The sky outside the office window was clear. The pale autumn sun attempted to make its presence felt and Lilly longed to take her lunch time walk. She’d instituted a daily turn around Harpenden Park after a four week kidnapping case that had frazzled her mind. She found the fresh air calmed her mind and it stopped her from wolfing more than a sandwich for her lunch.
She turned her gaze back from the window to her client and sighed. Mr Maxwell was so absorbed in his story he’d failed to notice his solicitor’s lack of interest.
‘I simply cannot justify another penny,’ he said. ‘And I cannot see why she should be able to sit at home all day why I am working my socks off.’
Lilly wondered why a man with such a profound lisp would choose so many words beginning with ‘s’ and pretended not to notice the spittle that was accumulating on his tie.
‘She has three children to care for,’ said Lilly, ‘and they are your children.’
‘We have an au pair for them.’
He fixed Lilly with eyes that bulged like marbles in an otherwise flat face. ‘You have a child, Miss Valentine, and you seem to manage to work without too much trouble.’
Lilly thought of her ridiculously complicated childcare routine involving her ex husband, friends and anyone prepared to offer a lift to school.
‘What do you think she could do to earn some money?’ Lilly asked.
Mr Maxwell gave a dismissive shrug. ‘She used to be a model.’
Lilly tried to hide her shock. What beautiful woman would go for this unappealing specimen of manhood?
Mr Maxwell gave a tree frog blink. The sort who would be happy to sit on her fat arse all day and count his money was the obvious answer.
‘As galling as it seems, Mr Maxwell, the court has ordered you to pay maintenance to your wife,’ said Lilly.
‘Ex wife.’
Lilly nodded. ‘So you will have to pay.’
Mr Maxwell shuffled his whinging backside out of Lilly’s office, his eyes pulsating like a dark star.
As he left the building she watched him limp up the road. Lisp, blinking eyes, a limp – maybe she was being too harsh on the poor man. Then a bleached blonde bounced towards him, her breasts fighting to escape. She covered his bald head in tiny kisses and squealed.
Mrs Maxwell mark two was waiting in the wings. Some men never learn.
Lilly checked her watch and groaned, realising that her next client was due any minute. She tried to leave a gap between them but these private divorce cases always overran. These people paid by the hour so it was their funeral if they blabbed over their allotted appointment. When it came to splitting up the marital assets this lot would argue over the contents of the hoover bag.
Lilly missed her care cases. Stroppy teens who might spare you ten seconds between shop lifting in Tescos and meeting their mates in the arcade. Sometimes they didn’t turn up at all but left convoluted messages about ASBOs, social workers and pregnancy tests.
God, she missed it.
She pulled a Kit Kat from her bag. Chocolate and no exercise, a double whammy. The only thing keeping her sane was the weekly trip to Hounds Place. At least there she could do some good. Some real good.
‘Might pop over there after this client,’ she mused.
‘Don’t even think about it.’
Lilly turned to the door where the ever-scowling secretary-cum-receptionist Sheila had appeared.
‘You don’t even know what I was talking about,’ said Lilly.
Sheila crossed her arms. ‘You want to go running off to the Dogs Home.’
‘It’s called Hounds Place,’ said Lilly. ‘As you bloody well know.’
Sheila scooped up some papers fanning the floor and slid them back into their file.
‘Do you keep your house as tidy as this?’
‘Have you just come to annoy me or did you get bored with filing your nails and fancy a chat?’
Sheila tried to put the file back in its drawer but the runners were jammed. She pushed and pulled, the metallic groan of the drawer matching her own.
Lilly sighed. ‘Do you actually want something, Sheila?’
‘The powers-that-be want to take you for a drink after work,’ she said, without turning around.
Lilly put her head in her hands. ‘Bloody marvellous.’
‘Stop whining,’ said Sheila and thrust her arm into the cabinet. It disappeared like a vet’s arm in a cow. ‘They probably want to thank you for hard work and good attitude.’
‘In my new role as advisor to the rich, ugly and divorcing, I make them shitloads of money. Good attitude is not part of the package,’ said Lilly.
