Confessions of a Barrister

I placed my hateful blue bag of shame on the floor then plonked the brief of West v West on my desk, making sure that it landed with a disdainful thud, causing my conscientious roommate Amir to look up. He was busily reading a rather crusty, yellowing law book.

‘Oh dear, you don’t look very happy,’ he suggested and I harrumphed and muttered something about having lost a case that morning. Amir grinned at me – ‘Just get it billed mate, and think about the cheque,’ he said, which is the barrister’s equivalent of being told that there are plenty more fish in the sea, just after being dumped.

He’s right though – just move on to the next case, that is what we do. I looked down at the papers in West v West.

I unwrapped the pink ribbon and started to read it. Why pink ribbon? I have no idea, but briefs are wrapped in pink ribbon, they always have been and they always will be (apart from Court of Appeal briefs, they are wrapped in white ribbon, yep, beats me too).

I am instructed to represent Mrs Phi Li West; a Thai woman who came to the UK eight years ago to marry Mr Graeme West. Things were great at first (aren’t they always?), but don’t appear to be now, because now Mrs West wants an injunction and non-molestation order from the court. This will prevent Mr West from going near her and using any violence or making any threat to harm her.

Okay. So far so good, I have enough of a recollection of this procedure to feel confident that I can obtain the injunction as instructed.

I read Mrs West’s statement.

I read that she came over to the UK having met Mr West at a function. Yeah, ‘function’ – only if ‘function’ is the Thai word for mail-order-bride website. I stopped myself. I know I’m only being cynical because I’m sulking at the prospect of being in the Family Courts.

Amir looked up from his desk. ‘So, where are you tomorrow?’

I mumbled my answer miserably, ‘Family Court.’

‘What?’ he exclaimed. ‘I didn’t know you did family work?’

‘I don’t,’ I said, trying to retain my pride and dignity, ‘I’m just doing it as a favour to Clem and the solicitors, you know how things are.’

He shot me a genuine smile, because he’s a genuinely nice guy. ‘Best make sure you’ve got your woolly cardie and sandals out of the back of your wardrobe.’

I smiled. But I didn’t mean it. I didn’t want to be doing a case about a failed marriage.

The rest of Mrs Phi West’s story is a rather sad one. They’d been trying for a child, but hadn’t managed to conceive. At which point Mr West had, allegedly, started to become controlling of Mrs West, not allowing her out with her friends, hacking into her phone and email accounts, that kind of thing, until finally, they’d had a fight and he had grabbed her round the neck, causing her abrasions and some swelling.

As it happens, as I write this, I’m single. And, when I read stories like the Wests’ I’m quite glad that I’m single. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some kind of cynical old bastard who’s been cruelly savaged by a love affair, or some kind of commitment-phobe who goes around trying to bed as many women as he can in an attempt to cover up for inadequacies elsewhere, I just haven’t met the right girl yet. Which is actually my mother’s phrase, but I’m happy to adopt it.

I suppose Graeme West thought he’d met the right girl. I suppose he thought that he’d create a little family and could live happily and contentedly ever after – well, he got that wrong.

The next day I turned up at the City Family Court Centre, a massive and rather ugly modern building constructed at a time before austerity. I didn’t need my blue bag – no wigs and gowns in the Family Court.

The atmosphere inside this court is different. Whereas in a Crown Court there is always an air of excitement and suspense, here there is just despondency and despair. These people aren’t bad, they’re just unhappy.

I stood in the reception area and watched as a little toddler tentatively meandered away from a girl who looked about nineteen years old and who I assumed was his mother. She sat looking vacantly into the middle distance as he waddled towards a Yucca plant, fell into it and started to cry. The girl went to comfort him, hoisting him onto her hip in that instinctive way that only mothers can. She put a dummy into his mouth and he stopped crying and stared at the offending plant.

A door slammed and a fat man stormed into the reception area. He turned and shouted back towards the door, pointing at it angrily. ‘I don’t care what you or anyone else says, I don’t bloody care.’ Then he flung his hands in the air and made a kind of growling noise, interspersed with various swear words.

