The day Martha finally leaves Shoe Lane is a day filled with memories of the past. It wasn't the first time someone had begged her not to leave – it wasn't the first time she hadn't listened.
New one-shot. Thanks to Panz who has been talking through some Clive and Martha things with me. Hope you all enjoy this, it's post-canon, but only just. My take on Martha leaving Shoe Lane. Review if you like!
"Don't go." It was a plea, and she wasn't used to hearing anything quite so desperate from Clive Reader. Weakness wasn't something he showed often, but his willingness to express something other than smugness or bravado in a semi-public place was jarring. She paused with her back to him, one cardboard box containing the entirety of her desk drawers propped in her hands, one piece of the box lid stabbing painfully at her chest. At least, she thought it was the box she could feel. In front of her, the door of Shoe Lane Chambers, light from the afternoon sun filtering through the glass onto the carpeted corridor at her feet. It somehow promised something new, something more. Her heart stopped as she considered everything she would be leaving behind when she left through those doors for the final time. There were so many memories.
She'd shared bottles of scotch with Clive in their office as they poured over briefs for the next morning, scrutinised the unused as pupils or big gangland cases as Q.C.s. In the Clerks' Room Martha had met Billy for the first time. She was all northern awkwardness, nerves and smudged eyeliner but he was nothing but a clerk: formidable, smooth… Kind. He'd told her he was dying in that room. They'd hugged. She'd lost some of herself right then, before any of the rest of it.
It wasn't just inside Chambers either. There had been so many victories celebrated on the outside. She and Clive had run down the street in full robes after they won their first co-defence case, after they were granted tenancy. She rumbled ahead of him along the cobbles (she was more accustomed to them than him as a Northerner, after all) only pausing when a sudden gust of wind pulled her wig from her head – they were still wearing those, too. Her hand raised and landed on top of her bare head, a second slower than the wind itself; and she whipped around, stooping to retrieve the white piece from the floor. It didn't feel silly; they were too caught up in the victory to be self-conscious. Clive had caught up with her and scooped her into a fireman's lift, running the rest of the way with her on his shoulder. She had her wig in one hand, cackling with euphoria at what they had just done, and how they were celebrating. He hadn't stopped until they reached the door to Shoe Lane, which he didn't make it through. The act of putting her down had given him a spectacular head rush on the way back up, and he'd staggered bent-double through the door only to trip over himself and land gracelessly in a pile across the threshold. It reminded her of just how many pubs she had fallen out of when she was hideously drunk as a student. However, Clive had managed it sober and she still held it over him now.
Billy had walked her down that same street in her Silk dress robes on the way to Middle Temple Lane – then she had felt ridiculous. Her wig had flapped about her face like the ears of an over-eager dog but Martha had seen the look on Billy's face, heard his monologue about history and she felt proud of herself. They'd thought about absent friends and she'd thought about how proud her dad would have been to see her. She didn't dwell on it, but it had reminded her of the day she'd found out about her dad's death. Another memory from just outside Shoe Lane. Another she shared with Billy. She had run from her office so fast when she heard her mum crying down the phone, the many missed calls from her and her granddad making her nervous, scared. Her mum hadn't even managed to say it all before she was overtaken by grief. There were too many maybes from that part of her life. If she'd stuck around longer he'd have remembered her more, she could have helped him remember, helped her mum look after him and stop her stress. Ironically she was sat in the place she had dealt with and achieved so much, staring and reminiscing about the life she had sacrificed as a result. She promised herself not to let the guilt rule her life – and it certainly hadn't – but in the shadow of her father's death it was hard not to let some of it creep in. Martha was normally careful about how others saw her vulnerability. She hated showing herself weakened but there were times of importance when she was younger that made her strong image irrelevant. This was one of those times. Billy had found her out on the bench by Shoe Lane sobbing into her knees but he had assured her through his own blurred vision that he would make time for her to go and say goodbye.
Goodbyes were so very difficult.
