"Members of the Jury -"
Temporary fun.
"- the time has come that the Court no longer requires a verdict based on the decision of all twelve of you."
Temporary fun.
"In a moment I will send you out again to re-commence your deliberations -"
Temporary fun.
" - the court can now accept a majority verdict."
Temporary fun.
"That means a verdict, please, on which nine or more of you are agreed."
Anthony burst into his office from the courtroom and slammed the door shut with his foot. Breathing heavily, he tried to shake away the words. They'd played on a loop for over three weeks, a constant whispering distraction. I never lied – I tried to be honest – it wasn't some big deception - and the worst of them all - temporary fun.
At Cambridge Anthony won three of the four mooting competitions and was a finalist in the other. He competed against Harvard and Yale. Even when he was expected to prance around the courtroom as he spoke like the Americans he still held his own. At Bar School his marks in advocacy were the highest in his year. As a barrister he'd been highly praised for his brave and precise submissions as well as his devastating cross-examination. He'd given judgments in the Crown Court on beneficial trusts in proceeds of crime cases and whether a Defendant could give evidence wearing the full niqab. They'd been praised in the higher courts and remained the definitive statements of the law on those matters. They were scholarly and incisive and he gave them off the top of his head, using only a few hand-written notes.
Words were his enduring, lifelong friends. He could always shape them in magnificent ways. In full flow, with words as his weapons, Anthony Strallan was a sight to see.
But when he'd needed them most of all, they deserted him. With Edith he fluffed all his lines. He didn't tell her any of what he should've done. He didn't even really apologise, he tried to obfuscate and evade, when he should have begged forgiveness at her feet for the choices he couldn't escape. He must have left her with the impression that she meant little to him, when the truth was quite the opposite.
Reverentially he took his Moleskin notebook from the top drawer. He turned to the back pocket and gently pulled out the single sheet of paper he'd sequestered there. He smoothed it out on the desk, admiring, for the thousandth time, Edith's beautiful hand-writing. The list of books was nearly complete now. Only one left and he'd have finished the education she set out for him. He pushed at the corner of the paper - dog-eared and crumpled - vainly trying to mold it back to perfection.
The Moleskin contained scrawled thoughts on each of the books he'd read since they'd been apart. A concession to the vain hope he might one day see her again, perhaps even talk to her. Game of Thrones was a direct lift from history, was he the only one who'd noticed it was just the War of the Roses with some dragons and magic shoehorned into the plot? The Rosie Project was saccharine but enjoyable. He cried when he read The Professor of Poetry, although he wasn't sure it had anything to do with the book.
He riffled around in the bottom draw of his filing cabinet and retrieved the whiskey he'd hidden there when the Jury had been sent out a little over three weeks ago. It had become a necessary crutch to get through the days of waiting. Snaresbrook and Notting Hill had become inextricably linked with Edith, everywhere he looked, she was there, except she wasn't and she wouldn't ever be again.
The amber liquid caught the mid-morning sunlight and he stopped himself from swallowing it in one. Slow sips. His work here was nearly done, but he still had to take the verdict from the Jury when it came and he couldn't be slurring his words when he did it.
Mrs Hughes's knock and her entrance into the room came too quickly for him to hide the evidence. The bottle was in the air, his hand was on the drawer, but it wasn't enough. He sat back into his chair and feigned innocence. Her eyes drifted from the bottle in his hand, to the glass on the table and back to his face. She raised a disparaging eyebrow.
Caught red-handed. There was nothing he could do except play it straight, he raised the bottle in her direction, "drink?"
"It's 11.30 in the morning."
"That's a no, I take it?"
"Most definitely. I have some admin I'd like to run through and I can see that you're not too busy." He waved his hand at the chair on the other side of his desk. "First on the list –"
"- holding my breath with anticipation." Carefully he folded away Edith list and replaced his little notebook.
"Don't interrupt. You need to start boxing up the office. They'll need to move everything over to the RCJ. I am having some storage boxes bought in tomorrow." She three her hand around the office and smiled brightly, "It'll give you some gainful employment for a few days."
"Something to look forward to." Mrs Hughes scowled at the sarcasm.
"Next. Mr Bates is organizing a post-trial meal. Everyone's going."
He laughed, "you?" Mrs Hughes hated the riotous drinking sessions barristers embarked upon after trials lasting longer than six weeks.
"Even me. After all it's likely this will be the last one." A night out was the very last thing he felt like doing, unless it was Edith on his arm. "It's a nice meal on Fleet Street and then they're going to a comedy night at Middle Temple, which I suspect is just a pretense to drink to excess, so I might skip that bit of the evening. You should come and get out of the house. Drink in company, rather than on your own." She nodded towards his glass.