I sighed and wondered if in ten or twenty years’ time, one of the toddler’s abiding memories of childhood will be of a Yucca plant and a man shouting at the City Family Court.

I’d been told to expect a trainee solicitor called Kelly. I looked around for her, then back at the growling man who was now being moved away by a court usher, when she made herself known to me.

‘Are you Russell Winnock?’

I turned around.

‘I am,’ I said, ‘are you Kelly?’

She didn’t smile as she acknowledged me, instead she looked at me with total disinterest. Kelly Backworth was quite stunningly beautiful. She had shoulder-length blonde hair, eyes that wouldn’t sit still and full lips. She had colour and youth and hope and expectation that shone out amongst the grey despondency of the waiting room. I wondered what she looked like when she smiled. I wished she had smiled at me.

‘I’ve put Mrs West in a conference room around there,’ she told me and I beamed back at her.

She then led me into a small conference room where Mrs Phi West was waiting.

Christ, Mrs West was stunningly beautiful as well. She had a long slick of black hair that made its way down the side of her unfeasibly perfect face and onto her chest. She didn’t smile at me either.

Kelly Backworth sat down next to Phi West and they both looked at me with grim disinterest, which was confusing – surely, they both need me for what was about to happen.

‘Right,’ I said, ‘Mrs West. Can I call you Phi?’ I pronounced her name Fee, as in fee-fi-fo-fum.

‘It pronounced “pie”,’ she replied in a surprisingly grating, heavily accented voice, ‘but no call me Porky Pie.’ She looked venomously at me as she said this. ‘He call me Porky Pie. No call me Porky Pie.’

‘Of course,’ I stuttered, ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

I introduced myself, as Kelly started making notes and Phi, not Porky Phi, stared at me.

‘Right,’ I said, ‘today’s hearing should be fairly straightforward.’

I then tried to describe the procedure I think the court will follow. Although, to be honest, it’d been that long since I’d done a Family Court injunction, I could be kidding all of us, so I’m glad when I’m interrupted by a knock on the door. It’s my opponent, Vicky Smith. Vicky is from my chambers. She is friendly, a few years senior to me, and a very good family barrister.

She smiled at me. ‘Can I have a word?’ she asked, and I mumbled something to Porky Phi and Kelly and made my way out of the room – I have to admit it’s a big relief.

‘Russ,’ she said, ‘Clem told me that you were doing this – what’s that all about?’

‘Just doing the solicitors a favour,’ I proffered unconvincingly.

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘well you’re going to love this.’ She added, ‘Follow me.’

I followed Vicky into another small conference room further up the corridor. In it sat a nervous-looking man with strawberry-blonde hair. He is Mr Graeme West. He didn’t look at all like I imagined. He looked respectable and normal, handsome too, to be fair, in an outdoors type of way. I find it difficult to picture him leafing through his wife’s iPhone or grabbing her around the neck.

‘Mr West,’ said Vicky, ‘this is Mr Winnock, he is representing your wife today. Will you please show him what you showed me earlier.’

Mr West unbuttoned his shirt and revealed a perfect and newly scabbed burn mark in the shape of a large sausage branded into his chest. Ouch.

‘I don’t suppose your client’s mentioned this to you, has she?’ asked Vicky.

I shook my head.

‘Let’s go outside.’ I followed Vicky outside and she immediately adopted a quiet, informal tone – ‘Russ,’ she said, ‘that’s where she attacked him with a pair of curling tongs just the other day after a row about a new car she wanted.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘Surely not.’ I wasn’t sure if I could quite picture Porky Phi carrying out such a venomous act of violence.

‘He’s absolutely terrified of her,’ Vicky continued. ‘I’ll be straight with you – as soon as a Judge sees that, there’s no way on God’s green earth that he’s going to give you your injunction.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, which I realised straight away was rubbish – Vicky was absolutely right.