Part Three
It was not often that Jo felt nervous when facing a new client for the first time. Her friendly, professional manner came natural to her and her mind had been honed to precision in assembling the known facts of a case and slotting in the additional facts as they came to hand. Above all else, she had a sure instinct in sensing the questions that needed asking. It was far too easy for a client, half seas over with confusion, worry and guilt, not to be able to be able to se facts of the case that were staring them right in the eyes. She had paid the hard way in her early years in not being that inquisitive enough and had groaned inwardly as her supposedly sure fire case sank right in front of her eyes to the accompaniment of a gleam of triumph from the other council and a pitying look from the judge. She had moved on a long way since those days.
That was all very well if she did not know the client personally. The image remained in her mind was the middle aged, respectable unobtrusive friendly woman whose harpsichord trills she could pick out to one side of her while she bent earnestly over her cello, coaxing the sonorous notes out of her instrument with her large bow. She was one of them, that band of musicians who retained some mystic bond from those months of intensive practice and the soaring ecstasy of that magnificent performance. For this reason, she could not think of recusing herself from the case as she was personally acquainted with her client as virtually the entire Bar Council were also acquainted with her. It might as well be her as anyone else to represent her as anyone and, besides, it was the sort of case that her heart was in. All the same, as she straightened her neat blue workmanlike suit, she wondered what she was letting herself in for.
It felt strange parking her car outside Larkhall prison once again. Images of her past visits had stuck fast in her mind so that when she confronted the outward reality, she felt hardly surprised. This October day was bright and sunny with the tail end of the good weather before the first cold fierce blast of winter's approach shredded the last of the remaining brown leaves off the trees. There wasn't a breath of wind in the air and the last of summer's warmth made it a good time to be outside before making her way to the gatehouse.
Barbara was sweating and drained as the early morning knock woke her dull senses. It felt as if she had only just drifted uneasily off to sleep. She had woken up in the middle of the night feeling that the walls of her relatively spacious double cell felt they were closing in on her and she had screamed at the window high up in her cell to be let out. By standing on tiptoes, she could only just see the night sky outside. It was lucky that Selena was on the nightshift and her calm relaxing manner had got her to get back to bed. The Julies had called anxiously from next door and had quietened her down but even then, she had spent hours staring anxiously at the walls and her breathing remained rapid and shallow. At the bottom of that core of fear, her world had been turned upside down. She loved the Julies for their unfailing kindness and she knew that she could have been worse off from remembering Larkhall of old but did she expect to see them again this side of the prison bars? She crushed that down as an unchristian thought, especially that they had been out of her thoughts for far too long while she had dutifully played the part of the vicar's wife. She thought of her friend Nikki who hadn't stopped being her friend even if she happened to be wing governor. She knew Nikki was looking after her but even when her terrors momentarily subsided, she felt acutely uncomfortable to be in the situation of being looked after. Even while these feelings of guilt and confusion swirled round her, the only way they could be blotted out was if her terrors returned to hold her in their vice like grip. All she longed for was that sweet feeling of normality. Nothing could possibly comfort her except to be free of this nightmare.
"Hey, Babs, want us to fetch you a cup of tea?" Julie Johnson asked her while she huddled up under her blankets, first thing in the morning. She had relapsed into a vague haze when her fingertips suddenly came into contact with a vaguely cylindrical plastic shape, which wobbled slightly.
"Careful or you'll spill your tea. Tina's made it just the way you like it."
A nice cup of tea, even out of a blue beaker as opposed to her prized tea set was the first vaguely normal experience.
"I've got to go on the servery, but Nikki's just behind me. She'll look after you."
The words of the other woman sounded incredibly tender and kind hearted to Barbara as Julie dropped into the natural mode of thinking and expectation that Nikki, whoever she was and whatever uniform she was wearing, would take care of her like she always used to. At this moment, following Julie's lead seemed to Nikki to be the most natural thing to do.
"Like Julie says, I'll stop here with you till you're ready. I've got time."
Barbara gradually released her fierce clutch onto a corner of the blanket and began to reach a tenuous grip on the world as she sipped the English cure for all manner of troubles.
Later, as Nikki looked at her watch and made plans on what she had to do when Jo came to visit. It was perfectly obvious to her and she received a grateful smile when this was suggested. It was the ideal solution to something that was worrying her of trying to concentrate if she was shivering, edgy and totally drained from last night and doing her best to think clearly and tell Jo everything.
"It's lovely to see you, Jo, we haven't seen you for far too long. It's a pity it has to be in a situation like this."