"Well if my Clerk is going, I can hardly refuse the invite."
"His Honour Judge Carson –"
"Do you ever call him Charlie?
"Stop interrupting."
"Charles?"
She rapped her notepad on the desk, "His Honour Judge Carson would like to organize a valedictory for us."
"We're not retiring."
"Yes, but we're leaving Snaresbrook, where we've been for some time and it'll be very different in the High Court, as you know. He'd like to have a celebration, call on a few members of the Bar to make some embarrassing speeches, get everyone to give us a big send off."
"I don't think –"
Mrs Hughes shook her head, "I might have confused you. When I said he 'would like' to organize a valedictory. I really meant he is going to. We've no choice, I'm afraid."
He raised his drink to her in mock celebration and knocked back the contents, "next, then."
She cleared her throat, "Mrs Strallan telephoned –"
"What?!" Lines of confusion creased his forehead. There was a moment when he heard 'Mrs Strallan' and his mind translated it to 'Edith'. Then he remembered Mrs Strallan was better known as Ms Taverner. There was no certificate with Edith.
" – she wanted me to remind you that the invitation remains open."
Maud had text him a message to that effect nearly every day. As if she knew, somehow, that he and Edith were finally at an end. He hadn't yet had the strength to pack up his things and return to Kent. It was just a matter of time, but he couldn't quite bring himself to leave the flat in Notting Hill. The reminders of Edith might be driving him to drink but they were better than no reminders at all.
"You're not going to ask me what the invitation is?"
"No. I rarely ask questions to which I don't already know the answers."
"You've become such a lawyer."
"Your fault."
"Charlie's too."
"The both of you. I used to be such a nosy woman."
The thought was so sudden, so absolute that he recoiled from the force of it, pushed at his desk, knocking over the empty glass, "did you tell Edith that Maud and I are on-off?!"
"Your Honour, I –"
He was shouting, ruddy-faced and so ludicrously sure of his indictment, "Did you tell her we are on-off, but eventually always on again?! Did you tell her that?!"
Elsie Hughes was a little over five foot, but she when she stood up from her chair, she drew her stomach in and puffed her chest out and looked him straight in the eye as if she too was over six foot, "That is not a question Your Honour, it is an accusation and it is unworthy of you, and positively insulting towards me. I am going back to my office. You can speak to me again when you've regained control of your senses."
The complete absurdity of his suggestion trickled through his dense brain as he wiped up the whiskey from his desk. It couldn't have been Mrs Hughes because Edith never came back to Snaresbrook before their argument. More pertinently than that however, Mrs Hughes simply wouldn't do such a thing.
Even if it had been her he had no right to react as he had; to positively scream at her as if somehow this was her fault. It wasn't anyone's fault but his own. Not Mary or Maud or Len. Just Anthony.
The guilt had caused the words to abandon him and now his senses had packed up and left as well.
He made three pots of tea before he was satisfied. Using his elbow he levered the door to Mrs Hughes's small office. She looked up at him, stoney-faced from behind her surprisingly tidy desk. A number of boxes occupied what little floor space there was, Mrs Hughes was all packed up for their promotion.
Stepping gingerly through the obstacles he placed the tray onto her desk and cleared himself a seat. He poured. She was silent.
He handed her the cup, "I am an utter and complete idiot. You did not deserve that and I am sorry."
"Have I ever, for even one moment, given you the idea my loyalty is to anyone but you?"
"You're marrying Charlie." He shrugged, throwing an impish grin in her direction.
She was unmoved, her eyebrows in her hairline, "Be serious, please."
"No, of course not."
She sipped at her tea, "I like Ms Crawley, very much actually, but I never once said anything to her which would cause you concern. I certainly never talked about Mrs Strallan with her."
"I know that. I do know, I knew that before I flew off the handle, I apologise."
"As if I'd ever use the phrase 'on-off', honestly."
"Quite." He rubbed his eyes and felt all fifty-one of his years, "I'm not myself."
A cup of tea appeared in his peripheral vision, a cloud of milk turning it to precisely the right shade, "It hadn't escaped my notice."
She threaded her fingers beneath his hand and gave them a squeeze. In spite of how beastly he'd been, she'd forgive him, she'd been the one constant in his life over the last decade.
Part of him wanted her to shout at him; to demand to know why he wasn't himself and, when she found out, to put him in a taxi to Brixton. But that wasn't their relationship.
"Anthony?" He looked at her, startled to hear his first name in her mellow Scottish tones, "you'll be alright. You'll figure it out eventually."
"What?"
"Everything." She smiled, "Drink your tea."