The Decision (95 page)

‘I know,’ said Toby Gilmour, surprising her. ‘Everyone finds it so.’

‘Of course to you, it’s all in the day’s work—’

‘To a degree, yes. But not entirely,’ he said and then, his voice at its most impatient, ‘I do know something of what you’re going through. I was divorced myself two years ago. I can remember every ugly moment.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Eliza looked at him; he was staring out of the taxi window, his face bleak.

‘Did – do you have children?’ she asked.

‘No. Thank God. I can see how much worse that makes it. Anyway, I really shouldn’t be talking like this. Very unprofessional. Old Selbourne, he’s been divorced three times.’

‘I’m surprised.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, that anyone would marry him in the first place. Oh, dear, that was very impertinent of me. Sorry.’

‘That’s all right,’ he said, but he didn’t smile. She had obviously offended him, overstepped the mark, when he had been trying to make her feel better; after all, Selbourne was his boss.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

‘It’s all right. Please don’t apologise.’

The cab had slowed down: ‘What number, guv?’

‘Oh, that block there. Yes. Thank you. Goodnight to you, Mrs Shaw – Eliza, I’m sorry, I keep forgetting. I’ll see you in court.’

He got out, his face blank and aloof. She looked at him, thinking she had blown it totally now. He must think her …

He suddenly leaned into the cab and smiled. ‘Try very hard not to’ – he’s going to tell me not to worry about it, she thought, and I shall scream – ‘pick your nose please. Until we’re outside again.’

And he was gone, up the steps and through the doors of one of the redbrick mansion blocks in Lower Sloane Street; she sat looking after him, trying to sort out how she felt about him, whether she liked him or whether she didn’t. God knows how he must view her from his lofty, brilliant barrister position. A dimwit fashion stylist, going through a messy divorce; her only discernible talent wolf-whistling …

Toby Gilmour closed the door on his flat and leaned back against it, smiling. She really was rather lovely. Very attractive. And funny. And engagingly self-deprecating. Which was odd, because from all accounts she was a brilliantly successful fashion editor. Well, that was the divorce effect. He should know.

‘I’ll just say no, I won’t be a witness,’ said Gina. She confronted Matt’s rage calmly. ‘You can, you know. Refuse. Unless the judge thinks there’s a real reason to call you. And why should he? He’ll probably ask you what our relationship is about and you can tell him the boring, unbelievable truth. You’ll be under oath, so they’ll have to believe you. Oh, God.’

‘What?’

‘Four more weeks or whatever without any nookie. It’s getting very tedious.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ said Matt.

Sometimes she really wondered if it was going to be worth it.

‘Matt!’

It was late; he’d been out, with a client, he said. She wondered if it had been Gina. She hadn’t even confronted him with that one. The solicitors had, and that was all that was necessary. She really, really didn’t care.

‘Yes?’ he said, walking into the study.

‘We have to talk about Emmie. I didn’t realise until today that the judge might want to question her.’

‘Then your solicitor has been very remiss. He should have warned you of that.’

‘Warned me! You talk as if it was my fault, the whole awful thing—’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘No,’ she said: and then, her voice rising, ‘No, no, no, it isn’t. It’s yours, your idea to do this, to take her away from me – or from you – to force her to live with one or other of us, growing up confused, torn in half, not sure who she’s supposed to love, who can tell her what to do, how to behave—’

‘That will be me,’ he said, ‘make no mistake about that.’

She bit back any retort. This was too important. ‘Well, but Matt, don’t you think we ought to prepare her? Poor little girl has no idea what’s happening, or rather what’s about to happen, surely if you love her so much you ought to face that fact, and we ought to talk to her, together, tell her, talk to her about it—’

There was a long silence; then he looked at her, and his face wasn’t harsh or hostile any more, it was exhausted and infinitely sad and he said, ‘Yes. Yes, you’re right, of course we should.’

‘Mariella, my darling, darling love, thank you for all of it. It’s been so lovely. So very, very lovely.’

