Page 20 of The Do-Over

‘But you made an executive decision to pull our client out of the process without even consulting them. How do you think they feel about that?’

Uh-oh. Here we go.

‘Here’s my problem,’ she says, and her voice is positively saccharine, making me jump when she suddenly starts shouting. ‘It wasn’t your decision to make, youfucking imbecile. Do you have even the first idea how much damage you’ve done? Quite apart from the loss of billing revenue, you’ve made a laughing stock out of both us and our client. If you think I’m angry, I’m not a patch on them. They’re not only threatening to ditch us for literally any other law firm, but they’re also talking about suing us to recoup their spend so far.’

‘I think that’s a little?—’

‘Shut up! I don’t want to hear you say another word. You’ve fucked this so badly, I don’t even know if it’s unfuckable. What you’ve done is sailed into the battle of Trafalgar and then promptly run away because the French “looked a bit fighty”. How do you think that looks?’

‘What was I supposed to do? I told you we were getting nowhere.’

‘For starters, it might have been a good idea to talk to me before you went off half-cocked. I’d have told you to stay in that fucking room, nodding and smiling, while the associates worked their arses off behind the scenes to find a way around it and I got new instructions from the client. What you were not, I repeat,notsupposed to do was pull the fucking plug and flounce off site without consulting anyone. What the hell is the matter with you?’

She’s right. I should have talked to her before pulling the team. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but now there’s nothing I can do except sit here politely while she hurls a torrent of abuse at me. I’m strangely calm about it though, because somewherebetween the point where she compares my intellectual ability unfavourably to a woodlouse’s and her detailed description of the anatomically challenging things the other senior partners want to do to me, something inside me has very quietly snapped, a bit like one of those strands of mozzarella when you pull a slice of pizza away.

‘Do you understand?’ she finally concludes. I’m not sure I do, because I’ve tuned out most of the last five minutes, but I have no desire to prolong this meeting, so I simply nod my head.

‘Good. Get out. I’ve got a deal to save.’

‘Are you OK?’ Janice is waiting for me in my office. ‘I walked past Helen’s room a few minutes ago and she certainly wasn’t holding back.’

‘I’m fine, thanks, Janice.’

‘Of course you are. If it’s any consolation, she may have barked but she’s not going to bite. Not hard, anyway.’ She lowers her voice even though we’re the only two people in the room. ‘She missed a filing deadline once when she was a junior partner. The fines were astronomical, and Martin was so angry we thought he was going to have a stroke.’

I know she’s trying to make me feel better, but I just need five minutes alone. ‘Janice,’ I say. ‘I know it’s not your job, but would you mind very much fetching me a flat white? I’d rather not be around other people right now.’

‘Of course.’ She bustles off and I open my laptop and start composing an email. It’s brief and to the point, and I read it a couple of times before clicking send. I haven’t even finished my coffee before I’m summoned to see Helen again.

‘Sit down,’ she instructs, closing the door behind me. ‘Look. I realise I may have said some things in the heat of the moment earlier which might be considered upsetting, but I think this is disproportionate.’ She holds up a printout of my email.

I stay silent.

‘You must have realised that HR would send it on to me,’ she continues when she clocks that I’m not going to say anything. ‘I’ve had a chat with them and they agreed not to take it any further until I had the opportunity to talk to you. Obviously, nobody is going to try to coerce you if you genuinely feel this is what you want, but I’m begging you to reconsider. Today is just a bad day in the office; we’ve all had them. Yes, I’m pissed off, but I think I’m allowed to be in the circumstances, and the good news is that I’ve already had a couple of phone conversations and it looks like it might just be fixable. Don’t do this, Thea. Learn from your mistakes and do better. You’re a good lawyer who made a mistake. You’re not the first, and like I said, it looks like we might be able to get things back on track.’

I stay silent.

‘Why don’t you take the rest of today off and think about what you want to do? I can probably sit on this for a day.’

‘I have thought about it,’ I tell her firmly. ‘I’m sorry, Helen, but this is what I want.’

‘You realise that the next person to see this will be Martin. He’s not going to react well.’

‘As someone said to me only a few minutes ago in this very room, I can’t go to the battle of Trafalgar expecting a cup of tea and a biscuit.’

‘That’s not quite what I said, but are you absolutely sure?’

‘I am.’

‘OK.’

The summons to see Martin comes so quickly that I barely have time to sit back down at my desk. ‘What the hell have you done?’ Janice asks when she relays the message. ‘The office rumour mill is in overdrive. Everyone knows something big is going down, and that you’re at the centre of it, but beyond that it’s all increasingly wild speculation.’

‘I’ll fill you in as soon as I’ve talked to Martin, I promise,’ I tell her as I head for the lifts.

‘Go straight in,’ Margaret tells me when I reach Martin’s office on the eighth floor. ‘He’s expecting you.’

Martin is sitting behind his desk and gestures to the chair in front of it as Margaret softly closes the door.

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