A Special Relationship (34 page)

‘I didn’t adopt a tone.’

‘Yes you did. And it’s not like I know you or anything…’

‘Well, if I’ve offended you, I’m very sorry. And …’

‘Don’t feel like talking to you anymore.’

And the line went dead.

I hit my hand against my forehead, congratulating myself on another tactical diplomatic victory. My inborn American inability to couch things in coded language caused me to strike out every time. Hadn’t I learned anything in my months here?

I vowed to be on my absolute best behaviour when I met Virginia Ricks the next day. I took the tube to Chancery Lane well in advance of our appointed time, and loitered for an hour in a Starbucks until three-thirty arrived.

The offices of Lawrence and Lambert were in a narrow terraced town house, sleekly renovated inside. There was a security man on the door – who made me sign in and checked that I did have an appointment upstairs. Then I headed up in the lift to the third floor and stepped out into a pleasant, modern reception area, with chrome furniture and copies of all the daily papers on the coffee table. While the receptionist phoned Virginia Ricks, I sat down and absently glanced through them, deliberately shunning the
Chronicle.

Around five minutes later, a young woman in her early twenties came out. Blonde. Big hair. Slutty suit.

‘You Sally?’ she asked. ‘I’m Trudy. We spoke yesterday. Doing all right?’

‘Uh fine, yes.’

‘Great. But listen, Ginny’s still tied up in court. Now we could reschedule the whole thing for Monday …’

‘I really need to see her today.’

‘Understood. And the good news is, she should be back at around four-thirty. So …’

I killed an hour in a branch of Books Etc on Fleet Street, then picked up another coffee and sat on a bench in Lincoln’s Inn, shivering with the chill, chasing another two anti-depressants with my latte, thinking that there is always something strangely comforting about a square like this one in the midst of a city – how it gives you a sense of enclosure and shelter.

Virginia Ricks was in her late twenties. As I expected, she was blonde, slightly horsey in the face, but immaculately polished: the sort of woman who spent a good hour putting herself together in the morning before showing her face to the world. But what immediately struck me about her was a certain ‘noblesse oblige’ manner – a slightly flippant superiority, no doubt taught to her at a young age by the kind of upscale parents who masked their own doubts behind an overweening public face.

‘Ginny Ricks,’ she said, hurrying into the conference room into which I had been ushered, proffering her hand. It was now almost five o’clock. As she settled herself into the chair opposite mine, she kept up a steady, non-stop line of chat:

‘So sorry to be so late. Ghastly day in court. It’s Sally, right? Trudy fix you up with some tea, I hope? Hope she didn’t take you aback, our Trude. A bit Estuary for some of my clients’ taste – but she’s brilliant with all the footballers’ wives we always seem to be representing. Puts them right at their ease, for some curious reason. So now, you have my complete, uninterrupted attention ... though we will have to curtail things in about a half-hour. Ghastly Friday night traffic again. Know the Sussex Downs, do you? Perfect romantic weekend spot, if you’re …’

But she stopped herself.

‘Oh, dear,’ she said, half-laughing to herself. ‘Can you believe such rubbish? So sorry. Well now, let’s make a start. You were recommended to us by ... ?’

‘Alexander Campbell.’

‘Sorry, never heard of him.’

‘He ran Sullivan and Cromwell’s London office for three years.’

‘But he never had business with our firm?’

‘No – he just told me, through his wife, that you were the best divorce lawyers in London.’

‘Quite right too,’ she said. ‘And I presume that, because you’re here, you want to get divorced.’

‘Not precisely,’ I said. And then I quickly took her through the entire story, right up to the bombshell court order. Ginny Ricks asked to see the order. I handed it over. She speed-read it.

‘Evidently your husband got his barrister to convince a sympathetic judge that you were an unfit mother, and to grant this temporary order. Which, in turn, raises the unpleasant, but most necessary question: were you, in your opinion, an unfit mother?’

I shifted uneasily in my chair because I was aware that Ginny Ricks was now studying me with care.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘Well, let me ask you this: did you ever physically abuse your child? Shake it when it was crying, toss it across the room, that sort of thing?’

‘No. I did get angry once or twice …’

‘Nothing unusual there. Parents often get angry at children and say angry things. But words
is
cheap, as you Americans love to say.’

Actually, we don’t love to say that.

‘As long as you didn’t physically harm your child, we’re on strong ground here. And during your stay at St Martin’s … you were never sectioned, were you?’

‘No – it was a voluntary stay.’

‘No problem then. Postnatal depression is such a commonplace thing these days. Though we will naturally investigate what evidence they used against you, the way I see it, your husband really doesn’t have much of a case.’

‘Then how did he get this court order?’

‘You were out of the country, and his legal team obviously put together a case against you, in which it was argued that the safety of your child was at risk … oh, by the way, is it a boy or a girl?’

‘His name’s Jack.’

‘Well, they probably chose a judge who was known for his misogynist credentials – and as you were not represented at the hearing, he heard just what they wanted him to hear …’

‘But could he rule against me like that without listening to my side of the story?’

‘With the alleged safety of the child in question … absolutely.’

‘But does this mean that, for the moment, I’m barred from seeing Jack?’

‘I’m afraid so. The good news, however, is that this
ex parte
order can come to an end at the next hearing, which is fixed for ten days’ time – which means that we have just five working days, not counting both weekends, to build our case.’

‘Is that enough time?’

‘It has to be.’

‘And do you also think you might be able to find out who this Dexter woman is?’