Smiling widely at an old family photograph, Martha picked up the framed article from her bedside and slipped it into another cardboard box for storage. There wasn't much room in her suitcase for big items because of the sheer amount of clothes, towels, sheets and other necessary things she had rammed into it; but she was determined to take a few things to remind her of home. The big suitcase creaked louder each time she placed something into it, maybe because placing it meant leaning her body weight onto the object in her hands to push the ever-increasing pile of stuff downwards. Of course there would come a point where nothing else would fit, but that point wasn't yet, and it wouldn't be until she had attempted to put everything she had left on the floor into the battered blue case. She was nothing if not persistent.
A particularly bulky pair of shoes was giving Martha trouble and no amount of leaning was helping. She turned the shoes around, upside down, inside each other and every time only one would settle into the mountain of belongings. Huffing her fringe from her eyes, she growled in frustration and knelt up and threw the offending shoe at her wall instead, sitting back on her heels in protest.
"Shit."
Behind her she could feel her mother standing in the doorway watching her try and pack.
"I think those belong inside the suitcase… Not in the air, Martha." Turning with a sigh, she smiled up at her mother and managed a laugh.
"I know. I just didn't realise I had so much…? I don't know -"
"Don't go." Her smiled dropped from her face as Martha tried to process the two words she'd just heard. For the first time she actually looked at her mother's face. Saw the tiredness, the sadness, and the fear. Apparently the time to let your guard drop was two weeks before your only child gets on a train to Manchester to start a new part of her life.
"Sorry?" She didn't say that, must've misheard. Her mother briskly walked further into her room and stopped just short of her.
"Don't go. Don't leave."
"Mum I don't-"
"He's getting worse, Martha, you know he is." She had to concede this. Ever since they had come back from his last doctor's appointment it was clear that her father was getting worse. Although his episodes were still subtle, they were much more frequent and his frustration now he was totally aware of his diminishing mental capabilities was wearing.
"I know."
"He needs you to stay." He doesn't. But she still pauses to let the comment sink in.
"He hasn't shut up about me leaving for three weeks. It's Manchester. It's, it's law. I can't just turn around and give the finger to the opportunity to change my life, to help people. How ungrateful is that? How could I possibly live with myself?" Her mother looked almost stung by her words, as though she wasn't expecting her daughter to fight her on the issue. Clearly she had expected her to drop everything and agree to stay, as though it was as simple as cancelling a night out with friends, or a study session at the library. Her mother's eyes changed, they became colder but she stared down her daughter who had got to her feet somewhere in her last few sentences. They are almost toe-to-toe now.
"And when he forgets you because you've gone away – could you live with yourself then?" She snapped becoming infuriated by the moral high ground her daughter appeared to be taking. Martha wasn't sure she could live with herself, but she knew if she turned down the chance to give herself a good career she might regret that for the rest of her life. There'd be a time when her Dad wouldn't be there anymore and she'd be stuck in Bolton with no chance of helping people and not enough air in her lungs. He wanted her to go – it had become an obsession of his. He was getting a bit more obsessed now; a bit less rational when he couldn't deal with is anger, or his hopelessness.
"How guilty would dad feel if I told him I wasn't going to Manchester so I could stay and look after him?" That one made her mother physically recoil.
"So it's all on me? You're riding off chasing some dream of being at the criminal whatever… Get real Martha – you're from Bolton! How seriously are they going to take you? You have to stay where you're needed." It always astounded Martha how hurtful fights with her mother became, they knew mostly everything about each other and she knew very well that going to university with her background was a worry for her, it made her much more determined, yes, but with all the disruption of moving out it was one a many things to play on her mind.
"But Dad doesn't need me! You do…" She pointed to her mother angrily. "You do." Brushing past her mother without another word Martha rushed down the stairs, pausing at the bottom to keep herself together. This was the right thing to do.
"Martha?" Martha couldn't bear to look behind her. She'd see Clive standing in the doorway to their office with a lost look on his face, just like he'd been told he was losing his favourite toy.
