Monday 11th September
When the buzzer of doom sounded, Tom Elliot uncrossed his legs and stood up. The jury had reached a verdict and were ready to come back into the courthouse to deliver their conclusion. Guilty, or not guilty? That was the question.
He glanced behind him to where his client sat in the dock, looking surprisingly cheerful for someone inevitably facing jail time.
Tom gave his client a questioning look, checking he was prepared for what was about to happen. Bobby Franco grinned and gave him a thumbs-up, which in the circumstances, was both highly inappropriate and stupidly optimistic.
The trial hadn’t exactly gone well. Bobby Franco was a fifty-year-old dishonest rogue who liked to bet on the horses and spent most weekends fighting at his local pub. On this particular occasion, he’d been charged with shoplifting. It was Tom’s job to defend him. Something that didn’t fill him with joy, but was a necessary evil of his trade.
It was a far cry from the high-profile cases he’d read about in the newspapers when he’d decided on a career in law aged just seventeen. But representing the likes of Bobby Franco was the reality of being a barrister. It paid the bills. Even if it didn’t prove very fulfilling. He firmly believed in everyone’s right to be represented in court, and some of his clients were even innocent. But the pressure to win cases, coupled with his stress levels exacerbating his asthma, meant being a barrister wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
The sound of footsteps approached. The jury. The door opened and in they walked, a mixture of modern society, some willing to serve justice, others forced to participate in their civic duty. Beads of sweat broke out under his wig. He could always predict the outcome of a case by whether the jury looked at him as they returned to their seats. On this occasion, they avoided eye contact. It was curtains for Bobby Franco.
The foreman, a man with tattoos and a ponytail, stood up.
The court clerk approached him. ‘Have the jury reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed?’
Tattoo man nodded. ‘Yes.’
No hesitation. No hint of ‘reasonable doubt’.
‘Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty of the theft of two marital aids from Ann Summers retail store in Reading?’
‘Guilty.’
What a surprise.
‘And is that the verdict of you all?’
‘It is.’
Tom glanced at Bobby. That was what you got for nicking a vibrator and a blow-up doll and trying to abscond with the items stuffed down your trousers.
But Bobby didn’t look remorseful. Far from it. He looked…smug.
‘Mr Thomas Elliot.’ The sound of the judge’s voice snapped Tom back to attention. ‘Your client has been found guilty on the most overwhelming of evidence.’
You don’t say. ‘Yes, your honour.’
‘In fact, this case shouldn’t have been in my court. This type of case should have been heard by the magistrates. Did you advise this man to elect to come to the Crown Court and waste thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money?’
Tom had predicted a bollocking. He tried to look contrite. ‘No, your honour. It was my client’s decision.’ And a stupid one. But as his barrister, the judge clearly felt Tom should have dissuaded his client from the theatrics of trial by jury. What was he supposed to do? Bobby Franco wanted his day in court and every defendant was entitled to be tried by their peers.
The judge turned his wrath on the client. ‘Robert Lewis Franco, you will go to prison for thirteen weeks.’ And with that, the judge flounced out of the court in true dramatic style. Job done.
The client’s response was to laugh. Thirteen weeks was nothing. He’d served longer for ramming a shopping trolley into a security guard at Tesco.
The jury started whispering.
Bobby Franco was led from the dock.
Tom picked up his briefcase and left court seventeen, heading for the grand Robing Room upstairs. His chest was tight. He stopped in the corridor and patted his pockets, searching for his inhaler. His phone vibrated.
He checked the display, knowing it would be either his mother or his ex-girlfriend, both of whom had already called several times that day, despite him telling them he was in court and uncontactable.
It was Izzy. Should he answer it, or smash the phone against the nearest bench seat? Tempting. But she’d only keep calling. He raised the phone to his ear, his brain telling him it was a bad idea.
‘Hi.’ She sounded hesitant.
There was a time when the sound of her voice would have brought a smile to his face. Now it was just an unwelcome intrusion. A reminder of the life he no longer had, or wanted.
‘Tom…are you there?’
He needed to stay strong and not soften at the break in her voice. ‘I’m here.’
She sighed. ‘I’m sorry about last night… Are you okay?’
He swallowed. Was he okay? When she’d walked through the front door of the place they’d shared for two years and were currently selling, her arms around another man, he’d stood there waiting for pain to hit him full in the chest. But it hadn’t come. He’d felt…nothing. Well, not entirely nothing, a slight twinge, a stirring sense of familiarity, but nothing crippling. Strange then that the sound of her voice could threaten to weaken his resolve, when seeing her hadn’t.
‘What do you want, Izzy?’
‘We didn’t get a chance to speak yesterday.’
‘There isn’t anything left to say.’
She paused. ‘Isn’t there?’
He opened his briefcase, praying he’d find his inhaler inside. He could feel the sweat trickling down the back of his neck, an indicator that an asthma attack was looming. ‘Not as far as I’m concerned.’
‘I don’t think you mean that.’
He closed his eyes. Life with Izzy had been a constant yoyo. She’d loved city life, parties, notoriety, and most of all, money. But her desire for endless excitement had proved incompatible with his demanding job and unwillingness to ‘party’ with her. Her boredom and frustration with his supposed conservatism had her seeking thrills elsewhere. The arguments would increase, accusations would be thrown and eventually she’d storm out. But the remorse would soon kick in and she’d come back, promising to change her ways. Of course, she never did. And he’d been a mug for thinking otherwise.
