The Pupil Page 9

  They walked to the tube. Neither spoke. She wondered whether to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ But she wasn’t sorry, didn’t regret those twenty minutes with Elliot.

  Luke said, ‘If you don’t want to move in…’

  ‘But I do.’

  ‘OK.’ He paused. ‘There’s one thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t ever do that again.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘That’s good. Because if you do, I…’ Luke hesitated. Some instinct had prompted her to test him and she waited in silence for his response. ‘I don’t know what I would do.’ He had passed the test. Just. She never apologised.

  Natasha remembered those words as she stepped out onto the bath mat, Leonard Cohen still wailing through the bathroom door.

  Her phone was ringing as she stepped into the bedroom. She saw the name on the screen and answered.

  ‘Mel?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Natasha.’

  ‘I didn’t get it.’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There were lots of good people. It was a really difficult decision.’

  ‘There was me and Nigel. You could have taken us both. Marcus reckoned you would.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s not up to Marcus.’

  There was a pause. Mel said nothing. She could have explained. But Natasha knew why she didn’t explain. It wasn’t just the Attendance Note. Mel had disliked her from the start. She had never wanted a pupil, particularly one who was quick, who could see through her waffle. Oh, Mel could talk the talk. She could be nice to clients, work out the legal issues. But put her on her feet, give her someone tough to cross-examine and she would fall apart. Natasha had seen it. Mel didn’t want another tenant on her patch who was better than she was. Younger, sharper, who would steal her solicitors, take her work. That’s why she voted for that bloke in a wheelchair. Mel’s practice was looking thin. She was never around when the work came in. Not like Natasha who stayed in chambers every evening till the clerks went home. She knew from those emails where Mel was spending her afternoons when she pretended to go home to work on papers.

  ‘I’d like feedback.’

  ‘OK. I’ll pass that on.’

  ‘So, what now?’

  ‘You’ve still got three months. They might let you have a third six months if you don’t find anywhere else. What are you doing tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m in Westminster Magistrates’ Court.’

  ‘Well you seem to be getting plenty of work. You could always squat.’

  Natasha didn’t want to squat. Barristers were self-employed so technically they could work anywhere. But traditionally they clubbed together in chambers where they employed clerks to bring in the work. As a tenant she would have had status, a say in the running of chambers, a secure foothold. As a squatter she would be a nobody, available for work but with no base on which to build a practice. Squatters never lasted long. The tenants could kick her out any time. And a third six as a pupil was even worse. There would be no reason for the clerks to put her forward if they knew she wasn’t staying. New pupils would move into her territory to be nurtured by Andy and the other tenants. People might be friendly; they might pretend to support you. But when you were no longer any use to chambers, they wouldn’t bother. Mel had destroyed everything.

  ‘Listen, I have to go. Jacob’s just had his biology exam. I haven’t had a chance to talk to him. We’ll speak soon.’

  ‘All right.’

  As if everything was just the same. Which, Natasha supposed, it was; the same shitty, badly paid trudge around the courts of Greater London, waiting for someone to give her a crumb of work. She had played the game, chatted up people she despised, worked all hours for less than the minimum wage. Everyone thought barristers were well paid. She could make three times the money in escort work.

  She put down the phone, sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall. She had worked so bloody hard. If only they had given her a male supervisor, none of this would have happened. Men didn’t take offence at the tiniest hint, didn’t set up cabals and cliques. Chambers were no better than school. The girls had always been tricky, shifting like silverfish. Natasha had preferred hanging around with boys. You didn’t have to keep proving yourself. She felt something rise within her, the same something that in her childhood turned to bites and punches.

  Natasha knew from experience that the mood wouldn’t pass unless she did something active. She used to try to blame her diabetes, but it wasn’t that. She shook out her hair, reattached her pump and checked her blood glucose. It was low, and she ought to eat, but a run would help to calm her down. She could stop if she felt unwell and she would take her phone. She put on her shorts and a T-shirt and went into the kitchen where Luke was standing over the stove.