‘Jeremy,
carissimo
, I love you so, so much. Can’t we – maybe – just a little while longer, next week I am in Rome, we could have one last wonderful meeting there, and then—’

‘No, Mariella. No, we can’t. We agreed, you know we did, we promised one another and – and Giovanni, I suppose, although he doesn’t know it, and we have to keep that promise. It’s the only thing to do, we can’t go on like this, it’s so …’

‘Yes, yes, I know. You are so, so good. So much more good than me.’

She sighed, a huge, heavy, tear-filled sigh; they were lying in bed in Jeremy’s apartment, had been there for what they had promised one another would be the last time, and now that the dawn was working its way most insistently into the room, the harsh, unforgiving dawn that would part them, they shrank from the task ahead.

‘It was the nightingale and not the lark,’ said Jeremy suddenly, reaching out, tangling a great lock of her hair round his fingers, raising it to his lips and—

‘What? I did not hear anything.’

‘Shakespeare, darling one, Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. Like us, they had to part at dawn, like us they dreaded it, denied it had really come. Oh, Mariella.’

‘Oh, Jeremy.’

She turned to him, clung to him, weeping; he could feel her sobs, feel them in his own body, how could they do this, it was cruel, so cruel. How could they bear it, how could he bear it, so little happiness together, so much pain to come.

‘I go now,’ she said suddenly, and sat up, turned her back on him and went into the bathroom; appearing again, in a few moments, pale and tearstained, looking as he could never have imagined her, un-chic, tousle-haired, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her face stony, her eyes hard with resolve.

‘I will not kiss you, or we will be here forever. I love you, I love you, dear Gentleman Jeremy, and – and goodbye. Thank you for loving me.’

And she was gone, swiftly, shutting the bedroom door after her, not even looking back; and he heard the front door slam, and she was gone, out of his flat, out of his bed, out of his life, and he turned back into the bed, and buried his face in the sheets that still bore her perfume and her imprint and the sweet, raw smell of sex with her, and he saw a hair, a long dark hair, and realised it was all he had left of her, and buried his face into his pillow and wept as he had not done since he was a small, small boy, shuddering, desperate sobs; and thought how hard it was, this grief, born as it had been from sheer joy, the joy hardly out of its infancy, that there could be no comfort for it from anyone, for who, knowing the circumstances, would think they had any right to it? And yet it was as harsh and as cruel as one born of bereavement, perhaps harsher in its own way, for they were without one another, longing for and needing one another, while knowing with the touch of a phone, a scribble on a page, they could be together again. And yet could not.

And then finally, exhausted, he got up and showered and dressed in one of his hundreds of beautiful shirts and one of his dozens of beautiful suits and drank a strong cup of coffee and walked all the way to Carlos Place, blind and deaf to everything, and pushed through the doors of the agency which was still blessedly empty and went up to his office and stood staring at it as if he had never seen it before.

And then the day began, and he went through it, a smiling, charming automaton, so filled with grief and loneliness he had no real idea what he was doing; and no one, no one at all, could have begun to guess the depth of his misery and how his life seemed utterly devoid of any kind of purpose whatsoever.

It was over. That bit at least. The whole thing seemed like a dream now, walking with Philip Gordon into that vast Victorian Gothic building with its great wrought-iron gates that she had seen a hundred times, on the news and in corny old films. She followed Philip and his pretty, posh assistant, Sarah, into the huge cathedral-like atrium, with alcoves on either side where people huddled, having clearly urgent conferences, and barristers berobed and bewigged strode about looking important. Nobody seemed to be smiling. Rather curiously, large glass cases contained life-size models of judges and Lord Chief Justices down the centuries, dressed in the requisite wigs and robes. It was all totally – what? Terrifying. That was about it.

