step for a woman in those days.’
‘Lydia Jefferson?’ Charlotte questioned. ‘Then she must have been…Was she related to Daniel Jefferson in some way?’
‘His great-aunt,’ Margaret confirmed. ‘She had been retired for several years when I first came to work as an office junior, but she still took a very strong interest in the practice. In fact it was she who first encouraged me to take my own articles and to qualify. She and Daniel were very close. When he was quite small, still at junior school, she used to bring him down here with her sometimes.
‘She had very strong views on women’s rights to control their own lives and she was vehement in her support of the underdog. Daniel is very like her in that. Much more so than his father, who, although kind, was much more the traditional stereotype of the country solicitor.
‘Daniel was a brilliant student and many people thought he should have opted to become a barrister, but he was always determined that he wanted to work here, continuing the tradition established by his aunt.’
‘But surely now with all the publicity surrounding the Vitalle case he must at least be tempted to take advantage of his success and perhaps move the practice to London?’
Margaret shook her head.
‘Oh, no, Daniel would never do that,’ she told Charlotte calmly. She said it so positively and with such faith and affection that Charlotte felt her resentment against Daniel Jefferson surge rebelliously inside her. It was all right for him. He had had everything handed to him on a plate. All he had had to do was to qualify and then to step into the comfortable world waiting for him. A world laboured for by a woman…
A woman who had succeeded as she had not, and against far greater odds, Charlotte reminded herself miserably as they reached the top of the stairs and Margaret Lewis opened a door on the landing.
Inside the large sunny room eight people sat at desks working. The room buzzed with the hum of computers and electronic equipment. All along one of the shorter walls were racks containing the familiar packages of papers and legal briefs tied with pink ribbon.
It was obvious immediately that the people in the room were extremely busy and yet the atmosphere was one of relaxed happiness, a young woman leaning over the shoulder of a male colleague, teasing him about something as she helped him with a query.
There was, Charlotte recognised, a bright-eyed quality and an enthusiasm about the occupants of this room that said how much they enjoyed their work, and there was also an alertness about them, an eagerness that she recognised as the kind of enthusiasm possessed by those who were the best of their peer group.
Without knowing any of them, she immediately knew that these trainees were all of them high achievers, quick, intelligent, hard-working, much as she had once been herself, but they had something she recognised that she had never really had: they were free of the anxiety that had plagued her almost from the moment she had set up her own practice.
If they knew about her professional history they were certainly not showing it, as Margaret introduced them to her and they reacted with what appeared to be genuine warmth.
One or two of the boys eyed her short skirt appreciatively, but no one displayed any antagonism or unpleasantness towards her.
‘Bless ’em,’ Margaret commented after she had closed the office door and was standing on the landing with Charlotte. ‘They’re a hard-working lot, but inclined to get a little high-spirited at times. Daniel believes in giving them as much responsibility as they can handle without overburdening them, and I must admit it’s a recipe they seem to thrive on. What we prefer to do is to assign someone to a specific case, so that he or she can see the whole thing through rather than merely acting as a clearing house for the mundane background work.
‘When you come to start work on Daniel’s files you’ll find inside the cover the name of the trainee assigned to that case, and any work you want doing you can either instruct the trainee concerned direct or, if you prefer, you can route your instructions through me.
‘I realise that for the next few days, until you find your feet, you’re going to be tied to your desk and the files, but once you’re properly settled in it might be nice to have lunch together one day.’
‘Yes, I’d like that,’ Charlotte told her with genuine enthusiasm. ‘There is one thing you could help me with,’ she added. ‘Where exactly do I find the files?’
Margaret smiled at her.
‘Come with me.’
As she headed back downstairs she told Charlotte that when Lydia Jefferson had first decided to set up her own practice she had bought this house with a small legacy, and thanks in the main to Daniel’s insistence it had stayed much as it was rather than being converted into a modern soulless environment behind a classic faa¸de. ‘However, as we’ve expanded we’ve grown progressively short of space, and the files or at least Daniel’s files are now housed in what originally was a large walk-in airing-cupboard.
‘Here they are,’ she told Charlotte as they stopped on the next landing. She opened a door into a small oblong room, its walls lined with shelves filled with files.
‘Dead files are stored in the basement. These are only current cases.
‘We operate a simple system. They are kept here in alphabetical order, and if you find that one is missing chances are either that Daniel has it out or that one of the trainees is the culprit. I have tried to institute a system whereby everyone logs the files they take out, but I’m afraid so far it’s proving a little difficult to implement.
‘If there’s anything you want to know, or any help you need, just give me a ring, or pop up and see me. I’m on extension 241,’ she told Charlotte.
Thanking her, Charlotte headed back to her own office. At least Margaret wasn’t antagonistic towards her, but perhaps that was because as yet she did not know the truth about her.
As she stepped into her office Charlotte heard Daniel call out to her.
‘Could you come into my office for a moment, please, Charlotte?’
Reluctantly she did so.
He was seated behind his desk, and while she stood in front of him, seething with resentment and misery, she was painfully aware of the contrast between them.
He looked up, smiling at her; a smile he had no doubt used to good effect for the television screens, she reflected sourly. Surely his teeth were too white…too perfect…but then she noticed that one of his front ones was slightly chipped. Oddly that cheered her up a little. So Mr Perfect wasn’t entirely perfect after all.
‘Here’s an addition to the list of the files I’d like you to familiarise yourself with,’ he told her. In order to take the list from him she had to step closer to his desk, so close that she caught the faint clean scent of his skin. He wasn’t wearing after-shave; that was quite definitely merely soap she could smell. She scowled. One of the things she had never wholly cared for about Bevan was his addiction to a particularly strong male cologne. Nothing she had been able to say to him had ever convinced him that she found it more of a turn-off than a turn-on.
‘Help yourself to a cup of coffee,’ she heard Daniel telling her, ‘and then pull up a chair. I’ll give you a brief résumé of each of these cases, and then I’d like you to read through the files and