  ‘I’m going for a run,’ she said.

  ‘But I’m just about to put it on the table.’

  He watched her as she opened a drawer, took out a glucose gel sachet, ripped it open and swallowed the contents. ‘Keep it warm for me,’ she said. Then, as he gave her his hurt, worried look, she added, ‘I’ll be fine. Once round the park. Twenty minutes.’ With that she darted out of the front door and down the stairs.

  The cool evening air brushed her cheeks, her bare arms. She breathed the scent of rain dripping off trees from an earlier shower, the hot spell finally broken. The air was heavy with lime and plane and horse chestnut. Under a grey sky streaked with the pale silver of twilight, she ran, past the neatly planted beds, down the gravel path to the playground, past the pond and canal, around the bandstand. The park was almost empty – just the odd jogger, a few dog walkers. She could hear the hum of traffic on the main road, the occasional scrape and roar of a plane across the sky. She felt the rhythm of effort, the comfort of repetition, the gradual loss of thought in movement. She could have gone on for an hour, but she needed to get back to eat.

  In the flat she took another quick shower. She checked her levels. Just in time. She was beginning to feel faint. In less than five minutes she was clean, dry and dressed at the table with a glass of apple juice, facing Luke’s concern.

  ‘It’s fine, Luke. Don’t worry.’

  ‘But I do. You take too many risks.’

  ‘It’s my body.’

  ‘I live with it.’

  ‘Your choice.’

  He said nothing. Just looked. She knew the pain she gave him, but she couldn’t stop herself. He might have read every book and website he could find on the subject, but he could not know what it was like to live with type 1. He sometimes said it came between them like a difficult child.

  ‘My child,’ she had said.

  ‘No, our child. We’re in this together.’ She shuddered as he spoke. It was as if he were trying to steal something from her. But she stayed silent. She had made her decision about Luke. She wanted him around more than she wanted to be alone and if that meant compromise she would compromise. If he crossed a line she would be gone, and he knew that.

  The casserole was good, but she needed to be careful not to eat too much, too fast.

  ‘Is it OK?’ He still looked anxious.

  ‘It’s fantastic.’

  They ate slowly, silently. Luke took a second helping. He said, ‘I heard you on the phone.’

  ‘I’ll get something. It’ll be fine.’

  ‘Of course you will.’

  Empty words. He had no idea how hard it would be. If she was to get a tenancy elsewhere, she would need Mel for a reference. She thought about the email to Paul Freedman. She still hadn’t sent it. Nor had she deleted it. It might work in her favour. Mel wouldn’t want the world knowing about her private relationship. A reference in return for silence could be a perfect bargain. And even if Mel didn’t care, Freedman would. Natasha remembered the way he came on to her at uni. Like he was entitled. Just because she was a student and he was a lecturer, he thought he could get away with anything. It was time he learnt to behave himself. She remembered the
photo of the pretty woman on his desk the one time she had been to his office. It certainly wasn’t Mel. Stupid man. He ought to be more careful with his emails. As for Mel, a good reference would cost her nothing. In fact, if Mel wanted to see the back of Natasha it was the best thing she could do.

  They carried on eating in silence. That was one of the many things she liked about Luke. He didn’t feel the need to punctuate every gap in the conversation, didn’t try to invade her thoughts.

  They finished their food and cleared the plates into the kitchen. Luke was stacking the dishwasher and wiping down the surfaces.

  ‘Want to watch anything?’ he said.

  ‘Maybe later. I’ve got a bit of work for tomorrow.’

  He gave her his sympathetic look. ‘Your colleagues are a bunch of fools. You work non-stop. You’re smart; you’re beautiful. They’re crazy not to take you.’

  ‘Yeah well, I guess they must have their reasons. Like Mel said, there are lots of good people out there.’ Luke moved towards her, placing both hands on her waist and smiling into her eyes. She pecked him on the cheek and shifted away. He would have stopped everything to take her to bed at that moment and she loved the way he wanted her. But the anger towards Mel was building inside her again and there was something she needed to do first.

