‘I said the right paper, not the one that can pay the most.’
‘Who is he?’
Simon leans back again, scrutinises my face as if it’s a map that contains the key to my trustworthiness. ‘She. Natalie Shale. So wife-of-client, strictly speaking.’
My pulse quickens, before natural pessimism returns it to normal.
‘She doesn’t do interviews.’
‘She didn’t, I’m advising her differently.’
‘To who?’
‘Her husband’s last solicitor,’ Simon says, mouth twitching slightly, possibly in irritation at being doubted. ‘I’ve taken over from a colleague who’s snowed under.’
‘You must be doing well to get given it …?’
‘Simon’s in line to be made a partner,’ Ben supplies.
‘So, you up for it or what?’ Simon asks me.
‘Natalie would do a face-to-face piece, photos, everything? An exclusive?’
It’s been a while since I got truly excited by a story, but I can feel the proper journalist in me stirring after a long, deep, Rip Van Winkle length sleep. My news editor will do somersaults.
‘Yes. But no spoilers on the fresh evidence for the appeal, and I’d want your assurance that it wouldn’t be a dredge of hubby’s murky past. She’s very sensitive about it, as you can imagine. She doesn’t want to do anything that’s going to dim the glory when he’s freed.’
‘What if he isn’t?’ asks Caroline.
‘He will be,’ Ben says.
I make a noise of agreement.
‘Why?’ she persists.
‘Because he’s innocent … and because he’s got a great legal team,’ Ben says, tipping his bottle to clink it against Simon’s. Ever the optimist.
Caroline glances at me and I know she’s thinking, since when was that a guarantee? Ever the pragmatist.
‘He needs great barristers,’ Simon says, evenly. ‘And as a miscarriage of justice he needs attention, so Johnny Judge accepts you don’t get that many people holding placards outside the Court of Appeal and tooting vuvuzelas unless there’s a bloody good reason. We need to keep it in the public eye. Natalie’s interview could help with that.’
Simon pronounces bloody as ‘bladdy’ and I wonder if he went somewhere properly flashy like Eton or Harrow.
‘And Natalie’s very media friendly,’ he concludes. ‘If you get this right, it’s made of win.’
‘I thought you said she doesn’t do interviews?’ Caroline asks.
‘He means she’s attractive,’ I say.
‘Correct,’ Simon says. He reclines, so laidback he’s practically horizontal, figuratively as well as literally.
20
Having university friends studying accountancy, business management and cognitive science meant one thing, for sure (apart from them all ending up considerably better paid than me in later life): I had many, many more hours wafting around on ‘free study periods’.
Naturally, Ben and I finished our end of first year exams about a week before everyone else. For reasons lost to history, we did our celebrating in a hideous Scottish-themed pub called MacDougal’s in Fallowfield. If it honoured the ancient MacDougal clan, I never much wanted to meet them. It had tartan curtains, upholstery the colour of a livid wound and smelt of carpet cleaning agent and Silk Cut. Ben summed it up: ‘Och Aye The No.’
Despite Ben and I spending almost every day together, and finding each other so effortlessly entertaining that we would’ve been able to wring laughs out of a night in the cells, I was perfectly clear in my mind there was no risk of me falling for him. Not only was he not my type, it was so easy. Attraction, I’d decided, required friction. It was based on conflict, mystery and distance. Rhys could be decidedly remote at times, in more than one way. He’d even asked me to stop coming to his gigs as it ‘put him off’. I was treated mean and, never one to defy a cliché, I was keen.
‘I am really really good at drinking shots,’ I announced to Ben, two vodka and Cokes down.
‘Really?’ he asked, dubiously.
‘Oh yeah. I can drink vodka to a band playing,’ I said.
‘You’ve only had two.’
‘I’ll drink you under the table!’ I cried, with the gung-ho spirit of someone who’d had a couple of large measures on an empty stomach and was talking total shit.
Ben sniggered into his glass.
‘You choose,’ I added, slapping the table for emphasis. ‘You choose the drink and I’ll match you, then carry you home.’
Ben cocked his head to one side. ‘Ever done flaming Drambuies?’
‘Nooooo. Bring it on.’
He darted off to the bar and returned with a cheap match-book and glasses holding an inch of copper liquid. Under Ben’s creative direction, we lit them and made tiny lakes of fire, then clapped our palms over the rims to form the seal. We tried to whirl them over our heads before drinking, with predictably messy results.
‘You’re not like other girls I’ve met,’ Ben said, lightly, wiping his mouth, after round two was aflame in stomachs instead.
‘More sweary?’ I asked.
‘No, I mean … you’re, you know. Like my best friends back home. Not a girly girl. You’re sharp.’
He mumbled the last word so I had to strain to hear it, while he busied himself with the cocktail list.
‘What, you’ve never met an intelligent female before?’
‘I didn’t mean that. I’ve never had a laugh with a female friend like you.’
I could imagine Ben hadn’t had many platonic friendships with women, and I wasn’t about to inflate his ego by speculating on why this might be.
‘You’re not like other boys I’ve met,’ I said, with the loose lips of someone half-cut, without considering it wasn’t a train of thought I especially wanted to pursue to its destination either.
‘How?’ Ben said.
‘You look like you could be in a boy band,’ I offered, with a drunken giggle.
Ben’s face twisted into something that looked like genuine offence. ‘Oh, wow, ta.’
‘What?
