Law Of Attraction

She was damned if she was going to ask him where to find the files, she reflected ten minutes later.

The list had apparently been on his desk and when he had opened the communicating door so that he could go and collect it she had been surprised to discover that his office was not a bit as she had imagined. The furniture was slightly old-fashioned, comfortable easy chairs either side of a fireplace, a heavy partners’ desk in front of the window and, most incongruously, a large wooden box of children’s toys in one corner.

‘I find them useful when I’m dealing with divorce cases,’ he told her, seeing her look at them. ‘Very often if I’m acting for the woman she brings her children with her. It helps to distract them.’

What she hadn’t seen in his office, though, had been any evidence of any filing cabinets.

Perhaps she could ask this Margaret Lewis when she met her, or perhaps she could ask Ginny the receptionist.

The communicating door was still open. Charlotte longed to close it, to shut herself off from the man working in the adjacent room, the man who trusted her so little that he had had her placed here under his visual jurisdiction, but even such a small choice as closing a door was not hers to make, she fumed bitterly. She was an employee now, dependent on the whims and the commands of others.

At half-past ten she heard a knock on her outer office door. When she got up to answer it the woman standing outside introduced herself as Margaret Lewis.

She was in her fifties, tall with thick strong hair and a warm smile.

If she shared Daniel Jefferson’s lack of faith in Charlotte’s professional competence she certainly wasn’t betraying it, and as she accompanied her up the stairs Charlotte felt herself begin to relax slightly, for the first time that morning.

‘We’re quite a small, close-knit unit here,’ Margaret told her as they went upstairs. ‘I like to think that it comes from the firm’s originally being started by a woman.’

‘A woman!’

Charlotte paused on the stairs to stare at her.

Margaret smiled.

‘Yes. Lydia Jefferson started up in practice here just after she had qualified, when she was unable to get work with any established practice. A very adventurous step for a woman in those days.’

‘Lydia Jefferson?’ Charlotte questioned. ‘Then she must have been…Was she related to Daniel Jefferson in some way?’

‘His great-aunt,’ Margaret confirmed. ‘She had been retired for several years when I first came to work as an office junior, but she still took a very strong interest in the practice. In fact it was she who first encouraged me to take my own articles and to qualify. She and Daniel were very close. When he was quite small, still at junior school, she used to bring him down here with her sometimes.

‘She had very strong views on women’s rights to control their own lives and she was vehement in her support of the underdog. Daniel is very like her in that. Much more so than his father, who, although kind, was much more the traditional stereotype of the country solicitor.

‘Daniel was a brilliant student and many people thought he should have opted to become a barrister, but he was always determined that he wanted to work here, continuing the tradition established by his aunt.’

‘But surely now with all the publicity surrounding the Vitalle case he must at least be tempted to take advantage of his success and perhaps move the practice to London?’

Margaret shook her head.

‘Oh, no, Daniel would never do that,’ she told Charlotte calmly. She said it so positively and with such faith and affection that Charlotte felt her resentment against Daniel Jefferson surge rebelliously inside her. It was all right for him. He had had everything handed to him on a plate. All he had had to do was to qualify and then to step into the comfortable world waiting for him. A world laboured for by a woman…

A woman who had succeeded as she had not, and against far greater odds, Charlotte reminded herself miserably as they reached the top of the stairs and Margaret Lewis opened a door on the landing.

Inside the large sunny room eight people sat at desks working. The room buzzed with the hum of computers and electronic equipment. All along one of the shorter walls were racks containing the familiar packages of papers and legal briefs tied with pink ribbon.

It was obvious immediately that the people in the room were extremely busy and yet the atmosphere was one of relaxed happiness, a young woman leaning over the shoulder of a male colleague, teasing him about something as she helped him with a query.

There was, Charlotte recognised, a bright-eyed quality and an enthusiasm about the occupants of this room that said how much they enjoyed their work, and there was also an alertness about them, an eagerness that she recognised as the kind of enthusiasm possessed by those who were the best of their peer group.

Without knowing any of them, she immediately knew that these trainees were all of them high achievers, quick, intelligent, hard-working, much as she had once been herself, but they had something she recognised that she had never really had: they were free of the anxiety that had plagued her almost from the moment she had set up her own practice.

If they knew about her professional history they were certainly not showing it, as Margaret introduced them to her and they reacted with what appeared to be genuine warmth.

One or two of the boys eyed her short skirt appreciatively, but no one displayed any antagonism or unpleasantness towards her.

‘Bless ’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.