One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [157]
Cassie had crept out.
‘And then through here,’ Torquil was saying, ‘we have double doors into the study, as Mr Forbes requested…’
He led me through into a wood-panelled room, one wall entirely lined with books, overlooking the back garden. I gazed out. Another refined, walled enclosure, old-fashioned white roses still flowering against ivy and a gnarled miniature apple tree.
‘Yes, he’ll love this,’ I agreed.
Perfect for Hal to hole up in, I thought, working late into the night, as I knew he did, being brilliant and scholarly, and making his company, probably the biggest and most highly regarded commercial set of solicitors in the City, a great deal of money. Earning every penny of his seven-figure, equity partner salary. Which was a long way from human rights, I’d teased him the other night, reminding him how he’d once wanted to save the world.
He’d laughed. ‘Full of high ideals and principles back then. But you’ve got to live in the real world, Hattie. And anyway, I still do pro bono work.’ He’d tossed me a brief tied up in pink ribbon: an immigrant family, over here from Zimbabwe, minus the mother of the three small children. He was trying to get asylum for her, remove her from the hostile regime. I closed it quietly, retied the ribbon and shut up. Right. No flies on him. Got every angle covered, hadn’t he?
I’d placed it humbly on the floor beside me. I was lying on the sofa in his house at the time, behind him as he worked at his desk, just as, it struck me, I used to lie on his bed in halls of residence, throwing a tennis ball at the ceiling. I smiled. Glanced at the sofa table beside me. A huge bowl of smooth sandstone balls – objets d’art no doubt, Helmut’s style but not mine – presided. I picked one up consideringly. Hal got up from the desk, came round and kneeled beside me.
‘Not thinking of tossing it at the ceiling, are you?’
I stared. ‘How did you know?’
‘There’s nothing I don’t know about you, Hattie Carrington.’ He stopped my protesting mouth with a kiss and removed the ball from my hand. ‘Absolutely nothing.’
The kiss developed, and the sofa was abandoned in favour of the bed. I’d suggested we stay put, or utilize the rather enticing Aubusson rug in front of the fire, but Hal wasn’t having any of it. He was very much a bedroom man. Didn’t linger there much, either. Liked to get up and go. Back to work, mostly. I was pretty sure I could lead him astray later, though, when his case had finished. Instigate a few entire days horizontal. I smiled, then realized I was smiling rather wantonly at Torquil.
‘Oh, I’m sorry?’ I came to.
‘I said would you like to see the bedroom?’
‘Oh – yes, I would! Very much.’ And I trooped out after him, only slightly pink.
Walking back through Portobello Market half an hour later, which I found in full swing, I thought how extraordinary it was that not so long ago, and for many years, my life had had more than a hint of make-do-and-mend about it. I did what I could. Now, strolling down this bustling street, fresh from viewing 26 Maidwell Avenue, I had to quell the idea that I’d somehow got too lucky. Up until now I’d never quite got the man, never quite got the family life that, say, Laura had – never quite got the breaks. Life had been, not a disappointment, but a compromise. I was used to working my socks off on a date, battling with the bank manager, with Seffy’s schools, or at auctions when I knew I’d be outbid on a piece I badly wanted – never quite making it in so many ways. Now, it seemed, I’d simply been plucked and carefully placed on the other side of the winning post without even breaking sweat: I’d arrived. So this was what it felt like: odd that the euphoria wasn’t more overwhelming, but then one could hardly go about with a permanent rictus grin on one’s face; that wouldn’t be realistic.
I smiled down at my patent boots as I threaded through the crowds. The cries of the traders echoed around me, and my practised eye caught the stalls of bric-a-brac I’d once sold: pseudo antiques. We’d talked, Hal