‘Mr Atwood, one more outburst and you shall be taken from this courtroom! The case has been decided, any appeals should be discussed with your solicitor.’ Judge Rothwell banged his gavel again and eyed the irate defendant over the glasses perched on the end of his nose. Judge Alexander Rothwell was one of the nicer judges at Harrogate County Court, but Cassie could tell that the slimeball ex of her client, a very mousy and kind woman called Joanne, was testing his limits.
‘I don’t give a rat’s arse what you do with your little ‘ammer, I ain’t paying her nowt. She sat on her arse all day, while I grafted my arse off at work!’
Grafted meaning running a very successful engineering firm and banging any female he could, while his long-suffering wife raised his three children, did his books and cooked and cleaned for him. Not much sitting on your bottom with all that and three children under three, surely?
Cassie thanked the judge and was just ushering a very delighted and embarrassed Joanne outside when she felt her arm being grabbed roughly, pulling her off kilter. She felt another set of hands on hers as the solicitor for the other side tried to wrestle his client off her.
‘Get off me now, Mr Atwood,’ she said as nicely as she could. She wanted to rip his arm off and beat him with it, but it wasn’t really the done thing. Not in the courtroom anyway. Had they been in the car park, she might have had an answer using her car door. It seemed she was a dab hand with one of those. Mr Atwood sneered at her, called her a ‘feminist tramp’ and, rearing back, went to spit at her. A hocking great loogy of a spit too. Cassie pushed her client back, spinning out of the way, and the huge wad of sputum landed squarely in the face of Mr Atwood’s solicitor. A rather weakly but razor-sharp law-minded man who looked at this moment like he wanted to throw up.
Joanne shouted, ‘Stop it, Michael! You owe me!’ and passed the poor solicitor a pack of baby wipes from her oversized handbag.
Court security came and hauled Michael off, Cass waving and giving him her best ‘eat shit and die’ grin, which only inflamed him more and caused him to catch the poor guard, John, in the testicles with a flailing leg. He was still screaming about bra burners and his lack of money when they took him down to the cells to cool off. Cassie hugged Joanne, making sure she was okay.
‘I can’t believe it’s over. I can buy a place of my own now, me and the kids.’ Joanne looked elated, and Cassie felt elated for her. Another client happy, able to move on from a bloke who couldn’t keep it in his pants and expected a woman to just take it without a grumble.
‘Well, you earned it too, don’t forget. I’m really happy for you and the children. I’ll get everything signed off and be in touch, okay?’
She looked to the doors through which darling ex-hubby dearest had just departed.
‘He’ll be down for a while, but will you be okay tonight?’
Joanne waved her away. ‘He’s not that type. He’ll just moan for a while. But he’s a good dad, believe it or not. When he shows.’
Cassie nodded, satisfied. ‘Well, any problems, you know where I am, okay? Call the police if he gives you any trouble.’
Her phone buzzed in her pocket and she went to take it as she waved Joanne off.
Her house phone number came up on the screen, and she smiled.
‘Have you not got a phone yet, Mr Tucker?’ she teased.
‘I’m waiting for it to be repaired in the shop, remember?’ Tucker’s laughing voice came over the phone, warming Cassie’s cheeks. ‘Some psychotic legal eagle tried to crush it into my hipbone. How did the case go?’
‘Good,’ she said, making her way out of the court building to the nearby car park. ‘We won. It didn’t go down too well, but I’ll tell you about it later.’
The line went quiet. ‘Ah well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I think I’m ready to get back to work, and my flat.’
Cassie reached her car, but instead of getting in, she sagged against it.
‘Oh?’ That was what she said. What she actually wanted to say was don’t leave. Why are you going, now?
‘Yeah.’ Tucker cleared his throat. ‘My business partner has been coping pretty well, and fine about letting me have the time off, but he’s wanting me back. Light duties of course, and I’m pretty sure all my plants are dead at the flat. Plus my roommate is a huge slob.’
‘Really?’ she said, thinking about how her house had been before he came to stay. ‘What an animal. How do people live like that, eh?’
He chuckled. ‘I know, right? Anyway, I was thinking I’d start back tonight, get out of your hair. It’s quieter in January, it’ll ease me back in. My shift starts before you get home, though, so I thought I’d better let you know.’
‘No problem, thanks,’ she said, pushing down the huge slab of hurt she felt in her chest, and digging deep from her tough persona. Woman up, Cass. ‘I’ll see you around then. I have to go.’
She ended the call, threw her phone and bags on the passenger seat and slumped down into her driver door. She looked around, but the car park was deserted, just empty cars around her.
Still, she waited till the first set of traffic lights had gone before she started to cry. He rang her phone again, the personalised Crocodile Dundee theme tune he had programmed in as a joke ringing out in the interior of the car. She drove straight to the off-licence and let it go to voicemail.
