Katie shook her head. “I can’t trust anyone. Even my own parents. He’s contacted them three times, via other people, to issue threats if I don’t go back to him. I know they’re threats – he’s made it sound like I’m in the wrong, that my mental health is questionable and maybe it is.”
“What’s he said exactly?” I asked, glad to get away from the topic of her pregnancy for a few moments at least.
“That the scandal I was causing would jeopardise my father’s job. Dean knows the chief executive where my dad works and I suspect he’s invested in the company. My dad didn’t tell me the finer details of what was passed onto him, just that it was hurting all of them by me being so pig-headed,” she bit her lip. “They have no idea of how controlling and manipulative Dean is. Everyone sees him as being this perfect business man who is constantly supporting charities, not sleeping with seventeen-year olds into submission or knocking his wife about when she won’t fuck who he says on his command.”
I winced. Some of the details of the abuse she’d suffered had already been given. I’d recorded her over several hours over several days, not knowing yet who was going to transcribe it or when she was going to go to the police. She wanted to divorce him, but the pre-nup would leave her with nothing except a tarnished reputation and her name dragged through the sewers of the gutter press. And there was more; more that she refused to tell me.
“How could I bring a baby into this mess, Claire?” she said, wiping away tears. “Part of me longs for it. I think about it growing inside me and wonder if it will be a boy or a girl and I love it already. But then I think what sort of life it would have if Dean somehow gets custody. You know he’s got medical records and enough money to make it seem as if I’m unfit. How can I put myself and a baby through that?”
Thoughts sprinted through my head considering a multitude of possibilities and potential outcomes. “Okay,” I said. “I need you to take a holiday. Get away from the city. I don’t need you here to speak with you, and when we start to issue proceedings I don’t want you anywhere about at first. We need to get you settled somewhere, registered with a doctor, seeing a counsellor – because you need it – and have you undergone a mental health assessment in preparation for what Dean might throw at us.”
She looked panicked. “But I can’t just up and leave. I have two events with my charities next week and where would I go?”
I bit my bottom lip and told my heart to slow down, thinking quickly, logically but as more than a lawyer. I liked Katie; if she hadn’t been my client we would’ve been friends. “My parents have a house an hour or so drive away. They have a spare cottage you can use and you wouldn’t be too far away. I just need to make a call.”
“Would he be able to find me there?”
“Potentially,” I said honestly. “He knows I’m acting for you. It wouldn’t take long for his lawyers to find what properties people around you own and find out where you’re staying. You have security.” My brothers had already engaged a bodyguard to keep an eye on Katie, and I’d had someone ‘getting to know me’ for the past few weeks because my over-protective older brothers were nothing if not fucking irritatingly thorough.
“Do you want to come back in an hour and I’ll let you know about a place where you can get away from it all for a while? And think about your future?” I needed to call my step-mother, Marie, to ask about the cottage, and it was phone call I wanted to make in private.
“I need to get something to eat anyway. I’m starting to feel ravenous all the time and I really need to put some weight back on,” she gave a sarcastic sounding laugh. “Me, an ex-model talking about needing to fatten up. What has my life come to?”
“You know it will be fine,” I said as she stood up, picking up her oversized designer handbag.
She smiled and shook her head. “Claire, both you and I know that it could be anything but fine. This could go on for months, if not years, and yes, I’m now worried about him maybe ensuring I meet with an accident. That’s why I’m taking your security.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s happened to lead you to that conclusion?”
Katie looked out of the window. The rain had finally subsided, maybe not washing away the entirety of a summer’s day. “No. Not yet.”
“You need to go to the police.”
“I can’t. His influence is huge, Claire. And I have nothing real to tell them. They’ll put it down as me being paranoid or attention seeking and he’ll end up using that against me,” she said, checking her phone. “I need a divorce, I need to get what I can from him and then I need to start somewhere new. I don’t want to leave my charities that I work for, but I’m coming to terms with the fact that I might have to.” She stowed the phone away. “I’ll see you in an hour. Thank you so much for what you do for me.”
“It’s part of the service,” I said, dreading the phone call I was about to make.
“It’s more than your job and you know that.” She slumped out of the room, saying a polite goodbye to our receptionist while I brought up Marie’s number on my phone.
I loved our step-mother. To all intents and purposes, she was my mum, except she had never wanted to take away the memory of the lady who had given birth to me and three of my brothers. Marie had married our father after a whirlwind romance while he was on business in New York. She’d come home with him after the case had settled and taken on a broken man and four broken children. Marie had been my gravity, my sounding board and now I needed her help with a client, I was also about to tear open an old wound that only she knew about.
She answered on the second ring, her voice still containing traces of the New York accent that nearly thirty years in England hadn’t managed to subdue. “Claire,” she said. “I hope you’re ringing to tell me you’ll be joining us this weekend?”
Shit. I’d forgotten that half of my family was congregating at my parents’ house to help discuss Jackson’s wedding plans. He’d become engaged to Vanessa a month ago and neither of them seemed content to wait or to have something small. Vanessa owned a marketing company and they’d met only three months ago when she’d undertaken rebranding Callaghan Green. Event planning for her was anything but a chore and they’d asked family over to our parents for the weekend to go over their suggestions. “I had forgotten,” I confessed. “I’ll be there for the Saturday if I can’t get over tonight.”
Marie laughed. “This new case will be taking over your life right about now,” she said knowingly.
Marie had been a lawyer herself, pausing her career to look after us and then have three more babies, my younger half-siblings.
“You need to remember to try and have a life too.”And stop punishing yourself, I heard the words even if she didn’t say them.
“I know. It’s hard though,” I said, honestly. “This case in particular.”
“Maybe you should have someone else run it, or do the bulk of it with you acting as advisor,” she said. “But I know you won’t. I know this will be complex and messy.”
I had told her some of the details already. She was still an owner of the company and acted as advisor herself when we asked. “My client, Katie, needs somewhere to be for a few weeks, maybe a couple of months. And she needs access to a doctor.”
“Okay. Can I ask why?”