  Back in the bedroom she turned on her laptop. She opened the Drafts folder on her email page and scrolled back to April. There it was: the message to Paul. There wasn’t much in it. She wondered why she’d been so careful. It was not like she was accusing anyone. If it gave either of them a moment’s discomfort, all to the good. She moved the cursor to Send and tapped her mouse.

  Then she took out her phone and opened Messenger, scrolling through the old texts till she found what she was looking for, her young Adonis, Jacob Villiers, a beautiful not-so-innocent kid, up for a bit of internet flirting. The messaging had been fun, and his latest photo was suggestive. He was stripped to the waist and had towel draped around his groin. His hair curled over his ears, his dark eyes looked huge and his skin was pale. He must have been holding the phone himself because the features appeared slightly distorted. But he was still a lovely adolescent boy. He reminded her of a painting she had once seen. She loaded another Lola picture, eighteen years old, blue-grey eyes, carefully tousled blonde hair and come-to-bed smile.

  Hi, Jacob she wrote. Lola here.

  She was sure Jacob would remove the towel if she asked him to.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mel

  Mel gazed through the open French windows across the tiny garden to the night sky, a swathe of deep orange behind a silhouette of Victorian roofs and chimney pots. She was lying on her back on the old chintz sofa, head propped on her hands against two cushions. The air was still and warm. The sofa was a dear friend, beloved despite the wine and tea stains hidden among the swirl of pink roses. The brown piping had frayed, the sides of the arms had been shredded by Mozart the cat, but if Mel must wait, this was where she would prefer to be.

  Mozart was no longer with them. He had slunk out through his cat flap one evening, never to return. Jacob, then twelve, had begged for another pet. Mel had stalled. She had never liked cats, not even Mozart with his cool disdain for all things human. Claude had brought him home in a rucksack. Mel remembered her dismay as she saw the little black and white nose peeking through the canvas.

  ‘Someone for you to love,’ Claude had joked. Two months later he left her.

  There had been no replacement. A dog would be impossible, and she could not countenance a creature in a cage. Jacob grew older and less bothered about animals, and now there was a terrible emptiness in the flat, no one and nothing to remind her of her own existence. Tonight, even a goldfish would have tempered the ache of solitude.

  She glanced again at her watch. It was just past midnight. If Jacob stayed out beyond eleven he was to ring her. She checked her phone. Had she missed a call? No. The sound was on, the phone charged and there would be no problem with reception. She opened her text messages. Nothing. She looked at Instagram, WhatsApp. Twitter, Facebook, Gmail. Unlikely that he would use any of them to tell her his whereabouts, though they were links of a sort. There was one reassuring note on Facebook informing her that Jacob Villiers was ‘attending an event near you’. Her first reaction was relief – at least he was not dead. Then she remembered that it only meant he’d accepted an invitation. It wasn’t live. He could be anywhere. She’d heard of parents installing trackers in their kids’ phones so they could check on them. But much as she longed to know, she wouldn’t go that far. Anyway, Jacob would refuse. And phones could be stolen. It might have been stolen now. Jacob could have been mugged. Or worse. He could be lying bleeding in a gutter at this very moment.

  She heaved herself up and reached for the half-empty glass of Pinot on the low table beside her. Once again she dialled his number, but it was his voicemail that clicked in. She ended the call without leaving a message.

  She waited. As a girl, she had waited for her mother. Isabel Goddard was an actress who, for most of Mel’s childhood, had played a pivotal role in a long running soap. During the day there had been rehearsals and filming. After coming home from school and letting herself into the empty house, Mel would pour herself an orange squash and stretch out on the first-floor landing with its clear view of the front garden. There she surrounded herself with biscuits, books, magazines, reading and nibbling through the blissful suspension of late afternoon, waiting for the sound of the key in the lock.