Yet another charity ball, and his mother was once again planning his life like a puppet show. He half-expected to see strings sewn into one of the suits that she forced him to wear, passive-aggressively sending his tailor ‘suggested’ designs for his bespoke clothing. He thought of the suit Maria had made him, how lovely it was, and how at the time he had been too preoccupied worrying about what his mother would make of it to thank her. He’d slept at his mother’s that night, before the wedding, and left the suit there. No doubt it wasn’t there now. His mother never would have kept it.
He was in his apartment in Harrogate now, and it was eerily quiet. He’d never been bothered by his own company before Maria moved in, grateful to be out of his parents’ house, but he had got used to her being there, her humming as she sewed on the couch, the strangled garble of her singing Motown in the shower. He hadn’t expected to feel her loss so much, given his urgent need to run away from her. From her, and their unborn child, it seemed. Did she know on the day? Was she planning to surprise him on the honeymoon? More to the point, the question Darcy kept asking himself, over and over, rattled around inside his skull. The question he knew he didn’t like his own answer to.
If she had told me before the wedding, would I have gone through with it, or would I have run that little bit faster?
The buzzer for the foyer rang, and Darcy was brought back into his empty apartment.
‘Hello?’ he said, pressing the intercom.
‘Your guest is here, sir. Shall I send her up?’
Darcy sighed inwardly. Another night out with the PR woman – Victoria Shaw, he now knew her as – to prolong this wounded-bachelor-finds-solace angle that bit more, till the press could focus on some other scandal. The new range of weight-loss teas would be launching soon, and then his mother might actually ease off him a little. Just a few more events. He had tried to call Maria, but her phone always went unanswered, and Lynn would just hang up if he rang the shop.
He went to answer the door, and there she was. Perfect blonde coiffed hair as usual, her boobs looking pushed up and perky in the red velvet gown she had been poured into. Darcy thought he saw the hint of a nipple but looked away quickly. Hopefully she would pull a fashion faux pas and wap one out just as a photographer came past. That would piss his mother off.
‘Hey,’ she said, looking him up and down. ‘Your bow tie’s not tied.’
‘Full marks for observation, minion,’ he said, ignoring her shocked expression and heading to the mirror in his bedroom to sort it out. She followed him, and he tutted his annoyance.
‘I don’t need a babysitter, I would have met you there.’
She went and sat on his bed, the slash in her gown showing off her tanned, muscular thigh.
‘That wouldn’t do, would it? We need to appear together. Your mother ordered a car to collect us from here.’
Darcy groaned. He’d been planning to take the Porsche, giving him an excuse not to drink and a means of slipping away early. Now he would probably end up getting battered just to have something to take the edge off the long night of being on show. His mother’s prize specimen.
‘Something wrong?’ she purred, and he felt her behind him. She was looking at him in the mirror, a predatory stance. She wound her hands around him, her long talons stroking down his sides, till one rested on the bulge in his trousers. ‘You seem so stressed. I can help, you know.’
She squeezed him, and he gasped involuntarily, making her smile triumphantly. She went to put her hand down the front of his trousers, and he stopped her, pushing her hands away from him.
‘What’s this, a bonus from Mother?’ She rolled her eyes at him. ‘For you, or me?’
‘Oh, come on, we have to work together for a while yet. Why don’t we both get something out of it?’
Darcy scowled at her. ‘You get paid, and I’m a captive little performing monkey. That’s the deal, isn’t it? I don’t need to be fed a peanut, thanks.’
She stood in front of him, changing tack, walking her fingertips up the button track on his crisp white shirt. ‘Yes, but it’s not like we can date anyone else, is it? We’re supposed to be dating each other, remember? So why not just do it? It will make our public interactions more believable.’
She ran her finger along his jawline, her fingernail making a scraping sound along his stubble. He watched her, saying nothing, and she moved her thumb pad over his bottom lip, making him quiver. She smiled, moving closer, till their lips were almost touching.
‘Just another little piece of the puzzle,’ she whispered seductively. ‘Like a jigsaw, fitting together. Don’t you think we would fit together well?’
She leaned in, just that fraction of a bit closer, and flicked her tongue out to taste him. He considered kissing her back for half a second, before he saw their reflection in the mirror. No. It didn’t look right, and he thought of Maria. How they had looked together. A photo on the nightstand taunted him in the reflection. A picture of the two of them, post-coital in bed, looking pink-cheeked and happy, laughing into the camera, wrapped up in his bedsheets. He pulled Victoria’s hand away, taking a step back. His erection betrayed him, pushing against the fabric of his trousers painfully. Her face dropped, turning to a thunderous look.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not free.’
She jutted her jaw out, fluffing her already perfect hair with one hand.
‘Oh, baby, I think you’ll find you’ve already been bought. I’ll wait in the car.’
She waggled out, her Kim Kardashian arse leaving a good few seconds after her cleavage.
Darcy sighed with relief, looking down at his waist.
‘We’ll have no more of that,’ he scolded. ‘It’s time to pay the piper, I think.’