A glass-fronted, double-sided noticeboard stood just inside the cathedral entrance, with details of the day’s cases; and there it was, pinned up, Court number 31, Mr Justice Harris, Shaw vs Shaw. That was her; and how had that happened, that her marriage, her really rather amazing marriage, entered into with such happiness and love and hope, had become Shaw vs Shaw and sent into Court number 31 to be dismembered by Mr Justice Harris? She felt her eyes fill – God, she must stop weeping all the time, it was pathetic – brushed the tears impatiently away, got out a hanky and heard a crisp voice, ‘No bogies, please!’ and there was Toby Gilmour, not quite smiling, looking oddly older and more important in his gown and his wig.

‘All right?’ he said and she nodded and managed to smile. ‘Good. We’re lucky in Harris, nice old chap, quite benign. Pity we won’t have him next time. He’d be ideal. Still – you OK?’

She nodded.

‘Good. The others are here, upstairs already. We’ve got a bit of time, want to see round?’

She shook her head; it seemed a bleak suggestion.

She followed them up a large stone curving staircase – everything seemed to be stone or marble – which opened onto a wide balcony overlooking the huge, empty space; ‘this is one of the few places you can actually have a meeting,’ said Philip, ‘you see people balancing enormous files containing millions of pounds’ worth of information on windowsills or this balustrade; there’s one windowsill if you get there early enough which is pole position, it’s actually got a seat and somewhere to put your files, only we’re too late. Which doesn’t matter, because we don’t need to have a meeting.’

He smiled at her and she managed to smile back; they were both being so nice, she thought, working so hard at cheering her up …

They seemed to know everyone; they were constantly stopping to say good morning to people and ask them how they were. Her main emotion, apart from terror, was a sort of astonishment at this strange new world she found herself in, so different from anything she had ever known, so cold and muffled and restrained, and she could have been in another country altogether; and yet outside, just beyond the gates, was Fleet Street, noisy, drunken, gossipy Fleet Street, one of the places she knew and loved best in the world.

They stood there for a while and then, ‘Might as well go along,’ said Toby Gilmour, ‘my pupil is meeting us there,’ and she followed them again down a long corridor with a vaulted ceiling and panelled walls, with doors leading into the individual courts. ‘This is where the family courts are – and look, there are the rooms for the Lord Chief Justice – and oh, yes, there they are, outside Court 31, your husband and his cohorts.’

Her husband; again she thought, he’s my husband but now he’s also Shaw and I’m Shaw and we’re versus one another and how and why …

‘Morning,’ said a rather large, bruteish-looking man to Philip, who smiled graciously and said, ‘Good morning, Mr Lewis. You know Toby Gilmour, of course?’

‘Yes, morning, good to see you.’ He nodded to Eliza, held out his hand. ‘Ivor Lewis.’

‘Good morning,’ said Eliza. Her own voice sounded very clear and firm to her; she felt relieved. She’d been afraid it would wobble.

‘This is my assistant, Maureen Gunn. And our QC, Sir Bruce Hayward,’ said Ivor Lewis.

Bruce Hayward clearly considered himself far too important to speak; he looked disdainfully at them all. He was much older than Gilmour; probably about as old as Tristram Selbourne, Eliza thought, approaching sixty, but taller, thinner and much less fruity.

‘And you two don’t need any introductions, of course,’ said Ivor Lewis, clearly with an attempt at humour, indicating Matt rather awkwardly. Matt managed something approaching a smile. Eliza stared back blankly. And thought, two hours ago, we were in the same house, having baths, cleaning our teeth, making tea …

‘Ah,’ said Philip, ‘here comes the judge now. Good morning, your honour.’

Mr Justice Harris acknowledged this with a gruff ‘morning’ and an inclination of his head, and swept into the courtroom followed by his minions. And closed the door.

‘Now we wait,’ said Gilmour, ‘shouldn’t be long.’

And then they were in there, and it was even more like a film set with Mr Justice Harris sitting on his bench, beneath a lion and a unicorn carved in wood – it was all wood in here, no longer stone and marble, with every inch of wall, it seemed, covered in books – and some rather lovely art nouveau hanging lamps, Eliza noticed, surprised that such a thing should even impinge on her consciousness.