Nikki's bright smile and light in her eyes welcomed Jo but faded as the purpose of her visit came home to her and that it wasn't a social call.
"I suppose you'll be showing me to the room?" Jo asked lightly
"I've got a better idea. If it is all right with you, I'll have a table and chairs set up in the exercise yard. There's a good reason for this," She went on to say as Jo raised her eyebrows in mild astonishment. "Barbara is under real stress and that brings on her claustrophobia. I know that very well as a long time ago, I was put into a double cell with her because of that which is how we got to become close friends. One of the private rooms would be living hell to her and no use to either of you."
"That sounds a good idea but will there be anyone around?"
"I can guarantee you two, three hours completely on your own as most of the inmates will either be in their cells or at work or education, so that you and Barbara have the exercise yard to yourselves. If you're happy with the idea, perhaps you care to join me in a cup of tea with me in my office while everything's being set up, and I'll take you and Barbara to where your al fresco room will be"
Jo thought over the idea rapidly. It was pleasant enough outside and Nikki's unconventional idea certainly had its merits, especially as Barbara would be at her most relaxed. What was most important was for Barbara to be at her most clear-headed. She liked the idea of being out in the open, one last taste of summer.
"You lead the way, Nikki," Jo smiled. She liked this courteous, thoughtful woman and a short break before the hard work seemed a pleasant way to pass the time. As soon as she entered the room, memories of when she was last here came flooding back to Jo and they came straight out of her mouth.
"The last time I was here in this room, Karen was wing governor and Fenner was still alive."
"He must be turning in his grave to see me of all people behind this desk. Never did quite make it to the top, did he?"
They both laughed at the joke and shared some idle chitchat. As Jo had finished her cup of tea, Nikki's phone rang to say the furniture was set up.
"In my club days, I would have done it myself. It still seems strange to pick up the phone and someone else does it for me." Nikki grinned at her aside to Jo and phoned up for Barbara to be brought to her room. Her voice was not quite the confident administrator as Colin answered the call.
"You're ready to face the music, Barbara?" Nikki asked the other pale faced, sweating woman. The way she walked told Nikki how tense Barbara was. "In your own time."
Barbara smiled wanly, and the three of them threaded their way out of the wing to the top of the steep steps down to the exercise yard to where the table and two chairs were set up. If Jo hadn't been a little anxious about Barbara, she could make believe that the three of them were merely happening to be having a pleasant get together in a suburban patio back garden if she didn't look too hard at the prison buildings at the far side of the short, cropped turf. When the three of them approached the simple table and chairs, she flopped into a waiting seat and inhaled deep lungfuls of air while Jo sat opposite.
"I've got to go but here's my mobile number, Jo. You phone me if you want any tea and biscuits and the Julies will bring them and also when you're done and I'll come myself to fetch you."
As she uttered these words, a memory flash took her back to the time when Claire Walker another very sympathetic and strong female member of the legal profession came to talk to her and Helen once stood in the shoes that she was wearing today. The autumn sun smiled encouragingly down on the two women and Jo allowed a minute or two after Nikki left before she spoke.
"I'm not sure what questions you're going to ask me, Jo," Barbara started to say in an agitated fashion, "but as God is my witness, I had nothing to do with dear Henry's death apart from nursing him right up to the end but I'm certain that some dreadful official will know my name and try all the more to ensnare me."
"Why on earth would anyone act that way?" Jo asked ever so softly. She could detect a mixture of hurt, pain, anger and despair running round her mind.
Barbara coloured deeply. She had given herself away.
"Just how much do you know about my past except that I've been here before?"
"I make it a rule to make up my mind from what any client tells me and not go by what I think I know. It's safer that way," Jo answered evenly.
"Do you find it easy to represent a client who you know personally?" Barbara pursued in a curiously formal fashion.
"I don't find it easy when I know you from playing in the same orchestra and from being a witness in the Atkins/Merriman trial."
"Is that so much of a problem?"
"It's only that it could make it harder to defend anyone who I know and got to like. It's like asking a surgeon to operate on his father and to be clear thinking as he has to be. I'm supposed to put together the facts in a detached, unemotional way so that I can think most clearly and not to overlook any weakness in my case that the other barrister can exploit."
"And do you?"
"Think clearly, yes. Be unemotional, not all the time. That is my failing if you could call it one."
Jo's smile was free and easy and her eyes sparkled in the sunshine.
"Then that's all right."
Jo's candid manner made Barbara become less tense and even smile slightly.
