Courting Trouble (21 page)

Danny smiled gratefully. His world-weary, craggy face creased up into a smile. Maybe Portia was right? She always maintained that, in life, anything is possible – except for mountaineering in stilettos and moon landing in a ballgown. Perhaps I needed a support group for recovering pessimists? I mean, Danny was acting like a hero and Jack like a human. It was very confusing. Overwhelmed by the night’s revelations (what was it? Global Blokes Behaving Nicely Day?), I went inside, shut the door and headed straight to the fridge for a fortifying bowl of chocolate mint ice cream.

‘Be careful what you wish for’ is one of life’s greatest lies. Like all women, I wished for James Bond, naked, telling me how much he liked wrinkles and crinkles on a woman. And there’d be nothing better than getting that wish fulfilled . . . except for getting my other wish – for things to turn out for me and Jack Cassidy.

The window of opportunity seemed to have opened . . . and, this time, I was not going to draw the blinds.

In the list of the worst things men say on dates, like giving details of their prostate difficulties or revealing a recent gender-reassignment operation – this topped them all.

Everything had been going so well – champagne at the Beaufort Bar in the Savoy, followed by dinner at the Delaunay restaurant on the Strand, a place where the human menu is so delectable the chef should advertise the ‘Celeb du jour’. Jack and I were gossiping about the famous faces around us – who had recently taken out a gagging order, sued for libel over sex allegations or settled out of court over compromising behaviour involving drugs, rent boys or reasonably domesticated tethered livestock. We were bantering and quipping, just as we had when we first met. When I mentioned that the air-conditioning was too cold, he draped his satin-lined suit jacket across my shoulders, resting his hands on me for a moment. I remembered then how much I loved the shape and strength of his arms, how safe I had once felt wrapped up in them. When I showed curiosity about his main meal, he leant over and kissed me so that I could taste the truffle oil.

At first our lips just brushed, but it turned into a kiss. He kissed me as though he was trying to erase all the many women who had gone before. When the waiter offered us more wine, it was with great reluctance that I pulled away from his delicious mouth. I had a feeling that, when we did finally go to bed, we were going to make John and Yoko look like amateurs. When the waiter took pudding orders, I knew that all I really wanted for dessert was Jack Cassidy, naked, on a bed of meringue. It was then that Nathaniel walked past our table.

‘Hello, Matilda! What a charming surprise.’ He leant in for the regulation air kiss, then nodded to Jack and extended his hand. ‘Nathaniel Cavendish. I think we bumped into each other, quite literally. Outside Matilda’s place.’

‘Jack Cassidy.’ When Jack stood up to shake Nathaniel’s hand, I glanced from one man to the other. Jack’s look is minimal, svelte, sophisticated – all in a monotone, moody palette. I suspected that if his shirt ever looked less than perfect, it’d be taken out and shot. Nathaniel, in his leather jacket, brightly patterned shirt and biker boots, sported a tough Metro look of grit and devil-may-care dishevelment.

‘I’m so sorry about standing you up. I hope you got my message? But what are you doing here? Delaunay’s doesn’t seem your “natural habitat”, Nathaniel,’ I joshed, recalling his remark when he’d found me on the council estate.

‘Putting the hard word on some banker mates to cough up some cash for my mentoring charity. But’ – he looked from me to Jack – ‘how great that you two already know each other. I guess it makes squaring off in the court room all that much easier.’

‘We try not to make a habit of that . . . Mainly because I could eat a whole bowl of alphabet soup and regurgitate a better argument than anything Jack could ever come up with,’ I teased.

‘Oh, really? I could win any case from you, Matilda, and you know it. You couldn’t talk a nudist into wearing sunblock in the Sahara,’ Jack parried.

‘Well, I guess in a few weeks we’ll have the perfect opportunity to find out which of you really is the better lawyer,’ Nathaniel added conversationally.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, puzzled, putting down my wine glass.

‘I work with rehabilitating offenders,’ Nathaniel explained to Jack, ‘and I believe you are prosecuting the woman who shot two of my clients. They go by the unedifying sobriquets of Bash and Stretch . . . Didn’t you know?’ he asked me, surprised.

My head spun to look at my dinner date. ‘You’re prosecuting my client? A poor gran who simply sought revenge on two scumbag rapists?’