To him, everything was still simple and nothing had changed, but he couldn't have been more wrong. It wasn't simple. She couldn't just choose to stay and never defend again. It was almost as if he thought she was complicating matters by leaving, and that his decision to change to prosecuting had no impact on her at all. Just because he cared for her deeply didn't mean she was immune to the changes he was implicating. She wasn't untouchable – not as invincible as Clive believed her to be. Some posh tart had put ideas in his head, stroking his ego with her visions of grandeur about a prosecuting set and he had been sucked in by her completely, and Martha was so angry with him for it. Only now that he was facing reality was it clear to Clive he was about to lose Martha for good. She had planned to stay for Billy's sake but… He was gone now. Billy was gone.
Right on cue Harriet appeared in the doorframe of the clerks' room, leaning with her arms folded against the wood with a penetrating stare. The sight sickened her. Everything in Shoe Lane was still so naturally Billy and anything else just seemed wrong.
Clive had been shot a warning through narrow eyes but it wasn't stopping him asking her to stay.
Glancing to her right she could see into the living room through the door that was slightly ajar. Her dad was in there, and something inside her needed a closure on the issue that he could provide – even if she didn't ask him directly. Taking all of her courage, Martha stepped slowly into the room, brushing the door open with her left hand. Her father had just crossed the room to the desk in the corner, and out of the corner of his eye he had seen her enter.
"Are you all packed?" She smiled tightly, shaking off the bad feeling hanging over her from the conversation she'd had upstairs.
"Just about… I'm here for another couple of weeks though, there's plenty more to go in…" Her sentence was slow as she watched him walking erratically around the living room, lifting sofa cushions and paperwork from the table. She kept the conversation normal as she watched in puzzlement, hoping the regular conversation would snap him out of whatever delusion he was engrossed in.
"I'm sure," he said dismissively, "but it doesn't hurt to get a head start." Her father looked up and turned to her then, seeming to stall or completely forget what he had been doing. "Are you all packed?" Martha sighed. A couple of months ago she would have let that repetition slide as a slip of the tongue from a pre-occupied human being. It was have been inconsequential. Now… It was a reminder if his failing mind, on his increasing reliance on his family to do all the little things that only become hard when you're really ill. The once-empty drawers in his office that used to have scribbles from her younger self stuck to them with tape now contained piles of post-it notes and pens; an artillery in reserve for the times he needed to remember and simply couldn't. The calendars that used to hang dormant as that unwanted Christmas gift from a 'colleague-but-not-quite-friend' actually had things written on it in thick marker. Martha had kept aside a pile of photographs that she had prepared specially for her father, leaving them on his bedside table and claiming they were to be looked at when she left home. She had painstakingly written the names of family members and their relation to her father on the back knowing that her father never turned over photographs – he would forget that just like he would forget the other parts of himself. She dreaded the day he would turn over the picture of her on the last day of school to see the words 'Martha, your daughter, eighteen years old' written in her spidery handwriting.
"Not yet Dad." She paused as she seriously considered whether or not this question was necessary. "Are you sure you want me to go?"
"What sort of a nonsensical question is that?" The manic searching resumed at the sideboard. "How can you be a lawyer without going to university? Now, before you go and finish can you help me? I can't find my watch… I know it was here somewhere…"
Smiling sadly, Martha walked further into the room so she was stood beside her father at the sideboard. He paused in his concentrated search and turned to look at her, a puzzled look on his face. Martha reached out and gently took his hand in hers, moving their joined hands up between them and, when she was sure he would keep his arm raised a bit, rolled back the sleeve of his navy jersey to reveal his gold wristwatch. She swallowed hard and looked up into his face, trying to read the look in his eyes as he saw the watch sitting on his arm. His mouth clamped shut, lips forming a thin line. "Go and finish up your packing, then."
So she did. When Martha left her house for the final time two weeks later, she left with no regrets, only hope.
"Martha." Clive said again. Clearer and more cloudy both at once. Nothing in the world could convince her to turn around, so instead she took a breath and walked out of Shoe Lane forever.