’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 give me your professional opinion of the strengths and weaknesses of each case.’
Fortunately she had her back to him as he spoke, having turned at his first words to see where she was supposed to get her coffee from. A coffee filter jug and heater stood discreetly to one side of the toy box, complete with china mugs and everything else, and as she focused on it she felt her backbone stiffen. What a mammoth ego the man had, she fumed as she poured herself some coffee. What was he trying to do—test her…as though she were a child sitting a spelling test? And then swiftly on the heels of this angry thought came another and more disturbing one. What if it was some kind of test? If she failed it…if her judgements on his cases did not exactly coincide with his, would he use that as further means of her incompetence and seek her dismissal?
She shivered a little as she added milk to her coffee, a mental image of her most recent bank statement reminding her of how important it was that she kept this job. The salary was excellent, and it was close enough for her to be able to live at home. And no matter how much such dependence on her parents hurt her pride, there was no getting away from the fact that until she had cleared that overdraft she simply could not afford to pay rent and she most certainly could not afford a mortgage.
The bank had been very understanding; they had offered her extra time to repay the overdraft, but her pride had jibbed at that. She wanted it reduced and repaid as quickly as possible. And besides, as her father had pointed out, there was the burden of the heavy interest payments.
Schooling her features into icy blankness, she turned round and walked back to the desk.
As she sat down she was briefly and uncomfortably aware of the way her skirt rode up along her thighs, but when she darted a brief glance at Daniel Jefferson he was looking at some papers on his desk, and he didn’t lift his head until she was sitting down.
As she listened to him describing each of the cases on the list she was reluctantly forced to admit that either he had a good memory for facile detail or he was deeply and genuinely involved with every case that he took on.
She preferred to think it was the former; it was after all the kind of showmanship she would have expected from someone made so much of by the media, but honesty compelled her to accept that it was probably the latter. But then, being a good solicitor did not necessarily make him a good human being, she told herself grimly.
At five to one, even though they were only halfway through the list, he stopped and told her, ‘I think that’s enough for one session. I have a business appointment this lunchtime and I doubt that I’ll be back before three, so I think it might be as well if we left the rest of the list until tomorrow.
‘I don’t know if you’ve made any arrangements for lunch, but if not we do have a staff-room upstairs.’
‘Yes, thank you. Ginny has already told me that.’
As she spoke, her voice curt and crisp, Charlotte was briefly conscious of the thoughtful look he gave her. To her intense irritation she could feel herself flushing slightly, and she knew that had her mother been present she would have chided her for her attitude.
She had brought some sandwiches for her lunch. The town was well known to her, small but busy with a very pleasant little park by the river, and she had planned originally to have lunch there.
However, it was a cool day with a grey sky and she had to admit that she would probably be more comfortable in the staff-room.
She was touched when she walked back into her office to find Ginny waiting there for her.
‘It can sometimes be awkward when you’re new,’ Ginny told her with a friendly smile. ‘So I thought I’d come and see if you wanted to go upstairs for lunch.’
‘Thank you. I’ve brought some sandwiches with me because I wasn’t sure. I had planned to eat them by the river, but it is rather cold.’
As they walked out into the corridor a woman was coming