‘Alleged rapists. Both men deny the charges, by the way.’ Jack’s napkin clung absurdly to his waist like a loincloth. ‘The barrister who took the case is from Regal Helm Chambers. He’s fallen ill suddenly. So I’ve had to step into the breach. I’m Senior Treasury Counsel and this case has attracted a lot of lurid media interest. Which is why the DPP’s insisted I take it. He says he wants a safe pair of hands to prosecute it fairly.’

‘Oh, and what, it somehow slipped your mind to tell me?’ Why had I allowed myself to be taken in by him again? Why hadn’t sirens gone off and SWAT teams set up a security cordon?

‘I was going to tell you. I was just waiting for the right time.’

‘Right after you pumped me for information on my case strategy, perhaps? How conniving! How underhand!’

Nathaniel looked longingly towards his table. ‘Look, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to throw a spanner into the works.’ He clung to the conversational cliché like a drowning man to a buoy.

Jack ignored him. He reached over to touch my arm. ‘I was hoping we could have a civilized discussion about it, lawyer to lawyer.’

‘Civilized!’ I recoiled. ‘You make the head-hunting, missionary-munching tribes of the Irian Jaya jungle look civilized. How could you call those two low-lifes as witnesses of truth?’

‘Need I remind you, Matilda, that the most important principle in English law is the presumption that the accused is innocent until proven guilty.’

‘You seriously can’t believe those minging A-list ratbags are innocent.’

‘May I also remind you that the witnesses are not on trial here. Your client’s on trial for taking the law into her own hands. Which I know you abhor as much as I do, Matilda,’ Jack said sternly.

‘I’d like to take the law into my own hands right now, actually, and skewer you on the end of this dessert fork.’

‘If your grandma changes her plea to guilty, I’m sure the judge would be lenient. We could do a plea bargain and save the State – and us – so much time and trouble. You’d be well paid by legal aid for a mitigation plea, instead of getting a daily pittance for a two-week trial.’

‘Gosh, you really are a devil’s advocate, aren’t you?’ Nathaniel interjected, unwisely allowing himself to be drawn into our argument.

Jack appraised Nathaniel for a moment. ‘Don’t tell me. You’re that banker Tilly mentioned. The one who’s hell bent on downward mobility. No wonder you left Credit Suisse. Swiss people routinely get into fistfights over the correct time. Matilda has no doubt only befriended you for your connection to chocolate. It’s her biggest weakness, you know.’

No, Jack Cassidy’s my biggest weakness, I thought to myself. He regularly made me feel so at sea I needed a distress flare. ‘Nathaniel is a man with backbone. You, on the other hand, are obviously still waiting for that spine donor. I mean, you couldn’t even get up the courage to tell me that you’d decided to prosecute my poor grandma.’

‘Actually, I was planning to tell you tonight that I’d taken the case to make sure it was prosecuted fairly and compassionately.’

‘Oh, really? Before or after you’d taken me to bed? I don’t think you would have told me at all if Nathaniel hadn’t accidentally blown your cover.’ I squeezed Nathaniel’s hand. ‘Thank you, Nathaniel. May I have the bill, please?’ I asked the passing waiter.

Jack eyed Nathaniel with cool disdain. ‘And you help those witnesses of mine, how exactly?’ He was using his crossexamination voice.

‘I mentor drug addicts and dealers who are coming out of prison on how to use their business acumen in the banking world, where wheeling and dealing are legal.’

‘Really? I’m totally pro drugs, actually,’ Jack said flippantly. ‘Drugs have taught an entire generation of British kids the metric system. Plus, an overdose of ecstasy tabs can be a polite way to get rid of someone you can’t stand – sanctimonious, holier-than-thou do-gooders who look down their noses for a living, for instance.’

I remembered now what I loathed about Jack: the self-satisfaction, the condescension, the amorality, the chip on his shoulder big enough to fuel a barbecue.

It was Nathaniel’s turn to bristle. ‘I’m just trying to help kids from the estate find an alternative to crime.’

‘Oh, shame. Life has let them down! There’s a support group for that. It’s called “humanity”. We meet regularly at the pub,’ Jack taunted.

Nathaniel gave Jack a look so hard it could deflect small-arms fire. ‘These kids are not intrinsically bad. They’re victims of society.’

‘Yes, yes, there’s such dignity in being poor . . . as long as they stay downwind.’

Nathaniel was now clearly wondering why I’d opted to have dinner with the captain of HMS
Cynicism
. In fact, the captain of the Exxon tanker would have made a preferable dinner date – even the captain of the
Costa Concordia
. Oh, where the hell was that waiter? I just wanted to pay my share and get the hell out of there.