"Are you ready to talk now?" Jo continued very softly, as a very gentle breeze ruffled her hair.
"I have to. I owe it to Henry's memory. He would not want it any other way."
Jo stretched out more comfortably in her chair as the tension flowed out of her body. She had been a little nervous in wondering how she would talk to Barbara.
"Let's start from the beginning. I don't want to pry, but can you explain in your own words, why you were previously in Larkhall?"
Barbara carefully removed her glasses, polished them on a pocket-handkerchief and replaced them carefully on her nose.
"I have been married three times," Barbara said slowly, her face twisting slightly in pain as the grim finality of the past tense hit home. "I was unhappily married to my first husband before I met Peter, my second husband. Peter was a lovely man like Henry was. He was a widower who was as much in need of comfort as I realized that I was in need of. Suddenly, I found a kind sensitive, deeply civilized man took me out of my world and into his world. I found a man whom I could love and who loved me. We traveled on holiday to different countries, to the outer reaches of Tibet in a spiritual journey of exploration for example. It was wonderful, except that….. "
Barbara smiled inwardly at such satisfaction until a shadow flitted across her face and she stopped.
"Please continue," Jo prompted.
"I was going to say that my first husband was a Catholic and did not believe in divorce and prevented us from marrying in the normal course of events. We felt married anyway in the eyes of God as any couple."
"I understand," Jo articulated softly. Now was not the time to pursue the matter, she judged as Barbara's voice lost its smooth flow and became awkward, strained.
"Peter had two children from his first marriage and they resented me from the start. They were Peter's children and for his sake I did everything to try and keep the peace but to no avail. They probably saw me as an obstacle between what they saw as their inheritance, God forgive me."
Jo passed a tissue with her sympathy as a long buried ancient hurt burst to the surface as her face crumpled.
"Everything would have been fine if Peter hadn't become ill," She sighed as recalling the tragedy meant reliving it one more time as she had for Nikki. "The dear man tried to minimize his illness till I forced him to go to the doctor. Even I wasn't prepared for the bad news…they called it inoperable lung cancer, too far advanced for more than palliative treatment…..my God. He became worse, in so much pain as the illness consumed him. I felt so helpless to do anything for him, you do understand, Jo. It is most important that you know and feel it, more than you could imagine……"
The passionate fear and pain broke through her accustomed stoical manner and her blue eyes looked at this professional woman for kindly judgment. Inside, Jo's feelings lurched sickeningly. She knew only too well. She had been sucked down into the same hell by the illness that killed her own husband years ago. She swallowed down that own knot in her stomach and smiled kindly mouthing to her ears trite words.
"I'm a human being, Barbara though I admit, I can't feel your feelings for you."
It was that look of understanding from the older woman which flashed between them that made Jo feel young and untutored but curiously relieved that, in her untutored way, she had done the right thing.
"He was in such pain towards the end," repeated Barbara in a bleak prayerful manner of a profoundly Christian fearing that the eternal judge who held her soul captive wouldn't forgive her or give her absolution, "that it was almost more than either of us could bear, It wasn't murder but what I did was to kill one of the two men I have ever loved in my life."
Those words tortured Jo beyond belief. There but the grace of god goes Josephine Mills. She could not speak as her own misery that she had held back for so long came flooding back. She did not know what to do or say next and she was supposed to do or say something.
It was at that moment that whatever providence in the world arrived in the form of Julie Saunders whose light footsteps and greeting came at the right time. She had carried a tray with a teapot and two cups and saucers, a milk jug and sugar pot and a plate full of rich tea biscuits.
"Nikki sent me as she thought you'd be thirsty with all that talking. I'm not getting in the way?"
"Bless you. You came out just at the right time," Came Jo's response with heartfelt emotion, a tear in her eye.
Julie Saunders was simultaneously flattered and embarrassed. She didn't think that serving tea and biscuits was all that special. Barbara was delighted that something like Julie's prosaic, common sense self came along at the right time and a wave of gratitude that swept through her and rescued her made her curiously light headed as she asked with that slight knowing smile curving the corners of her lips,
"You're not serving us with some of your special cookies, Julie? I've heard all about them."
"No, they're all legal and above board. Miss Betts said she'd have us shipped out if we did that again."
Julie set up the cups and saucers and poured the tea in her kindly down to earth manner somehow banished the demons that the conversation had summoned up in both Jo and Barbara. She smiled at both of them reassuringly though her conscious mind would have wondered why the bleeding hell she would need to reassure them. After all, she's only one of the red bans, nothing fancy like.
