“We’ll have to impose a financial penalty. It’s going to be a twenty-pound fine.” The teacher—Mrs. Adams, I’m almost sure her name is Mrs. Adams—writes in a notebook and shuts it sharply, her red-painted nails clicking against the hard cover. I bite my lip, hyperconscious that if I hadn’t been trying so hard to keep my name in Patrick’s little black book maybe my name wouldn’t now be included in this one.
“I’m sorry. I had an important meeting out of town, and I was sure my husband was going to make it in time,” I apologize.
“He told us yesterday that you would be collecting her. Matilda was very excited that you were going to be in school to pick her up.” She doesn’t say “for once.” She doesn’t have to. I try to ignore it.
“I must have got confused about arrangements. I’m sorry. Anyway, I’m here now. It’s just one of those things. Come on, Matilda, let’s go home.” I reach over to take her school bag from her.
“I’ll need the twenty pounds now, please.” The teacher moves so that she’s standing between Matilda and me, a solid barrier of dun-colored knitwear planting itself firmly in my daughter’s path. I desperately hope a more personal appeal will work.
“Mrs. Adams, I really am sorry about the delay. I’m afraid I don’t have twenty pounds on me. I used my last cash getting a taxi up here from the station. You said I needed to be here and I made it just in time. We’ll bring it in tomorrow morning. I’d really appreciate that, Mrs.—”
“It’s Ms. Not Mrs.” The interruption is abrupt.
“Ms. Adams, then. Sorry. Tomorrow. Come on, Matilda.” I move sideways and hold my hand out to her. The barrier moves again, surprisingly nimbly for something of that breadth.
“Anderson. My name is Anderson. I am responsible for after-school care and for enforcing punctuality. The fine will be thirty pounds if you pay it tomorrow.” Her chin is up, her color raised. It looks as if this is the most fun she’s had all day.
I look at my watch. This exchange has taken ten minutes—will I be charged for that too? “I will bring in twenty pounds tomorrow, first thing. In cash. In an envelope. With your name on it, Ms. Anderson. And I apologize for any inconvenience that has been caused. But now I am going to take my daughter home.”
I move fast and pull Matilda out from the gap between Ms. Anderson and the wall. She scoots through, head down, just as the teacher shunts sideways to try to stop her. I stand and look at the woman for a moment, and she meets my gaze straight on before I pull Matilda round and wheel her and my trolley bag out of the building. Ms. Anderson is muttering something about tomorrow under her breath but I’ve had enough. I walk as fast as I can out of the school building and through the gates before the woman is able to throw a force field out and bounce me back again into her hostile glare, only stopping when we’ve gotten well round the corner.
I pull Matilda in close and hug her. “Sorry, darling. I thought we’d never get out of there.”
“She was so cross,” Matilda says into my shoulder, part thrilled, part horrified.
“I know, I’m so sorry. Let’s go and get some sweets. We need something for the shock.” Matilda laughs and we go into the next shop we see and I buy her two packs of Millions and a Chupa Chups.
We walk slowly down the hill towards Archway, the skyline of London blurring before me, the Shard sharp through a haze that I don’t want to acknowledge is tears. At least Matilda’s happy, eating her sweets. I wipe my eyes with my sleeve. I’ve had enough of maneuvering the wheelie bag and I fight the urge to throw it into the nearest bin, stuff it in and push it down between burger wrappers and bags of dog shit until I can’t see it anymore, my latter-day ball and chain, the mark of every barrister trailing round the criminal courts of the southeast. I brush my sleeve once more across my face, tears finally subsiding.
“I’ll make sure I don’t do it again,” I say, kneeling down beside her.
Matilda thinks about it for a minute and smiles. “You didn’t do it on purpose though. So that’s okay.”
I smile back and she hugs me. I stand up and we walk the rest of the way without speaking, the squeak of the wheels of my bag and Matilda’s crunching the soundtrack to the journey.
“I can’t even get angry with you anymore. This has to stop. You have to be more organized.” Carl doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t have to.
“I must have got confused. I thought you said…”
“You know I always have a client late on Tuesdays.” He shakes his head, turns back to the tomato sauce on the stove.
“I must have got it wrong.” There isn’t anything else I could say.
“Yes, you must have done. And then you go and fill her up with sweets. She’ll never eat supper now.”
I wait to see if Carl has anything else to say, but he just pours water from the boiling kettle into a saucepan and adds two handfuls of pasta. As he starts to grate Parmesan I back quietly out of the kitchen. The silence lies heavier on me than any reproach. I have to do better.
6
Two weeks later and we’re well into October and a trial at Basildon Crown Court in which I’m defending a midranking footballer on charges of unlawful sexual activity with a child. It’s fair to say that the trial has not been an unmitigated success, his demeanor in the dock poor, and even as his representative, I can’t feel sorry that he’s been convicted. After he’s sentenced to five years I go down to see him in the cells.
As I wait at the custody suite door, I check my phone. Spam, spam, various court developments, Patrick. Patrick. I open the email fast, heart pounding. I’ve only seen him once in the last week, late on the Thursday afternoon in his flat. He’d texted to see if I was free and asked me round. The light was falling as I arrived and I watched it turn dark outside the slatted blinds of his bedroom, lying quietly beside him as Bob Dylan told me not to think twice. And it was all right, close, together.
Next conference booked with Madeleine Smith on Wednesday, meeting 2 discuss after.
Sort out ur childcare.
I grimace at my phone. It’s as if that afternoon never happened, as we go back into our usual sniping. He breathed into my hair, our heartbeats slowing together until they were in time. We kissed as we both came. An afternoon in a million, he’d called it. Perfection. I didn’t even want to exhale in case I blew it all away. But as I dressed to go he turned away, looking at his phone, and barely lifted his head to say goodbye though I tried to kiss him.
“Miss. Miss! Who are you looking for?” A muffled shout from the entry phone to the custody suite brings me back to now.
“Peter Royle.”
“Right.”
The meeting is as unpleasant as I knew it would be, Royle furious about his five-year sentence, cigarette sticking out of his mouth. Some sporting types keep fit in jail but I’ll guess not Royle, he’s too much of a spoiled brat for that. Adulated on the pitch as the star striker for Basildon United and admired off pitch on the odd occasions he deigned to turn up to work as a car mechanic, he’s singularly ill-equipped to deal with the reality that just because a fifteen-year-old girl is up for it doesn’t mean it’s legal to do anything with her, let alone get off with her repeatedly and push his luck towards a shag, until after one particularly persistent attempt at getting her to give him a blowjob she told her mum, who reported him to the police. I tell him that, on the face of it, there are limited if any grounds for appeal against either his conviction or his sentence but that I will go through it all thoroughly and advise soon. He makes no move to take my hand when I try to shake his, and all in all I’m glad to get on the train back to London.