‘Ah yes, the
femme fatale?
Another of her giggles. ‘Sorry – bad joke. But yes, that shouldn’t take much effort. Now – just a little spot of housekeeping. My fees are £200 an hour, I’ll need to put an assistant on to this immediately to help me with the research, and she’ll cost around £50 an hour. Then we will also have to instruct a barrister, though that’ll only be for the hearing itself. So, say a £2500 retainer to get us started …’

I was prepared for such an initial sum, but I still blanched.

‘Is that a problem?’ she asked.

‘No, I have it. However …’

I then explained about him stopping the bank accounts, and what the guy at Nat West told me.

‘But if you never insisted on a proper joint account …’ she said, with a little supercilious shrug.

‘I
thought
it was a joint account.’

‘You’re obviously a very trusting person.’

‘What about him trying to sell the house?’

‘You are joint owners, right?’

‘So I thought.’

‘We’ll search the Land Registry and check who owns the house. Anyway, if you put money into the house you’ll get it back on divorce. And if you get to keep Jack, you’ll probably get to keep the house ... or, at least, while he’s still at school.’

‘And when it comes to getting some sort of support from my husband … ?’

‘That’s Monday’s job,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘So, Monday morning – we’ll need the retainer and a list of assorted health care professionals and people who know you who can vouch for your good character and, most tellingly, your relationship with your son. That’s critical …’

She pulled over a diary, opened it, and glanced down a page.

‘Now Monday’s rather ghastly ... but shall we say four forty-five?’

‘Isn’t that late in the day, if we only have this week to build the case?’

‘Sally ... I am trying to fit you in at a time when I really shouldn’t be taking on any more clients. Now if you feel you can do better elsewhere …’

‘No, no, Monday afternoon is fine.’

She stood up and proffered her hand. I took it.

‘Excellent. Until Monday then.’

Later that night, while talking with Sandy, I said, ‘She strikes me as a bit young, but ultra-arrogant … which might be a good thing under the circumstances. She certainly seems to know what she’s doing.’

‘Good, because you need a bitch in your corner. And she sounds like she fits the bill.’

The weekend was endless. On Monday morning, I went to the bank. The American money had arrived. I bought a sterling bank draft for £2500. This left me with just under $6000 – or around £4000 … which I could certainly live on for a bit, as long as my legal bills didn’t spiral beyond the initial retainer fee.

I brought this concern up with Ginny Ricks later that afternoon. Once again, I was kept waiting more than a half-hour, as she was ‘tied up’ with another client.

‘So sorry about that,’ she said, breezing in.

I showed her the list of contacts I’d drawn up. There were only four names: Dr Rodale, Ellen the therapist, my GP, and Jane Sanjay, the health visitor. I mentioned that Ellen was out of town. ‘Don’t worry – we’ll track her down,’ Ginny Ricks said. She also wondered out loud if there was a friend in town – preferably English (‘It will play better in front of the judge, show you’ve found a footing here, that sort of thing’) – who could vouch for my good character.

‘You see, Sally, before the next Interim Hearing next week, we will already have submitted witness statements to the judge. So the more people who have positive things to say about you as a mother …’

‘I’ve only been a mother for a few weeks,’ I said.

‘Yes, but surely there are some chums here …’

‘I’ve only been in the country a few months. And I haven’t really met many people …’

‘I see,’ Ginny Ricks said. ‘Well ... I’ll have one of our researchers get cracking on the witness statements today. One last thing: you did bring the retainer, I hope?’

I handed over the bank draft and said, ‘If there’s any way we could keep costs within that £2500, I would greatly appreciate it. My resources are fairly limited.’

‘We’ll do our best,’ she said, ‘but if we do need to track people down and the like, it will run up things.’

‘Right now, I have exactly £4000 to my name, no job, no bank account.’

‘I understand your position,’ she said, standing up. ‘And, no doubt, we’ll be speaking in the next few days.’

But the next person I ended up speaking with from Lawrence and Lambert was one of their assistants. Her name was Deirdre Pepinster. She also spoke in the same horsey voice affected by Ginny Ricks – yet with a ‘this is so
boring’
inflection with made me uneasy.

‘Now I’ve been trying to reach this Ellen Cartwright for the past two days …’

‘But I told Ginny Ricks that she was out of town.’

‘Oh, right. Anyway, turns out she’s on some hiking trip in Morocco – and is completely out of contact until the week after next. And Jane Sanjay, your health visitor, is on extended leave of absence. Canada, I think. Won’t be back for four months at least.’

‘Any chance of tracking her down?’

‘It might run up the bill a little more.’

‘I could take care of it. Especially as she liked me. And I think she’d say nice things …’

‘Leave it with me.’

‘And I’m sure I could also find out lots about the woman who’s now with my husband …’

‘Let us handle that as well. We too need her background information.’

‘But it’s more hours on the clock, isn’t it?’

‘We want to do the most thorough job possible.’

I didn’t hear from her again until the end of the week.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘The woman in question is named Diane Dexter. Home address: 42 Albert Bridge Road, London SW11. She also owns a house in Litlington, East Sussex, and an apartment on the Rue du Bac in Paris ... which is a pretty nice part of Paris, not that Litlington is shabby either. Very handy for Glyndebourne ... on whose board she sits.’

‘So, she’s rich.’

‘Quite. Founder and Chairman of Dexter Communications – a mid-sized, but highly successful marketing company. Privately owned. Very highly regarded. She’s fifty, divorced, no children …’

Until now, that is.

‘Any idea how or when she met my husband?’

‘You’d have to hire a private detective for that. All I’ve been able to find out is the basic details about her.’