"You just phone Nikki if you want a refill and more biscuits," She finished before making a discreet exit.
"What was that all about, Barbara?" Jo smilingly asked.
"Oh nothing much. It was April fools day and they cooked up some cannabis cookies as a special surprise, and Karen had only been in her first week as governing governor, and Gina Rossi was acting wing governor. I think they both rather enjoyed the experience though they could hardly go around advertising the matter."
Jo shook her head and smiled at the nonchalant way that Barbara, that very respectable woman, delivered her judgment with total aplomb. The words 'dark horse' framed themselves in her mind without any conscious thought process.
"I have to ask you a painful set of questions, Barbara, but only as they are central to the case," Jo carried on, the delivery of her next set of questions being slow and as tentative as she felt inside. "Can you be more exact as to how Peter came to die and what led you to be imprisoned in relation to his death?"
"Peter did not want to die in a hospital bed, far away from me. He wanted to be at home with me. As his illness advanced……" and Barbara drew in a long intake of breath, steadying herself and nerving her to push through to the end of this intensely painful part of the story. "……………he grew weaker, more in need of nursing by me and more in pain. I took special leave from work so I had no shelter, nothing I could lose myself in….."
Jo winced inwardly. She knew exactly what Barbara was getting at.
"……..eventually, the anaesthetist had to instruct me on how to deliver regular morphine injections which were rather more effective than the cannabis plants that I grew in a discreet corner of my back garden. That worked for a while and we both had some temporary peace for a while."
"Did you have any assistance in looking after him?" Jo asked while Barbara paused.
"Towards the end, I had home helps who were very kind. I ought to add that Peter's two children started to come round more often than they used to. I believed that in their cold blooded way, they did indeed love their father. It would be uncharitable and unfair of me to say otherwise but it did not soften their attitude to me. Oh, they said the right words of sympathy but that was skin deep. In the end, the morphine wasn't enough to deaden the pain…..it got worse and worse and in the end, when we were quite alone, Peter begged me to put him out of his misery and I succumbed."
"So how were the police involved at a moment when you were thoroughly and morally deserving of sympathy and understanding of every decent human being?"
Jo's voice trembled as she spoke the words. This was not the action of a cold unemotional brief.
"That was Peter's children's doing. They insisted on an autopsy as to the cause of Peter's death. The unusually high level of morphine in Peter's bloodstream and them telling the police that I stood to inherit Peter's money provided them with a motive to draw the conclusions they wanted to arrive at."
"What evidence do you have of this?"
"They gave evidence at my trial in their high minded and slanted fashion. They had used the opportunity to visit their father to spy on me. I'm sorry, I shouldn't talk that way. Of course, I had no one who could or would have supported my testimony and that went against me…….I was technically guilty of shortening Peter's life but I have been brought up as a Christian to value all human life and it went against everything I had been taught to act as I did. I ought to say that the only time Peter's children ever visited me at Larkhall was to tell me that they had hired private investigators who had discovered that I was never divorced from my first husband when I married Peter. I owe it to Sylvia Hollamby in her typical score settling fashion to spread it around the other prisoners that I had inherited three and a half million pounds from Peter."
"What?" Jo exclaimed inadvertently. She had thought that John turned inscrutability into an art form but this quiet, middle-aged woman was in a different league. She saw the look of shock on Barbara's face and hastily qualified her reaction. "I mean, I am glad you have been frank on the matter."
"What you are really asking yourself is did that have any bearing on my actions. I can say in all conscience before God, none whatsoever. His money simply wasn't important to me. I acted purely to release from his sufferings the man I loved when his situation was utterly hopeless. When it came out at Larkhall about the money, I settled half a million pounds to found a half way house for discharged prisoners who had nowhere to go before Peter's children secured the money for themselves. It is run along the same lines as the Monica Lindsay foundation, named after another former prisoner at Larkhall whom Nikki knew very well."
Jo was impressed at how open Barbara's manner was and how fair minded she tried to be against the odds. She could easily picture Barbara being up on trial before the more cynical members of the brethren. All the pieces were starting to fall into places in her mind with relatively few questions as Barbara kept the story rolling along nicely.
