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two years earlier:
forty-eight hours before the wedding
chapter 01
alex
If I’d terminated my pregnancy, I’d be turning left now as I board the plane.
I’d have room on the small desk at the side of my privacy booth for both my case files and the pad of foolscap paper on which I take notes by hand, the old-fashioned way, because five years of legal practice have taught me it’s the best method to find the loophole everyone else has overlooked. I’d decline a glass of chilled champagne so that I could keep a clear head, and kick off my shoes – cream and camel Grenson brogues, shoes that are businesslike and understated and make clear that I am a woman to be taken seriously.
But I didn’t.
So I’m herded right, not left.
My brogues are from New Look, although you’d really have to know your footwear to detect the difference. I can’t afford highlightsandnursery fees, so my medium-length hair is more its natural ginger than the classy auburn I used to favour. At twenty-nine, I’m still on the fast track to partner at human rights law firm Muysken Ritter, but when I get up at 4.30 a.m. these days, it’s not to fit in an hour with my personal trainer before getting to the office by six. I used to love weekends, because itmeant I could work straight through without the interruption of meetings and client conferences.
Not any more.
The woman in the row ahead of me twists around as the trolley passes, peering between the seats. She’s smiling, but the expression in her eyes is strained. I don’t blame her: we’re less than half an hour into a nine-hour flight.
‘Could you ask your little girl to stop kicking?’ she says nicely.
‘Lottie, stop kicking the lady’s chair,’ I say, in a tone that gives no hint I might as well be commanding the sun to set in the east.
Lottie stops instantly, her fat little legs suspended mid-swing. The woman smiles again, more honestly this time, and turns away.
She’s fooled by the curls.
My three-year-old daughter is blessed with white-blonde ringlets that reach her waist, the kind of fantasy hair Disney princesses used to have before they got feisty. It misdirects attention from the pugnacious jut of her jaw, the stubborn, bull-headed set of her shoulders. She isn’t conventionally pretty – her features are too quirky for that, and then there’s her weight, of course. But you can tell she’s going to be striking when she’s older: what my grandmother’s generation would call ‘handsome’. She just has to grow into her face, that’s all.
The curls are nature’s sly sleight of hand. They make people think of angels and Christmas, when they would be better off sharpening stakes and searching for silver bullets.
Lottie waits just long enough for the woman to relax.
‘Please, dear, could youstopthat?’ the woman says. There’s no smile this time, pained or otherwise.
Kick. Kick.
The woman looks at me, but I’m studiously flicking through the inflight magazine. You have to choose your battles. We still have eight and a half hours to get through.
Kick.
Trying another tack, the woman pushes a bag of Haribo sweets through the gap in the seats. ‘Would you like some gummy bears?’
‘You’re a stranger,’ Lottie says. Kick.
‘Yes, very good, that’s right.’ Another unrequited glance in my direction. ‘Don’t take sweeties from strangers. But we won’t be strangers if we introduce ourselves, will we? I’m Mrs Steadman. What’s your name?’
‘Charlotte Perpetua Martini.’
‘Perpetua? That’s … unusual.’
‘Daddy said I had to have a Catholic name because he’s Italian, so Mummy googled saints and picked the worst one she could find.’
My daughter and I have no secrets.
‘And where is Daddy, Charlotte? Isn’t he going on holiday with you?’
