Page 3 of The Do-Over

For a moment, I stare at him, dumbfounded. Did I hear that correctly? The ripple of applause from the other senior partners would indicate that I did.

‘Now,’ Martin says when the applause has died down. ‘You know the rules, I’m sure. Regardless of the outcome, we expect you to leave the office immediately. We will make a formal announcement at the end of the day, after which you are of course welcome to share the news with friends and family. You will also have the weekend to conduct any celebrations you deem appropriate, and then we expect you in the office ready to go at seven o’clock on Monday morning. Do you have any questions before I ask Margaret to escort you out?’

‘No. Thank you. I won’t let you down, I promise.’

Martin smiles. ‘See that you don’t.’

As I descend towards the ground floor with Margaret by my side, I allow myself the tiniest of fist pumps. After all those years, and particularly the last four months without a single day off, I’ve actually bloody done it. Thea Rogers, youngest ever female partner at Morton Lansdowne at the tender age of thirty-two.

2

As I make my way back to my terraced house in Walthamstow, I look around at the other people on the Tube, half expecting them to pick up that something extraordinary has just happened to me, that I’m different somehow. There’s a girl sitting opposite me with big headphones clamped over her ears and her head buried in a dog-eared book that she probably picked up in a charity shop, and I find myself willing her to raise her eyes and recognise me, as if I’m some sort of celebrity because I’m now a partner at a major law firm.

It’s irrational nonsense, I know it is. Within the walls of Morton Lansdowne, I will definitely be a celebrity for the next week or so, but even there it won’t be long until I’m just ‘one of the partners’. Out here, there’s no reason for anyone to give a damn, but it’s hard not to feel a tinge of disappointment nonetheless. I’m burning to share the news with someone, but grabbing a random stranger and blurting it out is unlikely to end well, particularly in a city like London. Also, there’s the moratorium to consider. I check my watch: four and a half hours before I can tell anyone.

The house is silent as I close the front door behind me and pick up the post from the floor, but I can almost hear its question in my head. ‘It’s lunchtime on a Friday. What are you doing here?’ I’m inordinately proud of my house, even though I barely spend any time in it. When I first started as a trainee at Morton Lansdowne, I deliberately looked for the cheapest lodgings I reckoned I could put up with. I ended up in a shared flat in Peckham, with a box room so small even a standard single bed wouldn’t fit in it. The enterprising landlord, evidently keen to squeeze every drop of income from his investment, had fashioned a bed using a sheet of plywood supported by batons fixed to the wall. The mattress was a foam affair that he’d shortened by simply chopping the end off. It was boiling in summer, freezing in winter and the whole place smelled permanently of weed, thanks to the thriving business of a guy on the floor above. I didn’t care about any of that, though. It was cheap, and that enabled me to start saving.

When I made junior associate, the temptation to move out to somewhere better was nearly irresistible, but I stuck to my plan and watched my savings grow almost exponentially. My very limited downtime was spent researching property prices in different parts of London, always following the mantra to look for the shittiest house on the nicest street, as that was where the best potential growth lay. By the time I had enough to put down an acceptable deposit and secure a mortgage, I knew exactly what I was looking for and where. I also knew that I wasn’t going to get the best bang for my buck by playing safe and going through an estate agent. To my mother and stepfather’s horror, I snapped up my three-bedroom terraced house in Walthamstow at auction, without even visiting it to look round first. It was a probate sale, described in the listing as being ‘in need of modernisation’, which turned out to be something ofan understatement. Luckily for me, it was at least structurally sound, but that was where the good news ended.

For the first three years, I essentially lived in a building site, renovating room by room as I could afford to. The bathroom was first; the original was at the back of the house on the ground floor, with horribly stained turquoise sanitaryware that made my skin crawl. With the help of Brian, a local builder who defied the stereotypes by charging surprisingly reasonable prices and working his socks off even during my frequent absences, the bathroom was soon relocated into one of the first-floor bedrooms, with gorgeous contemporary fixtures and fittings and a shower nearly powerful enough to take your skin off. Once that was done, I found I could live quite happily with the rest of the house in various states of chaos. It was only an occasional place to sleep, after all, and Brian kept me abreast of the renovations by email when I wasn’t around.

The finished house is almost unrecognisable from the run-down property I bought. The front door still opens onto a narrow hallway with the original Victorian tiles on the floor, and there is a door on the left that leads into a small front room that I’ve set up as a study; useful for weekend working when I don’t need to be in the office. That’s where the similarities end though; the real magic happens when you step through the door at the end of the hallway. The middle reception room, original kitchen and bathroom have been combined into a large open-plan living area that spans the entire rear of the house. There’s a high-tech kitchen on one side and a floating staircase tucked into the corner on the other. Between them sit two comfortable squishy sofas for ‘entertaining’ (not that I ever do), separated by a low coffee table. We’ve pushed the back wall as far as we dared with a conservatory extension that houses the dining area. Bifold doors open onto what remains of the garden, where a small patio issurrounded by hanging baskets and abundant flowerbeds that I pay a gardening firm handsomely to maintain.

The post yields nothing of interest; a couple of bills that I can ignore because they’re paid by direct debit, and the usual collection of takeaway menus and other junk. I dump my laptop bag in the study and consign the post to the bin before kicking off my shoes in the hallway and wandering through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. This plan quickly falls apart when I realise that the box of teabags in the cupboard is empty and the milk in the fridge has solidified. I shove it in the bin without either daring to open it or read the sell-by date; a vague memory of using the last teabag comes to mind and, as I explore the mental picture, I’m horrified to realise that there was snow on the ground at the time. I glance to the left, at the wall that Brian suggested he paint with blackboard paint so I could use it as an ‘expression wall’ and, sure enough, the word ‘teabags’ is scrawled on there in my handwriting.

With a free weekend stretching ahead of me and currently no idea as to how I’m going to fill it, I decide a shopping trip is in order. I’ll head to the Sainsbury’s on the high street and stock up with a few essentials and one of those mini bottles of champagne so I can celebrate when the news breaks on the company website. I could even get a full-sized one; seeing as Alasdair is in the country, he might be free to come and help me celebrate. With a smile on my face, I lock the front door behind me and set off down the pavement. All being well, I should be able to kill a couple of hours on this trip, which would take me almost to the magic moment at five o’clock when I can start ringing people to tell them my news.

As I dump my bag of groceries on the worktop in the kitchen, my eyes lift automatically to the oversized clock on the wall. Half past two. I doubt very much that Walthamstow high street boasts a time portal, which means the battery must be flat. A glance at my smart watch, however, isn’t much more encouraging. Even though I tried to walk slowly and browse in the supermarket, my excursion has taken me less than an hour, and I still have an hour and a half to kill. A brief rummage through the drawers after I’ve put the shopping away reveals a packet of batteries that I probably bought when I moved in, so I put a new one in the clock and reset it while the kettle heats up for my second attempt at a cup of tea.

What on earth do people do on Friday afternoons, I wonder as I sit at my desk sipping my tea and staring out of the window. The parking space outside my house is empty but, while I’m watching, a black SUV swings into it, bumping up onto the kerb as it does. The driver makes no attempt to straighten it, leaping out almost before it’s even stopped. It’s a woman, probably around the same age as me, dressed in tight leggings and a crop top.

‘Hurry up, Rollo,’ I can hear her urging as she hauls open the rear door. ‘You’ve barely got time to change before your piano lesson.’

I watch as a boy climbs slowly out of the back seat. He can’t be more than seven years old, and his school uniform consists of black leather shoes with grey socks, grey flannel shorts and a green blazer with a logo on it over white shirt and green tie. You don’t have to be a great detective to work out that he doesn’t attend the local primary dressed like that. The womanpractically drags him along the pavement and, for amusement because I’m ludicrously bored, I set a timer.

They reappear seven minutes and forty-three seconds later. The woman is still dressed in the same clothes and looking even more harassed, but the boy appears oblivious as he saunters along behind her. He’s now wearing a white T-shirt, dark blue shorts and white trainers and carrying a music book. She bundles him into the SUV and, with dexterity evidently born of much practice, swings back out of the space and hurtles up the road.

‘If that’s what people do on Friday afternoons, they can keep it,’ I mutter to myself with a smile.

Five o’clock at last. My pulse quickens again as I log onto the Morton Lansdowne website and navigate to the relevant page. When I see my picture and bio among the other partners, I allow a bubble of pride to form in my gut. I study it for a while, letting my achievement sink in, before calling my mum and Phil. They’ve never really understood anything to do with my work, but surely even they will understand that this is a big thing.

‘Thea! This is a nice surprise,’ Phil answers. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Everything’s fine, Phil,’ I reassure him. ‘I’m just calling because I have some good news.’

‘Oh. Hang on then. I’d better get your mother on the other handset. She’ll only grill me otherwise and then get upset if I can’t remember all the details.’ There’s a clunk as he puts the handset down, and then I hear him calling, ‘Cath,Cath!Come quickly. It’s Thea on the phone and she says she has news.’

‘Hello, darling,’ my mother’s voice says after a short pause. ‘Phil says you have news. Are you OK? You’re not in any trouble, are you?’

Despite her best efforts, encouragement has never been one of my mother’s strong points. If we were describing her style of parenting since Dad left, as far as I’m concerned anyway, the politest word would be ‘detached’. To give her her dues, she did have a lot to cope with initially, and things only improved after she started dating Phil when I was thirteen. By that time, her somewhat patchy parenting style had become embedded. I suspect the fact that I was fiercely independent also played a part, as she’s always been closer to Saffy than me.

‘I’m not in trouble,’ I explain once Phil has rejoined the conversation. ‘As I said to Phil, this is good news. I’ve been made partner, can you believe it?’

There’s a long pause. Too long.

‘That’s lovely, darling,’ Mum says eventually. ‘Congratulations. We’re very proud.’

‘You don’t know what that is, do you.’ I sigh.

---