All the time that Barbara and Jo were intensely locked into the details of the unfolding story, the green grass unrolled itself as far as the grey walls of the administration blocks, which enclosed the exercise area. Inside, Karen glanced down at two distant human figures gathered round a table, complete with tea and biscuits. They might have been enjoying an open-air tea party in civilized surroundings if she didn't look too far around. She smiled approvingly at Nikki's highly unorthodox but successful idea of placing them where there weren't bolts and bars. Even she wouldn't have thought of that one and certainly none of the other wing governors. She smoked a cigarette as she watched and hoped that Jo was getting on well.
Jo paused for a second as she refilled her cup of tea and Barbara's from the last of the teapot and, as her eyes focused away into the distance, she spotted the hospital roof and remembered hearing of Karen's desperate attempt, in all senses of the word, to save Denny's life. Now that she could see how high and precarious that ledge was, she could feel for John being a helpless spectator of events for once in his life.
"Can you tell me about Henry, how you came to meet him and marry him?" Jo asked after she had sipped at the rather tepid liquid.
"I was already the organist at the chapel services at Larkhall when Henry first came to Larkhall. I saw him first as a perfect English gentleman who was ill cast to begin with as the vicar at a women's prison. Very early on, he said to me that he wanted more of a challenge from the parishioners he was used to. Well, he certainly got that all right." Barbara smiled fondly.
"Even from my limited experience of Larkhall, I can imagine."
"You might remember that both of us were witnesses a couple of years ago when Snowball Merriman and Yvonne's son were jointly charged with blowing up the G Wing library. Well, dear Henry was blatantly manipulated by Snowball Merriman into giving her the run of his office, and he couldn't see that coming at the time. I once gave him an earful from me for passing on to the authorities about a matter, which I had told him in strict confidence. His well-intentioned act had unfortunate repercussions in splitting up Denny from her partner, Shaz. Those were certainly challenges………………..Oh, and I forgot, with my assistance, he had to fend off the clumsy school girlish advances of Sylvia Hollamby. That just added to the score of resentments she had of me."
Barbara continued to rattle through all the various little incidents of the past, which had served to unite the couple.
"We were both lonely people, Jo," Summarized Barbara. "Henry had been widowed in the same way that I was. We both needed friendship and stability from each other, having lost someone dear to us. It brought us together. When I got out of prison, it was totally natural for us to settle down in the parish of Chipping Ongar and enjoy the autumn of our lives in peace and serenity as we did. I know that Peter would have approved of both Henry and me marrying him."
Jo did not need to ask any questions about how love could flower in such a situation, even between prisoner and prison chaplain. It was a simple tale, simply told and lived and with a very real loyal friendship between them. She wished that her life could have been like that.
"…….It wasn't as if Henry was another Peter. I didn't need to compare them…..."
Either the sun shone brightly on them or they both became aware of it as Barbara's thoughts swam comfortably in what she could pretend a little was the present. The distant grey walls were somehow not quite real as she enjoyed polite conversation with this very sympathetic woman. Jo picked up this pleasant, dreamy feeling but schooled herself to go into darker, more treacherous waters.
"Can you tell me what happened when Henry first became ill"
"It gradually crept up on him," Barbara sighed. "He had been diagnosed as suffering from lung cancer as far back as last June at the time of the Creation. I was watching him like a hawk at the celebrations afterwards and that was the reason why he had to leave early. Even Henry had to have a rest…."
"I'm really sorry, Barbara as I never noticed at the time." Jo coloured as she apologized.
"There was no reason why you should notice, Jo……anyway, things slid gradually downhill from then on as he found it harder and harder to keep up his duties for the parish…."
"Just like Peter," Jo prompted.
"As you say, just like Peter," Winced Barbara.
"I only asked that question as this does avoid having to ask you to relive an incredibly distressing experience twice over," Jo answered the silent reproach, receiving a look of gratitude in return.
"Can you tell me of the circumstances the day that he died? I have to ask you this question as a lot of the trial is going to center on this one day."
"I had been trained by the anaesthetist dealing with Henry's pain relief, how to deliver an injection, because, like Peter, Henry wanted to be at home, rather than in hospital. I remember going to the hospital and holding that syringe again and feeling everything that had happened to Peter come back to me in a rush. Of course, he said that I was a quick learner. Little did he know………"
Jo closed her eyes in pain at the same time that Barbara did and she paused long enough for unpleasant memories of her own husband's final illness to surface at a time when she didn't need it.
"I'd been trained to always have the next injection prepared ready for when he needed his pain relief topped up. I was particular about this routine. I had to be.……. "
"Did you leave the syringe in any particular place, Barbara? I can imagine you would have been under enormous stress and run off your feet and needing to make sure you remembered to administer the exact number of doses," Jo softly interjected.
