Page 2 of The Do-Over

‘Try not to have a coronary,’ she says with a smile. ‘I am first-aid trained, but I’d prefer not to have to demonstrate my skills today, if it’s all the same to you.’

Although her tone is light, office folklore has many stories of associates having meltdowns of various kinds on this journey. One famously threw up in the lift two years ago. Incredibly, he’s still with the firm but has never submitted another partnership application and had to move to another office to escape the fallout. The most humiliating, though, the one we all dread, dates from the year after I joined. I would dismiss it as apocryphal if I hadn’t been a trainee in the senior associate’s team at the time. He was the absolute model of what we believed a partner should be. Fiercely intelligent and a real powerhouse, nothing escaped his notice. Rumour had it that he had a flat in the Barbican somewhere, but we used to joke that he probably didn’t know exactly where it was and had definitely never been inside it because he was always in the office.

On the day of the partnership announcements, Margaret came to get him like she always has. Although we tried to focus on our work, very little got done while we waited to see whether he’d made it. An hour went by and none of us suspected anything unusual. For some people, the meetings are very quick because the senior partners are all in agreement. For others, the meetings can drag on, taking the form of a final viva interview, a last chance for the candidate to prove they meet the criteria and convince the sceptics. After two hours, we were getting fidgety, and nearly three hours had gone by before word trickled down that our man had left the firm and wouldn’t be returning. By the end of the day, another senior associate had taken his place at the head of our team, but it wasn’t until weeks later that we learned what had happened. As we had suspected at the time, the meeting had taken the form of an intense interview and the pressure, on top of the exhaustion from the hours he’d beenputting in, had proved too much for our candidate. He’d fainted in the boardroom and, if that wasn’t humiliating enough, he’d apparently wet himself while out cold.

The memory of that disaster serves as a prompt and, as we’re making our way along the corridor, I turn to Margaret.

‘Have I got time for a quick trip to the loo?’ I ask.

‘Yes,’ she replies. ‘But hurry. The senior partners don’t like to be kept waiting.’

The toilets are in the same place on every floor so, although this is probably only the second time I’ve been up here since joining Morton Lansdowne, I know where to find them. Having squeezed out every last drop, I wash my hands and stare at myself in the mirror.

‘Come on, Thea,’ I tell my reflection fiercely. ‘Knock them dead.’

‘All set?’ Margaret asks when I rejoin her in the corridor.

‘Yes. Thank you.’

The offices of law firms in London tend to fall into two distinct camps. The first are those who have probably been around since the dawn of time; their offices are dark, with lots of polished wood and brass fittings. Although it’s a well-established firm with a long history, Morton Lansdowne falls firmly into the second category; our offices are light and modern. The boardroom that we’re now approaching could be straight off the set of a TV series likeSuits. The glass wall has a carefully applied translucent pattern with the letters ML etched into it in a swirly font at regular intervals. It gives the appearance of transparency without you actually being able to see anything meaningful from the outside. Unlike the lower floors, which have light-coloured doors and desks with dark grey carpets, the carpet on this floor is light grey deep pile, with dark mahogany-coloured doors that reach all the way to the ceiling, no doubt to create an air of extra gravitas. My heart has givenup trying to break out of my ribcage as Margaret knocks on the boardroom door; it’s now taken up residence in my throat and, for a moment, I worry that I might join the folklore hall of fame by throwing up in front of the senior partners.

‘Come in,’ a deep voice that I recognise as belonging to Martin Osborne calls.

‘I have Thea Rogers for you,’ Margaret tells him before standing aside to let me pass. As soon as I’m over the threshold, the door closes behind me with a soft click.

‘Thea. Thank you so much for sparing the time to see us,’ Martin says warmly, as if I’m somehow doing him a favour. ‘Please, take a seat.’

