The Train by Sarah Bourne (fiction books to read txt) 📕

we’re getting ready for the summing up at the moment. The defence was exactly what we expected, so we had it all covered.’

‘Good. Better get back to it.’ He lifted her off him and she pulled her knickers up, pulled her skirt down, looked at her reflection in the window, smoothed her hair down and left.

Lawrence took his laundered handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped himself, zipped his trousers, and went to his computer. He’d decide what to do about Paula later but one thing was for sure – she wouldn’t get admitted to the Bar if he had anything to do with it, let alone make silk.

Lawrence was in a foul mood. Nothing had gone his way all day, through no fault of his own. He’d considered staying in town at his flat in Camden but decided he couldn’t face a solitary dinner and the call to Deidra to tell her he wouldn’t be home. She didn’t like him staying in town at the best of times and hated it now she was incapacitated. She expected him to come home every night to bring the world to her since she couldn’t go out to embrace its wonders.

And then, having made the effort to go home some bloody woman mutters something under her breath when he accidentally bumps into her at the station. Well, sorry, love – you asked for it, standing there like a stuffed rabbit in the middle of a busy concourse.

He fished his keys out of his pocket as he headed for the car park. He’d had to park further away than usual because Deidra had been talking at him as he was leaving that morning and delayed his departure by a critical two or three minutes. He peeled off his coat and threw it and his briefcase onto the passenger seat of the Merc and got in.

He loved his car. The white-leather interior, the polished-wood trim, the way the safety belt hugged him into the seat before releasing a little. And the purr when he started the engine, the thrum of power under the bonnet as he pressed his foot on the accelerator. His only regret was that he couldn’t drive it as it deserved to be driven, not in England with its bloody stupid speed limits. He sat in the driver’s seat stroking the steering wheel, the smoothness of it reminding him of Paula’s taut skin – not that he’d been allowed to touch it. She’d made a grave mistake rebuffing his offer of help. Who did she think she was? She may be all Queen’s English in chambers, but he knew where she came from. He bet she was all glottal stops and dropped h’s as soon as she got home to Peckham or whatever dreary little suburb she lived in. He smiled to himself and drove out of the car park toward home.

Pulling onto the A5 he turned the music up and surrounded himself with the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’. It was stirring stuff. As he listened, he wondered what they would have chosen for him with their power over life and death: to live or to die? Not usually one to let chance decide anything for him, tonight he thought it might be a relief for someone else to take charge. He was tired of having to deal with family dramas, of Deidra being out of action, of having to take up the slack. A buxom Valkyrie, perhaps with Paula’s full sensuous lips and Margot’s smooth, round buttocks, could escort him to Valhalla where he would never have to do anything except eat and drink and shag nubile young women. He might have made the last bit up but it made the whole package sound quite appealing.

He went past his normal turn-off at Monks Way, preferring to stay on the A5 where he could keep his foot on the accelerator. It was a longer route to go through Old Stratford and back along Watling Street but he wasn’t in a hurry to get home. He briefly considered keeping going until the A5 joined the M1 and beyond, driving until he ran out of road and had to get a ferry to the islands off Scotland where he would rent a small cottage under a false name. Live a simple life fishing, walking, having a pint in the local pub in the evening.

He sighed and turned off towards home. Fishing, walking, making friends with the locals – none of it was him. It was too parochial. He was a man of the city. He may live in the country but he was alive in the city. No passive fisherman, he was a hunter, like his grandfather.

As he pulled into his drive and parked the car his phone rang. He glanced at the screen and declined the call. The last thing he needed was to talk to his daughter. As if it wasn’t bad enough having Liam a drug-addicted dropout, his daughter was a self-absorbed financial black hole. She never spoke to him unless it was to ask for money. He had no idea how a seventeen-year-old could spend so much when she was at boarding school all week and riding her bloody horse all weekend. How many pairs of shoes or new dresses did a girl need?

The rich smell of roast meat hit him as he opened the front door. Deidra came into the hall to greet him. He looked at his wife in her expensive clothes, well-groomed and coiffed as always, the only differences being the collar she had round her neck, the flat heels instead of her usual court shoes and the stick she’d been using since her accident. Lawrence hung his coat in the cloakroom and walked past her into the lounge.

‘Scotch?’ He waved the decanter at her.

She limped in and sat on the sofa. ‘Lovely,’ she said in her refined Home Counties voice. Not a glottal stop within miles. ‘How did the case conference go?’ she asked.