Barbara nodded, surprised at Jo's ready understanding of the reality of the situation.
"I always left it in a special place in plain sight on the bedside table, so that it would be handy whenever Henry's pain got too bad. I remember reading one of his favourite stories as he lay in bed. He had always loved books and, when he was too weak to read, I read the stories to him. He kept a diary to write his thoughts in though he hadn't written anything for a few days, the nearest he could get to writing the sermon for the next Sunday service. He was always fastidious about the written and spoken word, like the speech he gave at our performance of "the Creation." That was Henry's little contribution….."
Jo remembered Henry's speech very well. She was hardly likely to forget it.
Denny came out into the exercise yard. She spotted Babs and that nice barrister deep in conversation. She guessed that it was Nikki's typical smartarse idea so Babs would get to talk rather than feeling like shit and keeping her mouth shut. Denny knew all about feeling that your birth must have been a mistake, let along anything crap in her life that she wanted to give her a break. Wicked idea that only Nikki could come up with. She carefully edged her way to the top end of the exercise yard and got to work on the plants that Nikki herself had carefully tended a few years ago. It was great out of doors and better to be here than shut up stuffing bleeding envelopes. She was starting to feel a little better but it was a stupid idea coming on like some bible nutter and banging on about being saved. Life didn't work that way, certainly not to Denny.
"We used to have conversations much as we always had. He insisted on that and I remember talking for a little while before he drifted off to sleep as he slept very badly at nights."
Jo grasped straightaway that it meant that Barbara did also and that everything was seen through the grey mists of drowsiness, which she had to force herself to overcome.
"I can remember that it was around lunchtime, when I gave him another injection, that I had prepared the next dose ready, and left it where I normally did. Henry asked me
to make him a cup of tea while he wanted to write in his diary. I agreed as I know from my experience how much it means to write your thoughts down. That's one of Henry's strengths…."
Barbara smiled as his presence still seemed to surround her as if he could never die. Then her smile faded as she grimly took the final plunge.
"When I came back with the cup of tea, I honestly thought that he had fallen asleep again. He looked so peaceful. It took me a little time for me to realize that he wasn't breathing……..I can't remember much after I realized that he had stopped breathing. The last that I can remember was dropping the cup of tea on the floor than that the syringe wasn't where it should be……"
Ten minutes later, both Barbara and Jo in their various ways relaxed back in their chairs, drained while the grief that was lived by both of them had eventually drained from them and left them feeling weak. They let the sun and a very faint breeze attempt some slight healing process. They could do with everything like that which came their way. Just as Jo started to put some of the facts into rough order, Nikki's light footsteps could be heard as she approached them.
"I'm sorry to disturb you but we're letting the other prisoners out for association in ten minutes time. Do you want more time and, perhaps I'll find you a room if that is a good idea." "You're fine, Nikki. We've just finished," Jo answered with a small smile.
As Barbara was led back to the wing into the Julie's kind hearted care, Nikki exchanged a few words with Jo.
"Of course, we're relying on you to spring her out of here," Nikki said lightly and instantly regretted her words from the expression on Jo's face. Jesus wept, she thought, I've got to do my crusading routine and be a champion duelist with my weapons of legal precedent, incisive reasoning and my facility with words and keep my feet on the ground. Some chance.
"Of course, we'll do our bit and look after Barbara. We can't expect you to be Superwoman."
"Leotards never suited me, Nikki," Jo responded in a crazy attempt at humour.
Karen came out of the wing office, took one look at the strained expression on Jo's face and made an instant executive decision. In her job, that was ridiculously easy.
"Want to come back to my office for a chat and a cigarette, Jo?"
Immediately, Jo jumped at the idea. It was what she knew she needed, to have a chance to mentally regroup and light up a very much-needed cigarette. Some irrelevant train of thought made Jo ask herself how on earth a self righteous non smoker managed to deal with his very turbulent life without resorting to nicotine.
"You look as if you've really gone through it," Remarked Karen as Jo lay back in a chair.
Jo nodded. That was the understatement of the century.
"Am I doing the right thing, Karen? She asked abruptly.
"What makes you think that this case will be harder than other cases you've taken on?" counter questioned Karen. "Don't forget, I've built up quite a lot of experience of seeing you, George and John in action, professionally speaking in the same way that you've all seen me in mine."
Jo was silent. Her thoughts were churning around far too much.
"You look as if you could do with a large scotch."
"If it wasn't too early, I would." Jo responded at last with a profound sense of conviction.