cases, anger actually serves an important purpose.’
She gave a brief nod. ‘It’s nice of you to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s what I love about you – you’re brutally honest, but also generous.’
‘Though he was being an arse,’ I couldn’t resist adding.
She lifted her finger and tapped the air, smiling despite herself. I had cheered her. ‘True that.’
We walked together in silence along the pavement to join the main road.
‘Sometimes I’m not sure I should stay married,’ she said.
There was a gap in the traffic, and she gripped my elbow to steer me across. Tom and the kids had already gone in, and we stood for a moment, between our two houses. She was still holding my arm, but she was looking over her shoulder down the street towards the common. ‘Listen,’ she said, eventually. ‘I fancy a walk. If anyone asks, could you say I was with you?’
‘I’d love a walk,’ I said.
‘I just fancy being on my own?’ Her sentences were going up at the end. ‘Do you mind?’
I spoke too quickly. ‘Of course not.’
She dropped my arm and turned her head away again.
‘See you later,’ I said. And then because she was still standing there, gazing into the distance, I decided to hug her. I’m not a big hugger, but I’d noticed that she always threw her arms around people if she bumped into them when we were together, and I wanted to make a gesture, to show my allegiance. I took a step towards her, extended my arms and held her awkwardly, feeling how delicate her shoulders were, beneath her layers. It was only for a second, and I only pressed lightly, but when I moved away I was sure I caught on her face a wince of pain.
Chapter Eight
Pale grey scarf
Recalcitrant, adjective. Esp. of a person or animal. Obstinately disobedient; uncooperative, refractory; objecting to constraint or restriction.
Ailsa’s meeting – or ‘consultation’ – with the QC took place today. She took a mirror from the bathroom and rested it on the window ledge in the front room to put on her make-up. It was quite a performance: the contortions, her eyelids lifted and stretched as she applied a shadow and a liner. Maybe her hand was shaking too much – the strain of concealing emotion – but when she’d finished, the proportions seemed wrong; the powder settled in her pores; the blusher looked painted on.
She didn’t want to go alone. Lawyers intimidate her and fair enough, she’s spent enough time being bullied by Tom’s father. She’d wanted to get an Uber, but I persuaded her the Tube would be quicker and we took the Northern line up to Embankment, and then changed onto the Circle line, alighting at Temple.
We got a little lost, finding the right chambers, and wandered, buffeted by a brisk wind, under towering plane trees, up stone steps, past fountains and through courtyards, along rows of black railings. Our footsteps echoed and jackdaws cawed, heating vents hummed; there was the occasional smell of cabbage and boiled pasta. It was inappropriate but I did feel a slight thrill – it was my first time at the inns of court and it reminded me of visiting Fred in Oxford: the same mix of architecture, the same sense of hushed scholarship, the same preponderance of balding men in cords.
John Standling, her solicitor, was waiting for us on a bench when we finally found Terrace Court. I’ve met him a couple of times now, at the police station, and at the plea and trial preparation hearing, and he seems a decent enough man. He’s in his mid-forties with cropped ginger hair, a very straight mouth – literally no curve to his lips at all – and a pinkish round tip to his nose, rather like that of the actor who played Pod in the film version of The Borrowers. He has the traces of a Mancunian accent (flat vowels), which I approve of, and an owlish air, accentuated by rectangular steel-topped glasses.
He leapt to his feet when he saw us, pumping our hands up and down, and muttering, ‘OK, OK, grand,’ under his breath. He was the duty solicitor the night Ailsa was charged, and most of our encounters are underpinned by the sense that for him, her case (murder!) is quite a coup. Shortly after she was first arrested, I caught sight of him outside the police station, talking on his mobile while pacing up and down. Glitzier lawyers had already begun to