A/N Thank you, thank you for all the reviews.

Anthony exclaimed with surprise at the sight a set of long, pale legs in black high heels stretching into the middle of his office, propped on the coffee table. He entered the room fully. Maud was lounging on his sofa in a dark grey suit. Her sleek hair swept from a poker straight centre parting down past her shoulders. She smiled slyly, "good morning."

Kicking the door shut in frustration he dumped his large bag onto the desk along with the parcel of croissants, "what the devil are you doing in here?"

She opened her mouth but the anger was rising in his chest. She'd seemingly fallen off the edge of the planet for seven months and now he had seen her twice in seventy-two hours. First at the restaurant, ruining an otherwise perfect evening with Edith, and now here, with Edith due to arrive at any moment. She'd knock for coffee and breakfast and find Maud on his sofa, in the very spot where she usually sat.

There would be questions. The questions had no good answers. It was all his own fault. It was his deception, his decisions, Maud was no part of them, but she was here and she shouldn't be. This wasn't the way it usually worked when she left him. Usually she sent tentative emails and texts saying she was ready to have him back. She didn't just turn up. She did not surprise him at his place of work.

He was practically shouting, "These are my Chambers Maud, in case you'd forgotten – I am a Judge. The Recorder of Snaresbrook, no less and you –" he pointed at her, "you are but a lowly barrister. You do not just come in here. Come to think of it, how the hell did you get in here?"

She picked some imperceptible specks of dust from her sleeve, "do calm down. Getting in was easy. You know how it is – the most important people in any court aren't the Judges-" she looked pointedly at him, "or the barristers, or solicitors or clients or clerks. The most important people are –"

Anthony groaned, "Winston from Security let you in."

"Bingo." She cleared her throat slightly, "It helped, of course, that I'm your wife."

He shook his head with a sigh and looked at her, "You left me seven months ago."

Being married to someone for a decade, having been friends with them for the previous decade gave one an absolute understanding of their manner of communicating. Maud had a way of tilting her head and flexing the corner of her lips to indicate that a point someone had made was so irrelevant as to be unworthy of comment. Their estrangement received this treatment. She treated it as she had the previous two estrangements. Leaving him was what she did. He'd long since given up trying to understand it and she'd never cared to explain. She always came back; he suspected that Maud thought that was the pertinent point, a point that might receive more than a dismissive head tilt.

"How are you Anthony?"

His arms remained folded across his chest. He did not sit. He did not want a conversation, "Busy. Summing up my trial." He gestured at the stacks of lever-arch files, "I need to robe and do some reading. If you wouldn't mind?"

"Don't let me stop you."

"Maud."

"I came to offer my congratulations." She enjoyed speaking in this coded way.

The frustration sounded in his voice, he glanced at his desk clock. Edith was about ten minutes away, "About what?"

"The High Court. I'm a little wounded you didn't tell me."

"It's confidential" he rolled his eyes at the irony, "or supposed to be, until the formal announcement."

She furrowed her brow and spoke with feigned sweetness, "Even from the wives of the appointees?"

Anthony rolled his tongue around the inside of his cheek and bit it gently as he tried to contain his irritation, "you left me." There it was again – the tilt of the head denoting the lack of importance in that fact, "how did you find out?"

She picked up one of his files and begun to examine the contents, "I asked myself why you'd be having a portrait done, made a few discrete enquiries -" She trailed off. He got the idea.

"Right. Well, yes. Thank you for the congratulations, but if you wouldn't mind?" He reached for the door handle.

Unusually she spoke quietly, as if she hoped he wouldn't hear the question, or perhaps that he wouldn't attribute any importance to it, "who is the artist?"

Realisation dawned – she was here, out of the blue and out of character because of Edith. He spoke evenly, "you met her."

"Yes." Maud laughed and smiled awkwardly, "Of course, I know - at the restaurant. Such a nice restaurant." She shifted in her seat, uncrossing and re-crossing her legs. "I suppose - I was surprised - it wasn't -" she was babbling, he wasn't sure he'd ever heard her babble. Then it came, with surprising clarity, the point, he suspected, of her whole visit - the key question, "are you sleeping with her?"

He wouldn't answer. He stared pointedly at his wife, who stared right back.

"I'll take your silence as a 'yes'."

"I do not care how you take my silence."

She stood then, with an exasperated huff, arms folded, "you've chosen a terrible time to have a mid-life crisis, darling. They'll take the nomination away, you know, if they find out about your 20 year old child mistress."

Anthony went to protest but balled his hand up and forced his nails into his palm. The argument could rage: she was not 20, she was not a child. As for mistress - he was married and not to Edith, so the technical truth of it was there. But in all other respects the insult the word conjured rung in his ears and barbed at the pit of his stomach. It was not simply sexual relationship, although there was sex, extraordinary sex. She was not some sideshow tacked on to the periphery of his life for his own gratification. Edith was at his centre, his very core. The sum of what she had become to him could not be reduced to words; friend, girlfriend, lover, mistress, wife – none of them were adequate.

