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‘Remember all the scrappy work we did back then?’ she says.
It had been the early days of the firm when her father had taken Jen on as their trainee – a recipe for dysfunction if ever there was one. He had trained at a Magic Circle firm in the City but wanted to run his own firm, so moved home to Liverpool, head full of mergers, acquisitions and ambition. After her mother died – cancer, in the nineties – he had set up Eagles. Why he hadn’t called it Legal Eagles, Jen had never understood.
In those early days they had taken any work going, had stretched themselves to the limits of their expertise to avoid being late on the rent. They’d do powers of attorney alongside residential conveyancing alongside personal-injury claims. ‘Drafting codicils with the textbook under the desk across my knees,’ he says with a laugh.
Jen smiles sadly. ‘Do you remember the timeshare conveyances we did?’ she adds, happy to reminisce.
‘What’s that?’ her father says, but there is something strange about his tone. Something performative, as though somebody is watching.
‘Yeah – remember we did timeshare conveyances, and we had to keep that mad list of whose slot was when?’
‘Did we?’
‘Of course we did!’ Jen says, momentarily confused. Her father has a phenomenal ability to recall events from the past. She must have misunderstood, the memory not quite what she thought.
‘I don’t think so. But weren’t those the days, anyway?’ he says. ‘Pizzas in the office …’
Jen nods. ‘Sure were,’ she says, though it’s a lie.
‘And then it kind of all tipped over, didn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’ She remembers the spring when she met Kelly. The firm had finally started earning money. A few big client wins. They hired a secretary, and Patricia in Accounts. And now look at it. A hundred employees.
‘Stay for dinner?’ he says to her, pouring out two cups of tea.
She hesitates, looking at him. It’s four o’clock. He has between three and nine hours to live. Their eyes meet.
She takes her steaming mug wordlessly from him and sips it, buying time. She knows she shouldn’t do it. Don’t change other things. Stick to what you are supposed to be doing. Don’t play the lottery. Don’t kill Hitler. Don’t deviate.
But her mouth is opening to answer on her behalf. ‘Love to,’ she says, so quietly she hopes the universe might not hear if she says it under her breath, just to him, no witnesses, a private communication from daughter to father. She wants to stop being alone, just for a while, to stop figuring out all the incomprehensible clues, never moving forwards, only backwards, backwards, backwards, a game of snakes and ladders with only snakes.
‘What’re we having?’ she adds.
Her father shrugs, a happy shrug. ‘Whatever,’ he says. ‘Another person just sort of makes life feel official, doesn’t it? Even if we just have beans on toast.’
Jen knows exactly what he means.
It’s five past seven. Jen and her father have put a fish pie he’d had frozen for ‘God knows how long’ in the oven. She should be leaving, she should be leaving, she keeps thinking, her rational brain imploring her with a kind of panicky reasoning, but his feet – in slippers – are crossed at their ankles and he’s put Super Sunday on, and he’s so close to it, and she can’t leave him, she can’t, she can’t.
‘Might put a garlic bread in the oven, too,’ her father says. ‘I can eat for England these days. You know, your mum hated garlic. Says she ate too much of it in pregnancy.’
‘Did she?’ Jen says, getting up. ‘I’ll put it in.’
‘God, I hate Super Sunday. Vacuous.’ He begins channel-hopping.
‘Let’s watch Law and Order and criticize the procedure,’ Jen says over her shoulder.
‘Now you’re talking,’ her father says, navigating to the Sky menu. ‘Get me a beer, too,’ he says. ‘And some peanuts for while we wait.’
The hairs on the back of Jen’s neck rise up, one by one, like little sentries.
‘Sure,’ she says. She walks into the quiet of the kitchen and puts the garlic bread in the oven. The interior lamp illuminates her socked feet.
The beer is already chilling in the door of the fridge.
‘Help yourself to whatever,’ he calls through.
Jen finds the peanuts in a cupboard which seems to contain just about everything – orange squash, two avocados, chocolate-covered raisins, teabags, Mint Club biscuits – and brings them through for him.