  On arrival Isabel would stand in the hallway. Now it was her turn to wait as Mel abandoned her pleasures to run downstairs and hurl herself against her mother’s tall, unyielding body. Even at home Isabel Goddard carried herself with regal detachment. In her small way she was a star. To Mel she was the brightest in the sky.

  Mel’s father had disappeared when she was six, reappearing at Christmas and birthdays for the next ten years. He had married again and now lived in Spain. He rarely flew over to see them and Mel had no desire to see him. Mistakes travelled down generations. She gulped her wine. How was it possible to hold a family together nowadays? Three quarters of Jacob’s class had separated parents.

  She glanced at her watch. Twenty-two minutes past one. She must have drifted off. A second wind had hit, and she knew she would not sleep again while Jacob was out. She was due at Feltham Family Court in seven hours’ time to meet the client in a contested care application. Her cross-examination required more work. But she was too tired to focus. Jacob was never this late on a week night. Should she ring his friends’ parents? There seemed to be nothing else she could do.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t help, Melanie,’ said Jonathan’s mother, Clare. ‘I’ve no idea where Jacob is. Jonathan’s asleep in bed. Do you have any idea what the time is?’

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ mumbled Mel. ‘It’s just that I’m anxious.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry. He’ll be back.’ Clare put the phone down. She tried other numbers, Kim’s father, Hannah’s mother. Then Mel called the only other person in the world who would drop everything and drive across London to pick up Jacob at this hour.

  ‘He’ll be fine. It’s his last exam. He’ll be celebrating.’ Claude might be sleepy, but he spoke with the usual iron certainty. Was it his last exam? Wasn’t there one more next week? She couldn’t remember. She could hear Jo’s voice murmuring in the background.

  ‘How do you know he’ll be celebrating?’ Mel asked.

  ‘Leave off, Mels. I’m in the Court of Appeal tomorrow.’

  He was always in the Court of Appeal when she needed him.

  ‘I think I should call the police.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. They’ll tell you to go to bed.’

  ‘He might be hurt.’

  ‘I’m telling you, Mels, they won’t give it a thought. It’s the end of the exam season. There are thousands of sixteen-years-olds on the streets after midnight.’

  She put down the phone without saying goodbye. She had come t
o hate what she had once loved, his freedom from doubt. She would wait ten minutes then call the police. She didn’t need Claude’s approval. The police might indeed tell her to go to bed. If that was the worst they could do, she had nothing to fear. She stood up to go to her desk. Her legs were unsteady. This was ridiculous. She’d had two glasses. Or was it three?

  The door of his room was ajar. Mel swung it open, hit by the smell of unwashed socks and sweat, laced with the tang of cheap deodorant. She hovered. He was her son. This was his territory. She would have been furious if Isabel had invaded hers. But when, on rare occasions, she had cut a swathe through the clutter to tidy up, Jacob had seemed indifferent. Not because he had no secrets, surely. More likely that, as a child of the millennium, his darker secrets were stored in a cyberworld she could not imagine, let alone enter.

  Mel switched on the centre light. Clothes were strewn over the floor. There were books too, magazines, fantasy and sci-fi scattered between mugs half-full of cold tea, chocolate wrappings, empty crisp packets. She picked up a T-shirt, sniffed it, dropped it, hesitated. What was she looking for? Only the essence of the boy who should be here. She surveyed what he called his desk, an old door resting across two trestles, seeking some clue as to where he might be, who he might be, this child who had become a stranger. A couple of chemistry textbooks, covered in yellow and green highlights, scraps of paper and post-it notes covered in doodles, scribbles, names, telephone numbers.

  She stopped, conscious of the ambient hum of London traffic. Was it her imagination or had cars become quieter? A sudden burst of rock music pummelled the air, thrumming across the gardens. She leant down and picked up the T-shirt for the second time. She would take it to the laundry basket.

  She looked at the scraps of paper on his desk, telephone numbers, girls’ names, Hannah, Maud, Lola. Then she looked at her watch. Ten minutes had passed since she’d spoken to Claude. It was time to call the police.