Babyface

The name didn’t ring a bell, I wondered which part of his life she was involved in, in which volume of the brief I might have read about her, if I’d had all the papers.

‘Mmm,’ I said, cautiously.

She was thin, blond and tanned. She had to be Danny Richards’ girlfriend. She looked tired, her face was lined, as if she’d spent too much time in the sun, and I was conscious that she was wearing a lot of gold jewellery. She looked like my idea of a gangster’s moll.

‘Have you got time for a coffee?’

‘I can’t talk to you about his case,’ I said. ‘I’m only here for the morning. You should get in touch with his solicitor.’

‘Oh her,’ she said, dismissively. ‘I don’t even know her. She’s only been on the case a week.’

‘Has she?’ I was surprised. The brief I didn’t have was obviously prepared in her usual meticulous style.

‘Two weeks,’ she amended.

‘Look, Mr Richards hasn’t said I can talk to you,’ I said, thinking he probably would have, if we’d got round to it. ‘It’s his case, I can’t.’

Her face twisted in anguish. ‘I’m not going to be able to see him before this trial. Someone’s got to do something.’

‘OK,’ I sighed. ‘If you like, you can tell me what you want to tell me and I’ll pass it on.’

She smiled, a big wide smile.

I thought we would go to a rather nice café with large windows and the smell of coffee beans; I envisaged a little espresso with some hot milk on the side; I saw myself considering a slightly warm apricot danish pastry. But we were sitting on two rickety chairs in the back room of a shop, drinking Tesco’s own brand and eating non-chocolate Hob Nobs. I felt quite at home, it reminded me of my life in Colchester, days spent in my dad’s garage. And compared to that, this was high class, because in those days it was Rich Tea or nothing.

We had walked for about five minutes, in silence, away from the city centre, down Dalton Street and round behind the hospital. She walked like a model, moving confidently, head straight, a small smile on her lips. Men looked at her, and kept watching as we passed, twisting their necks, shaking their heads. Till we arrived at the shop. ‘This is Danny’s shop,’ she said. My heart sank. I shouldn’t be here. Kay was going to kill me.

I would make it short. It would be very short. She had unlocked the front door (‘There’s just me, during the week, when Danny’s away,’ she explained. ‘Sometimes I have extra help on a Saturday.’) and we had walked through a forest of armchairs and sofas, covered in mottled blue and grey velvet, and beige and orange corduroy, with matching footstools, guarded by nests of tables. The kind of things I always say I would never have in my home, but that are always fantastically comfortable and comforting to sit on, unlike my own furniture.

I had watched Yolande as she had fiddled with the kettle, carrying it to a room I assumed was the toilet to fill it, as she had removed two mugs from a cupboard on the wall and as she spooned powder from the jar. All with her left hand. I gazed at the long pale-pink painted fingernails incongruously but expertly, left-handedly, completing the coffee-making process. I once fell in love with a person on the basis of left-handedness alone. The relationship didn’t last long, but while it did, whenever anything manual came up I was in heaven, watching her write, watching her make a point, watching her look at the time on the other wrist.

But today I was here for professional reasons.

Yolande eased carefully back in her chair and stretched out her long legs. Not that I was watching.

She wore two thick gold rings on the third finger of her left hand, one splattered with stones that looked like diamonds. She wore a thick gold chain round her left wrist. Her blonde hair was caught up in a sleek chignon and she wore expensive cream clothes. She looked like she had stepped out of the eighties, the seventies. She was obviously older than me, and older than Danny Richards, but as she relaxed, nibbling at a Hob Nob, sipping her coffee, she seemed to grow younger. Maybe that’s what classic clothes and hair do for you. Or perhaps good biscuits. Or possibly good company. I smiled.

She crushed it. ‘You know who I’m married to?’ she said. I couldn’t work out if it was a statement or a question.

‘No.’

‘He’s a bastard.’

‘OK.’

‘He hates the fact that I’m having an affair with Danny.’

‘Well he would.’

‘No, he wouldn’t. Not for the reasons you’re thinking. He doesn’t care about me.’ Uh-oh, we were into the barrister-as-priest situation. I fixed a bland but caring expression on my face. ‘But I actually care about him.’

‘Mmm hmm.’ Whatever gets you through the night, I thought.

‘He’s fifteen years older than me. To him I’m a kind of trophy. That’s what he wanted when he asked me to marry him. And that’s what he got. Look at me. Long legs, blonde hair, good face.’

‘He’s a lucky man,’ I said, meaning it, uncertain where the conversation was going.

‘We’ve been married fifteen years.’

‘That’s good. Did you care about him when you married him?’

‘Good question,’ she said. I felt a small glow of pleasure. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I married him because he asked me. And it made my sister’s eyes pop. And he was very rich,’ she added. ‘So I suppose in one way I married him for his money. And he’s got his money’s worth.’ She ran a hand down her leg. ‘He’s been good to me. It’s just … he can’t help Danny with this … thing.’ She stared at the pieces of carpet on the floor.

‘That’s understandable.’

‘And I wondered if you could.’

My head snapped up from the turquoise swirls on the floor. I was more than happy for her to ask me to go for coffee because of my personal charm. I was also happy to be a listening ear, even to offer a little bit of moral support. But I wasn’t sure what concepts we were now dealing with. What might a husband do? Put up shelves? Have a toolbox with screwdrivers in? Plan a jailbreak? We could be heading towards a conflict of interests. ‘I’m Danny’s barrister,’ I said. I was already in too deep, I was calling the client by his first name. ‘Does he know you’re talking to me?’

‘Oh yes, I just went to see him. He said he thought you were OK.’

‘That’s nice, but I can’t represent anybody else.’

‘But I thought that after today, you weren’t going to be his barrister. You could give me some advice.’

‘No, no, no. There are professional considerations here. I really shouldn’t be talking to you at all.’

‘Professional considerations! Where have I heard that before?’

‘I don’t know, but I’m no good to anybody if I’m not professional. You have got to go through Kay Davidson, the solicitor.’

‘I don’t know her, I don’t know if I can trust her.’

‘She’s straight,’ I said, adding to myself, professionally speaking. ‘I know her, you have absolutely nothing to worry about from her. But, if you don’t trust her, what’s she doing being Danny’s … Mr Richards’ solicitor? Not to mention the fact she’s in London.’ It’s not unheard of to have a solicitor from out of town, even on Legal Aid, but it is unusual.

‘Because he – he needed a new solicitor. For this, he needed a new solicitor.’

‘I thought all his recent offences were serious assaults? Why change now?’

‘He’d … had the old one for years. He needed someone new. And we heard she was good. She was in London, away from Birmingham. But I’ve never met her. You can get a feel of people when you meet them. You know who to trust.’ Her expression changed. ‘Danny’s got to get off this.’

‘You can trust Kay Davidson,’ I said. ‘Ask her.’ I was so anxious not to know about Danny Richards and his problems. I could feel myself slipping down into a large vat of golden syrup. Nice, especially if you had a slice of bread and butter with you, but really difficult to get out of.

‘But she’s only been to see him a couple of times. She won’t even speak to me on the phone.’

I lifted my hand. ‘It’s probably because she hasn’t been given the say-so from Danny to speak to you.’ Oh God, Kay was going to kill me for talking to Yolande. ‘It really is tricky in a case like this, who you talk to, who you don’t. Why don’t you go and see Danny? He’s on remand, you can go any time, can’t you? Tell him to talk to Kay.’

‘I can’t take any more time off,’ she said, gesturing round the room with a biscuit.