‘It feels so final, putting the apartment on the market and everything.’ Her voice broke. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’
His eyes flicked open. What he wanted? Jesus!
It would be so easy to remind her of all the reasons why it’d ended. Reasons caused mostly by her, not him. But he was past the point of caring. He was done arguing. He took a deep breath. ‘We’ve been here before. It’s time for us both to move on.’
‘I just wanted to make sure, before…before it’s too late.’
The tightness in his chest squeezed, increasing the need to administer a shot of Ventolin. ‘I have to go… I hope everything works out for you. Bye, Izzy.’ He ended the call before he heard her voice again and found himself caving…again. And that would make him the biggest idiot on the planet.
It was no good, he needed his inhaler. He must have left it in the Robing Room.
He’d just reached the end of the corridor, when his phone buzzed again. Christ, she was trying his patience today. He snatched at his phone, only realising at the last minute that it wasn’t Izzy. It was his mother.
He pressed the button for the lift, deciding his lungs weren’t up to climbing the stairs. ‘Hi, Mum.’
No response. This wasn’t unusual.
He tried again. ‘Mum…? Everything okay?’
A few seconds passed before she spoke. ‘Tom, love?’
There was a slur to her voice. He checked his watch. Twenty past three. Great. She’d either hit the bottle early, or she was still hungover from last night.
The lift doors pinged open and he stepped inside. ‘Is there a problem? Only I’m at court today. Can I call you back later?’
Another delay before she responded. ‘I have a problem.’
Several. But now wasn’t the time to be pedantic. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I don’t know how it happened.’
Oh, Christ. ‘How what happened, Mum?’ He pressed the lift button for the third floor.
‘It just arrived. With no warning.’
Trying to get to the crux of his mother’s many issues was a bit like pulling teeth. There were days when she got her shit together and was the funny bright person she truly was. But those moments were obliterated by the days when she succumbed to the booze. He should be used to it. Dealing with her drinking had been a constant throughout his thirty years, but it never got any easier. ‘You need to be a bit more specific, Mum. What has arrived?’ Post? Aliens? Dinner?
‘A unicorn.’
A…what? He hadn’t seen that one coming. ‘A unicorn?’
‘Yes. An inflatable one, to be precise.’
Was there any other type? Jesus, how pissed was she? ‘And how did this unicorn arrive?’
‘FedEx.’
At least she hadn’t said, ‘It flew in through the window.’
The lift doors opened and a couple of barristers got in, dressed in their full regalia. Oh, great. An audience.
‘And what do you want me to do about it?’ he said, trying to keep his voice low. Tame it? Ride it? Or merely inflate it?
‘I want to know how it got here. I wondered whether you’d ordered it?’
‘And why would I do that?’
‘You often order things for me.’
‘Yeah, food or clothing, not inflatable unicorns.’
One of the barristers turned and looked at him.
Tom shrugged. Don’t ask, he wanted to say.
‘Well, if you didn’t order it, then who did?’
Tom rubbed his chest. He was starting to wheeze. ‘What does the paperwork say? Does it say where it was ordered from?’
There was a delay while she no doubt searched for the paperwork.
The lift reached the third floor, enabling him to escape.
Trying to manage his mother’s affairs back in Brighton was getting harder. It was one thing to pay bills, send her food, or check she got up every day, but trying to ensure she was managing her business adequately was another level of responsibility entirely.
His mother was the daughter of a titled family who’d accumulated several properties built in the 1700s. When his grandfather had died in 1979, the estate had been divided up between his two offspring. Uncle Henry had inherited the castle in Scotland and Windsor townhouse, while his mother had been lumbered with the crumbling manor house in Brighton. Uninspired by the thought of managing the upkeep of a Grade Two listed building with its multitude of antiquities and issues, his mum had applied to the local authority for planning permission to turn the entire lower ground floor into an arts centre. She’d had grand ideas to build a theatre, a cinema, several art studios and a café for local artists. Although permission was granted for the renovations, the project became too expensive to complete.
Over the years, the Starlight Playhouse had been used as a youth centre, a camera club and housed the occasional art display. But only the café attracted any regular custom, along with the solitary hirer of the dance studio.
Eventually, his mother came back on the line. ‘I found it,’ she said, accompanied by a rustle of paper. ‘It came from eBay.’
Tom checked her eBay account. Unsurprisingly, he discovered an order for ‘one inflatable unicorn’.
Shaking his head, he lifted the phone to his ear. ‘The order was placed on the fourth of September. What were you doing last Monday?’
‘Monday, you say?’ A pause followed. ‘No, I definitely didn’t order anything last Monday. Are you sure it wasn’t you?’
‘It definitely wasn’t me.’
‘Maybe the account was hacked?’
There were times when he wanted to laugh – if he didn’t find the situation so tragic. ‘I doubt a hacker would have the items delivered to you, Mum. That would rather defeat the object of a scam.’
‘Oh, yes, I suppose you’re right.’
‘You also ordered a set of acrylic paints. Does that ring a bell?’
Pause. The sound of breathing. More rustling of paper. He waited for the penny to drop. ‘Now I come to think of it…’
And here it came.
‘…I do remember ordering paints. I was going to design a mural for the foyer. A magical woodland scene with an enchanted leprechaun and a…’
‘Unicorn?’
Pause. ‘A unicorn…yes.’
Tom opened the door to the Robing Room. ‘Anything else I can help with?’
‘Err…no, love. I’m good, thanks.’
‘I’ll call you later, okay? Love you.’
‘Love you too.’
Tom ended the call. He needed his inhaler…now!