and as naturally as you do.’
Oh, the gloves have come off now. I can feel Skylar almost telepathically warning me not to get involved with this but she’s gone to far. He glares at me anxiously, like I’m a wild animal who needs to be tamed.
I laugh sarcastically. ‘Nah. I think anyone can wear blonde well naturally… but it takes a special kind of person to wear a peroxide blonde well. It’s such a strong look. Anyway, sorry for interrupting your lunch! Bye now!’ Then I powerwalk out, hoping Skylar is behind me.
As soon as we are outside, Skylar just looks at me as I wait for him to tell me to pack my stuff up and get the hell out of Chambers for being so aggressive. He stands opposite me, his eyes narrowed and head slightly tilted, like he’s trying to work me out. I have no idea what’s going to happen next, and so I can’t meet his eyes.
‘You’re not scared of people, are you?’ he asks, sounding mildly impressed.
‘Not of people like that, no,’ I reply in my best hoity-toity voice.
‘Not quite how I wanted your first run-in with them to be, but I have to say… smooth, very smooth,’ he replies, with a wry smile.
I smile back and, right there, I know that, no matter how hard he works me, Skylar is on my side.
Telling Heidi about the entire bitch-fest later that evening when I get home is great fun. She pulls all the outraged faces and keeps uttering ‘what absolute bitches!’ sporadically throughout the story.
‘You know, you really should get hair extensions, just to see the looks on their stuck-up faces then!’ Heidi suggests in all seriousness, and at one point I consider it. However, we both reach the conclusion that extensions, in addition to wearing the wig, might just be too much ‘stuff’ to wear on my head on a daily basis (in a weird TOWIE-meets-Rumpole kind of way).
By the end of the rant, she is furious on my behalf and I have to stop her seeking out Clarinda on social media and giving her a piece of her mind.
‘Mandy, it’s simply unacceptable that you must endure this kind of behaviour. They’re only jealous, you know,’ she says, filling my wine glass up.
‘It’s hard, though,’ I point out. ‘I can’t go into proper, full-on slaying mode because Skylar has warned me not to be bitchy, and he’s right. My career depends on this.’ I stretch out on the sofa, taking a large gulp.
‘Well, just do your best to avoid them. I can meet you every day for lunch if you want? Moral support? I hate to think of you alone in the middle of that bollocks,’ she kindly offers.
I smile at Heidi. I know she’s trying to help, but I need to do this myself. And I can’t run away from it.
‘Thanks, sweets. But Skylar has my back, and it’ll take more than a few catty comments about my hair to drag me down,’ I laugh, hoping I’m right.
The first month of pupillage whooshes past in a blur.
I’ve literally spent the last month being dragged around every Crown Court in the north of the land, doing advocacy exercises for Skylar and… not much else. Well, I’ve been trying really hard to gracefully integrate into Chambers as best I can, but seeing Marty in action truly is something else. I’ve had to watch him professionally seduce virtually all members of Chambers and I honestly don’t know how he does it. He seems to pick up on their weaknesses and exploit them to his own advantage. It’s excruciating. For example, last week, I heard ‘Livvy’, another barrister in Chambers, telling him how she failed to get tickets for her favourite ballet in town. Marty put on his best smug/sympathetic/I’m-about-to-make-all-your-dreams-come-true face, informed her that his mother was on the Arts Council of SomethingOrOther in London, and that not only could he get her tickets, but it would be his ‘absolute pleasure’ to do so.
What. A. Fucking. Creep.
Everyone at the Newcastle Bar is giddy on this particularly leafy day in October because it’s their turn, among other legal centres on the North-Eastern Circuit, to host ‘Mess’. Despite the fact he’d rather be just about anywhere else on the planet, Skylar is taking me; he’s decided I’m ‘ready’, whatever that means.
‘Mess’ is basically a really formal, traditional dinner full of barristers, with frightening judges in attendance. From what I can gather, it’s all terribly hilarious and much wine is consumed. Obviously, for a baby barrister like myself, it’s a rather daunting process, not least because I will be expected to drink wine and, as a result, my personal standards will slip. I do not want to relax so much that I attempt to debate the new storyline in Hollyoaks with a High Court judge.
As the new pupils in Chambers, Marty and I are expected to go with our pupilmasters. The dress code is ‘formal suitwear’ for women and ‘lounge suits’ for men. I mean, seriously, what the hell is a ‘lounge suit’ anyway? Does anyone even know? As per the unwritten rule, pupils don’t pay for it, but Skylar makes a fuss, as usual. When I ask him for the payment to give to the Mess secretary, he gets his cheque book out and mutters something under his breath; the only audible words I can decipher are ‘bloody traditions’. He rips the cheque out with unnecessary vigour and gives it to me.
I have been told members of Chambers are meeting in Nevo Bar at 6.30 p.m., but when I arrive at 6.20 p.m. it appears Marty and his admirers have got there much earlier and are all sitting together in a booth, Marty in the middle, looking like the cat who got the cream.
‘Heeeyyy Mandy! Think it’s about time you were let off Skylar’s leash for a night! Why don’t you tell us all about this dancing job you had in Ibiza?’ creeps a barrister named ‘Beaumont’, who is old enough to be my biological grandfather. He winks as he says it, so I don’t think he wants a technical lowdown of what my job actually involved, but rather a demonstration of what he thinks it was, that is a free lapdance where I shake my tits in his face while artistically waving glittery fans about. Or something. I actually dread to think.
‘Yes, Amanda! Come on! Give us a demo! Consider it a Chambers initiation!’ yells Percy SomethingOrOther, as the rest of the Bad Boy Bar Crew clap and holler.
Thankfully, Skylar walks in at this very moment and trundles me off to the bar to get a drink. By this point, I need one.
The Mess is being held at the Liberty Gentlemen’s Club. It has a fairly normal exterior but the interior is something else. Grand staircase upon entering, the whole place dripping in chandeliers and one of those hideous patterned carpets throughout, which looks like it’s been there since time began.
The meal itself is in a large dining room containing several large round tables. It doesn’t matter where you sit, but it DOES matter in which order you walk into the room.
Of course it does.
‘You have to enter the room in order of seniority,’ says Skylar, as if this is a perfectly normal thing to do.
People start forming a line. All the old folk who have been at the Bar hundreds of years (or so it appears) stand ceremoniously at the front, emanating a great sense of achievement. Then there’s me at the end and a whole load of middle-aged people in the middle.
Some random man I’ve never seen before comes to the front of the line with a kind of sceptre-stick thingy, stamps it on the floor three times and the general guffawing and chattering comes to an abrupt end. He declares that ‘Dinner shall be served!’ and everyone begins walking in.
As people spew into the dining room, they clamber around for the best seats. Obviously, Marty is beckoned over to the ‘old boys’ table consisting of his fan club from Chambers. Skylar really couldn’t have picked a worse table, but he’s been left with little option. It includes Angela and her Hot Bar Bitches Club (Flick, ‘Jazz’, Lottie and the passive-aggressive Clarinda) and a fella called Rupert, who is clearly tickled pink to be surrounded