‘Though he pretends otherwise,’ I intervened, ‘Jack grew up on an estate. Slum landlords, gang warfare, race riots, two rooms in a tenement declared unfit for habitation.’

‘Yes. The whole Dickensian cliché.’ Jack turned his laser eyes on Nathaniel. ‘You, though, probably went to Eton and can only get turned on if you’re touched on the gonads with a velvet opera glove . . . Although, wait.’ Jack reappraised him. ‘I bet you went to a wanky, liberal, bisexual school. Do I mean that? . . . No, I mean co-ed. Sorrry.’ He gave an insinuating smile.

‘I went to Bryanston, actually,’ Nathaniel replied stonily. ‘And yes, the female pupils played a big role in civilizing us.’

‘I knew it. Ha. You’re probably a feminist, too, am I right? Who needs Sisters to Do It for Themselves when Nathaniel is on hand!’

‘I’ll have you know that Nathaniel has dedicated his life to helping people who are less advantaged than himself.’

‘Oh, well, I don’t want to keep you then. I’m sure it must be time to go and fell a few trees to make your cross.’ Jack turned his back on Nathaniel and said to me, ‘I only agreed yesterday to take the case. I was going to tell you straight away, but I’ve waited so long for this date and it was going so well that I kept putting it off . . . Can’t you at least try to see it from my point of view?’

‘I’d like to, Jack, I really would. Only I just can’t stick my head that far up my own backside.’ I pushed up to my feet.

‘Why don’t you come and join my table, Matilda. It would be a pleasure to introduce you to my friends. And then I’ll see you home safely.’

I dumped Jack’s coat from my shoulders as though it were toxic. ‘See you in court, where you will take a heavy beating from me.’

‘While the thought of being exquisitely birched by you is obviously quite exciting to our upper-class friend, I would prefer to whip your arse in the traditional legal way, by winning the case, hands down.’

‘Well, that’s never going to happen. Last time I saw you in court, I yawned so much I got lockjaw.’

‘Really? You’re such a hopeless lawyer, you couldn’t convince a jury of anything. Hell, I doubt you could sell crack to Charlie Sheen.’

‘We’ll let the jury decide, shall we?’

Jack slammed some money down on the table with such violence it made the hinges wince. Jack Cassidy, I marvelled, showing real emotion – that was a first.

I watched him disappear out into the night. A storm had blown up, full of thunder and lightning – which I was trying hard not to match with a torrential downpour of angry tears. Jack and I parted in that cloudy, electrically charged atmosphere. The court case now lay between us, as solid as a mountain – a huge granite geographical feature, impassable. Jack Cassidy had lied to me and let me down. It was déjà vu – all over again.

There has been a little confusion of late over the definition of a troll. One is short-tempered, ugly and lives under a bridge. The other is a warped, lonely male probably still living in his mother’s basement, with stale ejaculate in the cracks of his computer keys.

‘
@rapehernow
disgusting bitch . . . should have been aborted with a clothes hanger’ and ‘SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH . . . OR ILL SHUT IT FOR YOU AND CHOKE IT WITH MY DICK’ were probably not the ideal greetings first thing in the morning. But, as Phyllis’s court case came closer, the abuse on social media became more cretinously cacophonous.

Every time I turned on my iPhone there’d be a twisted message on Twitter. ‘Nine Nos and one Yes is still a Yes, bitch.’ ‘Raping a prostitute’s not rape. It’s shoplifting, slag.’

Chantelle’s Facebook, Snapchat, Whatsapp and AskFM sites were clogged with equally delightful messages from strangers announcing that she’d ‘seen more pricks than a second-hand dartboard’. Or telling her to drink bleach, hang herself or cut off her vagina, as she was a ‘diseased slut’. Cyber-bullies created a Facebook page, posting Chantelle’s obituary. A fake profile in her name offered abusive comments about men and how to frame them with rape claims. We closed her accounts and reported the abuse to the police but were told it would take weeks to investigate.

Television offered no respite. It seemed that whenever we gathered on the sofa after supper and tuned in, some chippy ‘comedian’ would be thrusting his testosteroned misogyny down our throats.

‘The cops said “Men who rape will be named” . . . Cool, can I have “Nightstriker” or has that already been taken?’ bantered some weedy bloke on a comedy panel.

‘The only girl in the room said, “I’ve often wondered if I’m strong enough to stop someone trying to rape me” . . . Turns out she’s not,’ leered another, as the studio audience roared with hilarity.