The Undomestic Goddess

“Well, you’ll be calling the shots soon. When you’re a partner.” He cocks an eyebrow.

“Don’t say that!” I hiss in horror. He’ll jinx it.

“Come on. You know you’ve made it.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Samantha, you’re the brightest lawyer in your year. And you work the hardest. What’s your IQ again, six hundred?”

“Shut up.”

Guy laughs. “What’s one twenty-four times seventy-five?”

“Nine thousand, three hundred,” I say grudgingly.

Since I was about ten years old, I’ve been able to do big sums in my head. God knows why, I just can. And everyone else just goes, “Oh cool,” and then forgets about it.

But Guy keeps on about it, pitching sums at me like I’m a circus performer. This is the one thing that irritates me about him. He thinks it’s funny, but it actually gets a bit annoying. I still haven’t quite worked out how to get him to stop.

Once I told him the wrong number on purpose—but that time it turned out he actually needed the answer, and he put it in a contract and the deal nearly got wrecked as a result. So I haven’t done that again.

“You haven’t practiced in the mirror for the firm’s Web site?” Guy adopts a pose with his finger poised thoughtfully at his chin. “Ms. Samantha Sweeting, Partner.”

“I haven’t even thought about it,” I say, feigning indifference.

This is a slight lie. I’ve already planned how to do my hair for the photo. And which of my black suits to wear.

“I heard your presentation blew their socks off,” says Guy more seriously.

My indifference vanishes in a second. “Really?” I say, trying not to sound too eager for praise. “You heard that?”

“And you put William Griffiths right on a point of law in front of everybody.” Guy folds his arms and regards me humorously. “Do you ever make a mistake, Samantha Sweeting?”

“Oh, I make plenty of mistakes,” I say lightly. “Believe me.”

Like not grabbing you and telling you I was single, the very first day we met.

“A mistake isn’t a mistake.” Guy pauses. “Unless it can’t be put right.” As he says the words, his eyes seem to hold an extra significance.

Or else they’re just squiffy after his night of no sleep. I was never any good at reading the signs.

I should have done a degree in mutual attraction, instead of law. It would have been a lot more useful. Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Knowing When Men Fancy You And When They’re Just Being Friendly.

“Ready?” Ketterman’s whiplash voice behind us makes us both jump, and we turn to see a whole phalanx of soberly suited men, together with a pair of even more soberly suited women.

“Absolutely.” Guy nods at Ketterman, then turns back and winks at me.

Three

Nine hours later we’re all still in the meeting.

The huge mahogany table is strewn with photocopied draft contracts, financial reports, notepads covered in scribbles, polystyrene coffee cups, and Post-its. Take-out boxes from lunch are littering the floor. A secretary is distributing fresh copies of the draft agreement. Two of the lawyers from the opposition have got up from the table and are murmuring intently in the breakout room. Every meeting room has one of these: a little side area where you go for private conversations, or when you feel like breaking something.

The intensity of the afternoon has passed. It’s like an ebb in the tide. Faces are flushed, tempers are still high, but no one’s shouting anymore. The Fallons and Smithleaf people have gone. They reached agreement on various points at about four o’clock, shook hands, and sailed off in their shiny limos.

Now it’s up to us, the lawyers, to work out what they said and what they actually meant (and if you think it’s the same thing, you might as well give up law now) and put it all into a draft contract in time for more negotiations.

When they’ll probably begin shouting some more.

I rub my dry face and take a gulp of cappuccino before realizing I’ve picked up the wrong cup—the stone-cold cup from four hours ago. Yuck. Yuck. And I can’t exactly spit it out all over the table.

I swallow the revolting mouthful with an inward shudder. The fluorescent lights are flickering in my eyes and I feel drained. My role in all of these megadeals is on the finance side—so it was me who negotiated the loan agreement between Fallons and PGNI Bank. It was me who rescued the situation when a £10-million black hole of debt turned up in a subsidiary company. And it was me who spent about three hours this afternoon arguing one single, stupid term in the contract.