The sound of my name on the lips of the most powerful man in the London office sparks a familiar momentary feeling of resentment. The truth is that I fell out of love with my name when I reinvented myself; to me it sounds soft and a little doughy, the kind of name that might suit a librarian but not a top-flight lawyer. I should have been called something more warrior-like, such as Xena. When I was at secondary school, one of my classmates was called Xanthe and, although I ribbed her about it along with the rest of the class, I always secretly envied her. Having X as an initial makes you stand out. Thea Rogers is the precise opposite; it’s an instantly forgettable name without a single hard consonant to give it some bite.

This brief distraction is thankfully enough to allow me to make it from the doorway to the seat Martin has indicated without any disasters. Although there are a couple of other empty seats, most of the senior partners are here, I notice as I look around the room.

‘I think you know everyone,’ Martin continues, ‘and we obviously all know you so, unless you feel it’s necessary, I suggest we skip introductions and get straight down to it. Jeremy and Helen couldn’t be with us in person today, but theyhave dialled in remotely.’ He indicates a screen on the wall behind him with two faces staring out of it.

‘Hello, Thea,’ they say together.

‘Right. Before we start, have you got any questions you’d like to ask us about the process?’ Martin says to me.

‘No, thank you.’

‘Great.’ He taps a button on the laptop open in front of him and a slide appears on the screen with my face and name underneath it. ‘As you’ll be aware, Thea, a partnership at Morton Lansdowne is only offered to truly exceptional candidates. In our business, reputation is everything and we cannot allow that reputation to be diluted by mediocrity. I’m sure I don’t need to bore you with the precise figures, but the percentage of people who join us as trainees, like you did, and subsequently go on to make partner is witheringly small. Regardless of the outcome, you should therefore be immensely proud of the fact that you’ve made it as far as this meeting. Whatever happens, I want you to hold on to that.’

I’m listening intently to every word, trying to gauge which way this is going to go, and so far it’s not sounding positive. My mood is plummeting fast.

‘Let us look at the specifics of your application,’ he continues, tapping the laptop again to bring up a graph. ‘From this, we can see that you have consistently exceeded your billing targets every quarter since being promoted to senior associate. That’s no mean feat; we deliberately set aggressive targets here, not just for the good of the company, but also as a means of identifying those with the kind of stamina we’re looking for in our next leaders.’ He taps again and a pie chart comes up. ‘You are also held in high regard by your colleagues and your team members. It doesn’t influence our decision, but when we asked them whether they felt you would be the right kind of leader for a firm like ours, their response was universally positive.More importantly, and I don’t have a slide for this as it’s not something we can quantify on a graph, the clients value you. You’re seen as someone who is trustworthy, hard-working and with an exceptional eye for detail.’

OK, this is sounding more positive. I allow the flame of hope to re-ignite.

‘However,’ Martin continues, ‘while these are all laudable qualities in a senior associate, they don’t automatically translate into a good candidate for partnership. A partner has to take all of these superlative qualities and manage to add an extra layer to them. Do you understand?’

Shit. I allowed myself to hope too soon.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘As a partner, you are an ambassador for the firm. Our partners are the public face of who we are, and clients will hire or reject us based in no small part on whether they like the partners or not. We’re therefore looking for someone who can earn the respect of a new client and bring them on board, making Morton Lansdowne their trusted guide for all aspects of commercial law. As senior partners, we have to decide whether we believe you have those qualities. There is also your age to take into account. At thirty-two, you are at the very bottom of the age range that we would even begin to consider for partnership. I’m not betraying any confidences if I tell you that some of the senior partners felt that it might be better for you to spend another couple of years as a senior associate and reapply after that.’

That’s it then. They think I’m too young. It’s all been for nothing, and I focus all my energy on maintaining a neutral expression. The howls of frustration will have to wait until I’m alone so nobody witnesses my moment of weakness.

‘Deciding whether or not to offer a partnership is a responsibility we take very seriously,’ Martin is saying, but I’m barely listening now that I know my fate, ‘and I can assure youthat we haven’t taken your application lightly. After considerable thought and discussion, we have agreed that you do exhibit all the qualities we’re looking for, and we’d therefore like to offer you the position of junior partner at Morton Lansdowne. Congratulations, Thea.’

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