Читать книгу A Year of Chasing Love - Rosie Chambers - Страница 7

‘There’s a guy in reception asking to see you, Olivia.’

‘Did you ask him to make an appointment?’

‘I did, but he said he’d wait for as long as it took for you to see him.’

Olivia sighed. As a divorce lawyer she often had clients calling into the office, hoping to see her straight away, desperate for someone to listen to their story. Usually she didn’t mind, and if she didn’t have a prior engagement, she’d try her best to accommodate them in her crammed-to-bursting diary. After all, she knew how hard it was to take those first steps to visit a solicitor, never mind rustling up the courage to divulge the most heart-breaking details of your failed marriage to a complete stranger.

‘Okay, no problem. I’ll squeeze him in before I see Mrs Coulson at eleven thirty.’

‘Shall I show him up to your office?’

‘No, no, it’s okay. I need a coffee so I’ll come downstairs with you. You never know, I might be able to persuade him to make an appointment.’

Olivia pinned a professional smile on her face and followed Katrina down the corridor, giggling at the clickety-clack of their stilettos on the polished wood flooring. Little did she know that would be the last time she would laugh for a long time, because as soon as she stepped into the reception area, a crumple-faced man leapt out of his seat, reached into the pocket of his grubby raincoat, and extracted a large manila envelope which, incongruously, he then waved in the air. The glee reflected in his hard, ball-bearing eyes was the absolute antithesis of the bewildered confusion that was racing through her veins.

‘Mrs Fitzgerald?’

‘Yes?’ Very few people outside her circle of friends knew her married name. Alarm bells started to ring, and she exchanged a quick glance with Katrina who was staring at the man with patent dislike. ‘What can I do for you, Mr …?’

In order to elongate the drama, the man took a few moments to survey the elegant, marble-walled foyer of Edwards & Co, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths – already devoid of its Christmas decorations despite twelfth night being the following day – deriving obvious pleasure from the perplexed expressions on the faces of his audience. A tickle of recognition began to agitate at the edges of Olivia’s memory; the dishevelled attire, the ill-disguised porcine proportions, the whiff of stale nicotine. Where had she seen him before?

‘Just leave the papers and get out!’ snapped Katrina, the first of her colleagues to step forward to break the freeze-frame image.

Without further ado, the envelope was thrust into Olivia’s hands and the process server ambled towards the smoked-glass elevator, a grin on his face and an air of satisfaction following in his wake. As the doors slid shut behind him, the burble of conversation magnified. No one needed a Private Detective badge to work out that what had just transpired had come as a complete shock to Olivia.

‘Come on,’ said Katrina. ‘I think some privacy is—’

‘Hey, I know that guy!’ announced Miles, a fellow divorce lawyer and Olivia’s least favourite colleague. ‘That was Jack Leyland, Ralph Carlton’s personal lackey – does all his dirty work for him. What was he doing here, though? I thought we instructed that ballet-shoed princess, Heidi Fowler, to deliver all our court documents, not that piranha. Although, I’ve always said that Jack does have his uses. Are we changing our approach at last?’

Ralph Carlton was renowned throughout the legal profession as the go-to rottweiler in the field of matrimonial litigation, which could only mean one thing. Olivia’s stomach gave a pain-filled lurch and a curl of nausea began its assiduous journey around her chest.

Oh God, surely not!

‘No, Miles, we …’ she muttered, desperately trying to reconnect her brain to its modem.

‘Because I have to tell you, all this conciliatory, non-confrontational malarkey is starting to scratch at my balls. We need to get a lot tougher in our negotiations, especially after that article about you being London’s Top Divorce Lawyer appeared in the local rag. Ridiculous accolade, if you ask me – just because you’ve achieved the questionable milestone of having handled five hundred divorces doesn’t mean that—’

‘Shut up, Miles. Haven’t you got secretaries to harass?’ said Katrina mildly, taking charge of the situation and guiding Olivia out of the reception and back down the corridor to her corner office.

By now, panic was beginning to ricochet around Olivia’s body, her throat had contracted around what felt like a prickly pear, and she felt light-headed. She collapsed onto the overstuffed leather sofa she used to interview the more emotional clients who sought her advice and slowly slid the paperwork out of the envelope as if it contained a poisoned pen letter – the effect it caused was almost as bad.

Because London’s Top Divorce Lawyer had just been served with her very own divorce petition.