"They won't take it away. I've been told when I'm to be appointed. Plenty of High Court Judges have – " He couldn't articulate a definition. He didn't want to, he'd spent months trying to avoid precisely that, he would not be forced by Maud, of all people, into labelling Edith. A label meant consequences and he knew at the pit of his stomach that they wouldn't be good ones.

"So you are sleeping with her?"

"What the hell do you care? You left me, Maud, and not for the first time."

"I was restless. Things weren't happening for me as quickly as I wanted them to – I thought I'd have silk by now, be on my way –"

"Jesus, that's all I am to you isn't it? A meal ticket? A means of advancement?" He snapped the words out.

"That's not all you are Anthony, but that's a big part of it. You act surprised – offended – as if you didn't know precisely –"She waved her hand in front of her face and then gripped the bridge of her nose, "You agreed to marry me, you knew precisely what you were getting into, don't act offended now because you're embarrassed to be caught with some bit of skirt."

"Maud, you will not talk about her –"

"Stop." Her hands were raised, she looked suitably sheepish, "I'm sorry. I don't want to argue about that. I didn't come here about that, about her – not really."

"Then why?"

"To remind you, to remind you of what we had. When I look to the future I still see it all exactly as we planned. Us – together - sitting at the Middle Temple Benchers' table, you next to the Lord Chief, me across from the Master of the Rolls – you on the High Court, on your way to the Court of Appeal, me on the Circuit Bench, with those successes to come. We're doing what we always wanted to do. We are happy and we are fulfilled. That was the plan, wasn't it? I am not mistaken in that and we can still get there."

Maud inched towards him, and he inched back. He wanted to argue, to disown the version of him that she conjured, a version he didn't recognise. But he couldn't, because she was entirely right. That was the plan. They'd made it together, him as much as her – a plan to give him everything he ever wanted. All his dreams.

Last night he'd dreamed of dancing with Edith in the ballroom at Locksley. There was a little girl spinning around them, skirts fluttering up with each pirouette. He didn't know, but he'd had the sense the child was his. His and Edith's.

His stomach churned, and he glanced nervously back to the door of the court, silently praying for tube delays.

"I'm sorry I kept leaving. I was frustrated at the lack of progress. I get frustrated and restless. I will own up to those failings on my part and I will apologise for them. I will not leave again."

"How generous you are."

"Anthony." Maud's eyes were wide and her tone was urgent, "This is quite serious you know. Do you want a divorce?"

Yes.

There it was. The answer was immediate and obvious, but it didn't translate through his brain and into his vocal cords and out of his mouth.

Maud proposed to him in a Little Chef just off Junction 17 of the M62. They were on the way to his fortieth birthday party, thrown by his ailing father at the house he'd bought with the funds from the sale of Locksley. Anthony was halfway through levering a forkful of hearty English breakfast fare into his mouth and she was pouring two cups of tea. "We should marry." The coughing fit she'd caused rained beans and bacon scraps and black pudding back down to his plate. Three simple words. He hadn't appreciated the havoc they would wreak.

Marrying Maud made absolute sense at the time. She was his best friend, he loved her in a way, she was a lawyer of significant talent, his intellectual equal, she didn't want children, she wanted him to go to the Bench and to the High Court and she accepted all the sacrifices that came with trying to achieve those goals. She wanted the same successes for herself, of course, and he gave the same support in return. That's what their relationship was, and, by and large, it worked. That's what his life was, his whole life, and it worked.

Edith made him think and feel and want entirely different things. It was exhilarating.

It was petrifying.

So he was silent. The answer receded and suddenly he didn't know what to say in response.

Silence is fatal in a courtroom. It betrays weakness. Honest answers, clear answers, unchanging answers are immediate.

Maud was the best barrister of her generation and she would know his silence signified uncertainty. She took the chance to try and tip the scales, "I understand, I really do. But you must see the reality of it Anthony. You've had some fun and you've blown off some steam, but she is half your age and she knows nothing about the lives we lead. You'd be throwing away a marriage that has served us well for nearly ten years – and possibly an appointment to the High Court, certainly the chance for further advancement - for a complete unknown. We are a team, we have achieved great things and we will continue to achieve great things, you're not seriously going to throw it away?"

He was weak and pathetic and she was right. He wasn't going to throw it all away. He'd carried it around with him for so long he didn't think he could.

Coward.

He sat down at his desk chair and squeezed his eyes shut.

"I do not want a divorce Anthony, so if you were hoping I'd ask, I won't. I can forgive whatever has been or whatever is going on with you and the little artist. It was probably time for you to sew a few wild oats. This is an open invite back to Kent. Deal with your issue and we'll start again."

Her hand was on his shoulder and then it was gone. He opened his eyes to find the office empty.