling out. Major.

      To be honest, it had been brewing for years. I was a shy, clumsy teenager whose desperation to fit in clashed – badly – with my family’s bohemian side. But until the big drama, we’d all rubbed along pretty well. Harry was ten years older than me and thick as thieves with Suky, who’d had her when she was barely out of her teens herself. Back then I adored Harry – whose real name is Harmony. She was beautiful, funny, clever – still is, I suppose – and amazingly talented in the witchcraft department. She’d long since left home and was living in Edinburgh, but we still saw a lot of her.

      My mum – who is Suky’s twin sister – and I were less close but we still got on – pretty much. My mum – who is Suky’s twin sister – and I got on pretty well back then. We weren’t as close as Harry and Suky, who were more like friends than mother and daughter, but we did ok. And unlike many teenagers, I also got on with my dad, who’d split up with Mum before I was born and now had a glamorous wife and two little boys.

      As for the cause of the rift, I won’t bore you with all the sorry details but imagine a spiky teenager who had fallen in love for the first time and a mum who – in some misguided attempt to make us as close as Suky and Harry – decided to meddle.

      After the sparks had stopped flying (and I mean literally of course) I fled. I took off to Edinburgh, to my big cousin who would make everything OK. Except she didn’t. She sat me in the kitchen of her tiny top-floor flat in Leith and listened as I poured my heart out. And then do you know what she did? She laughed. She laughed and she told me not to take myself so seriously. In short, she took my already fragile heart and shattered it into a thousand pieces.

      That was that really. Luckily Dad came to my rescue with an offer of paying for me to do A Levels at a school near where he lived in Cheltenham. I packed my bags, moved to England and never looked back. Until now.

      Nerves jangling, I looked at the phone on my desk. Then I grabbed it and dialled Mum’s number before I had a chance to change my mind.

      ‘It’s me,’ I said when she answered. There was a brief silence and then I heard her breathe out, almost in relief.

      ‘Esme, darling,’ she said. I immediately felt guilty at how pleased she was to hear from me.

      ‘Harry said you’re coming.’

      ‘I’m coming,’ I told her. I bit my lip. ‘Is that going to be OK?’

      ‘Of course it is,’ she said. I could almost feel her smiling down the line. ‘It’ll be good to see you.’

      Maggie appeared in the door of my office holding up two blouses. I pointed to the one on her left, knowing she’d wear the other one.

      I knew Mum wanted me to say it would be good to see her too, but I just couldn’t lie. Instead, I asked her about Suky and told her when to expect me. And I was relieved when my phone beeped to tell me I had another call, and I could say goodbye.

      As I tried to talk my vindictive client out of emailing indiscreet pictures of her philandering husband to all the contacts in his address book, my assistant Chrissie stuck her head and an arm round my door and put a large latte on my bookshelf. She gave me a quick, sympathetic smile and I wondered how much of my phone call to Mum she’d heard (or listened to, more like).

      I stared at my coffee, lacking the energy to walk over and pick it up. Then I checked Chrissie wasn’t lurking outside, and gently waggled my fingers in the direction of my cup. In a shower of pink sparks the latte flew across my office. It landed neatly on a pile of papers and a drip plopped on to a super injunction I’d been preparing for a TV presenter. I wiped it off with a tissue, thinking that coffee spills were the least of my worries. The two halves of my life – two halves that I kept far, far apart – were coming together and I felt very uneasy.

       Chapter 4

      ‘We do have one car left,’ the woman at the car hire desk told me much, much later. She tapped some keys on her computer and the printer began spewing out the reams of paper that I apparently needed to sign to hire a Nissan Micra.

      I looked past her shoulder at the rain lashing the windows and sighed. Inverness never changed. Mindlessly I scribbled my signature on the many bits of paper the woman pushed towards me and tried to ignore the Tannoy that was announcing a flight to London. I’d be home soon, I told myself.

      ‘It’s a silver car,’ the woman said, handing me the key. ‘The registration number is on the fob and it’s in space 60, row Z.’ She gave a rueful chuckle. ‘Oh dear, it’s rather far away…’

      Together we turned and looked at the rain streaming down the glass behind her. I was not traipsing past rows A to Y in this weather – for a Micra. I draped my jacket over my arm so it hid my hand, and wiggled my fingers. Her computer gave a loud beep.

      ‘Oh I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve made a mistake. The only car we have left is a Mini – oh and it’s in row A. That’s lucky.’

      ‘Isn’t it?’ I agreed. I took the new key she gave me and turned to leave with a self-satisfied smile. I tried not to listen as her computer beeped three times in a row and she banged the keyboard, cursing. My magic did sometimes backfire.

      Despite my efforts, I was still wet by the time I reached the car. Muttering to myself under my breath and wiping a drip from the end of my nose, I hurled my sodden bags into the back seat and arranged my damp self in the driving seat. Craving a friendly voice, I scrabbled in my handbag for my mobile and turned it on, expecting a message from Dom after being on the plane. But my only message was from Maggie.

      ‘Esme,’ she shrieked. ‘The meeting was just wonderful! It all went so well…’

      I cut her message off, not interested in her gushing, then I flung my phone on to the passenger seat where it bounced once and disappeared down the side of the chair.

      ‘Oh well, I’ll find it later,’ I thought. It wasn’t as though Dom would be trying to get hold of me at this late hour. I expected he was spending the evening with Rebecca.

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