Take My Breath Away Read online

  On her way into work that morning she had bought herself something to eat in the middle of the day, but she was in the mood for something special. Creed’s restaurant was said to be excellent, Egon Ronay was a fan, but she wasn’t ready to share lunchtimes with her new colleagues. She needed to get out for half an hour. At last she had something to celebrate, if only with herself. It wasn’t every day that you started afresh. She hurried up Southampton Street to Covent Garden. