Page 110 of The Girl You Left Behind
“Okay.” Paul removes his jacket and sits down heavily on a bench. “Okay.”
She waits.
“I had a brief relationship with her before I realized who she was. It ended when we discovered we were on opposing sides. That’s it.”
Janey studies something high up in the vaulted ceiling. When she speaks again her words are casual. “Are you planning on getting together with her again? After this is over?”
“That’s nobody’s business.”
“The hell it is. I need to know that you’ve been working in the interests of our clients, of our company. I need to know that this case hasn’t been compromised.”
His voice explodes into the empty space. “We’re winning, aren’t we? What more do you want?”
The last of the legal team is going into court. Sean’s face appears around the heavy oak door, and he mouths at them to come in.
Paul takes a deep breath. He makes his voice conciliatory. “Look. Personal stuff aside, I do think it would be the right thing to settle. We’d still be—”
“We are not going to settle. Why on earth would we? We’re about to win the most high-profile case this company has ever handled.” Janey reaches for her folders.
“We’re destroying someone’s life.”
“She destroyed her own life the day she decided to fight us.”
“We were taking what she believed was hers. Of course she was going to fight us. Come on, Janey, this is about fairness.”
“This isn’t about fairness. Nothing’s about fairness. Don’t be ridiculous.” She blows her nose. When she turns to him, her eyes glitter. “This case is scheduled for two more days in court. Provided nothing untoward happens, Sophie Lefèvre will go back after that to her rightful place.”
“And you’re so sure you know where that is.”
“Yes, I am. As should you be. And now I suggest we go in before the Lefèvres wonder what on earth we’re still doing out here.”
He walks into the courtroom, his head buzzing, ignoring the glare of the clerk. He sits and takes a few deep breaths, trying to clear his thoughts. Janey is distracted, deep in conversation with Sean. As his heart rate steadies, he remembers a retired detective he used to talk to when he was first in London, a man whose face had set in wry folds of amusement at the ways of the world. “All that counts is the truth, McCafferty,” he would say, just before the beer turned his conversation to blather. “Without it you’re basically just juggling people’s daft ideas.”
He pulls his notepad from his jacket and scribbles a few words, before folding the paper carefully in half. He glances sideways, then taps the man in front of him. “Can you pass this to that solicitor please?” He watches as the scrap of white paper makes its way down to the front, along the bench to the junior solicitor, then to Henry, who glances at it and passes it to Liv.
She gazes at it warily, as if reluctant to open it. And then he watches as she does so, her sudden, intense stillness as she digests what it says.
I will fix this.
She turns and her eyes seek him out. When she finds him, her chin lifts slightly.Why should I trust you?
Time seems to stop. She looks away.
“Tell Janey I had to go. Urgent meeting,” he says to Sean.
•••
“You’re one of Mr. Flaherty’s people.” Marianne Andrews stoops a little, as if she is too big for the door frame.
“I’m sorry to land on your doorstep like this,” Paul says. “I wanted to talk to you. About the case.”
She looks as if she is about to turn him away, and then she raises a large hand. “Oh, you might as well come in. But I warn you, I’m as mad as a cut snake at how you all talked about Mom, like she was some kind of criminal. The newspapers are no better. I just got off the phone with my old friend Myra from high school, and I had to tell her that Mom did more useful things in six months than her husband did sitting on his fat old backside in his thirty years at the Bank of America.”
“I’m sure.”
“Oh, I bet you are, honey.” She beckons him inside, her gait stiff and shuffling. “Mom was a social progressive. She wrote about the plight of workers, displaced children. She was horrified by war. She would no more steal something than she would have asked Goering out for a date. Now, I suppose you’re going to want a drink?”
Paul accepts a diet cola and settles in one of the low-slung sofas. Through the window the sound of distant rush-hour traffic drifts in on the overheated air. A large cat that he had initially mistaken for a cushion unfurls itself and jumps into his lap, where it kneads his thighs in silent ecstasy.