Sheila was now virtually inside the cabinet, her shoulder and chest lost in its recesses, her face pushed against the handle. ‘I don’t know why you’re so miserable. It beats the bunch of no-hopers that used to come here thieving the staplers.’
‘Vulnerable kids,’ Lilly sniffed.
‘Junkies, most of them.’ said Sheila, her cheek contorted by the pressure of the metal. ‘And as for those scroungers at the Dogs Home, I don’t know why you bother.’
‘Because it stimulates my intellect,’ said Lilly. ‘Something you wouldn’t understand.’
At last Sheila withdrew her arm, bringing with it a battered book.
‘This was stuck at the back,’ she said and threw it onto Lilly’s desk. The Art of Positive Thinking.
‘Something to stimulate your intellect.’
Lilly put her head on the desk. ‘Do I really have to go for a drink?’
Sheila’s laugh was nothing short of cruel. ‘Rupinder says it’s a three line whip.’
It’s been a horrid day. A nightmare. Mr Peters had balled Luke out for not paying attention in Latin. He’d said he was wasting his talents, and that it was nothing short of criminal. Luke had wanted to tell him how close to the mark he was.
During computer studies he’d surfed the net to see how long people got for rape, how old he’d be when he got out of prison. He couldn’t breathe when he saw that life was an option. He’d seen a politician on the telly saying the Government were cracking down, that ‘life should mean life.’
He’d bitten his lip until it bled, terrified he would burst into tears in front of the entire class.
Worse still, Tom had been acting like nothing was wrong. He’d even boasted in the common room about meeting a ‘right little goer.’
The other boys had laughed at him, said he was talking bollocks.
Tom leaned over the snooker table and potted the black. ‘Ask Lukey boy. He’ll tell you what she was like,’ he said. ‘Gagging for it wasn’t she?’
Luke smiled weakly, but he could still hear the girl screaming and see her wrists being held so tightly they seemed to turn black-blue. A bit like the sky before a storm.
Now the bell is ringing and Luke can finally escape. Thank God he’s not boarding tonight. He wants to go home, to throw himself onto his Arsenal duvet and let it all out.
Maybe he should tell his mum. Maybe she could help. Even if she can’t, it might stop the whole thing running through his head like some bad film on a loop.
He sees her car parked by the cricket pitch and bolts towards it. Inside smells of clean washing and lavender water.
His mum smiles. ‘Had a nice day, love?’
He can’t answer and squeezes his eyes shut.
‘Is everything alright, love?’ asks his mum.
He stirs his pasta with a limp wrist.
‘Luke?’ her voice is so very gentle.
He feels wrung out like a damp cloth, all the moisture down the sink.
She lifts his chin and looks into his eyes. ‘You would tell me if something was wrong?’
He sees in her lined face, a lifetime of wiped noses and birthday teas. This isn’t a broken window or a bad school report. How can he tell her what he has been part of, what he has done? She can’t make it better. No one can.
He forces some words out. ‘I’m just tired.’
‘You look peaky,’ she says and presses a cool palm against his forehead. ‘You’re not hot but you’re obviously sickening for something.’
He pushes his bowl away. ‘Yeah. I feel sick.’
Relief plays at the corners of his mother’s mouth. This is her territory.
‘Better lie down, love,’ she says. ‘Will you be alright while I collect your sister?’
The thought of Jessie, a year younger than Luke, fills his mind. What if some boys took her to a park … held her down …
He runs from the room, his hands over his mouth, acid bile running through his fingers.
His bedroom is spinning and Luke concentrates on a small brown water stain on the ceiling.
‘I’ll be twenty minutes,’ his mum calls from the bottom of the stairs. ‘How about I call into Waitrose for Lucozade?’
Luke doesn’t answer.
When he hears the front door close he lets the tears spill. He curls into a ball and weeps, snot pooling under his nose, sliding onto his lips, until it becomes clear what he has to do. He wipes his eyes on the back of his hands and packs a bag.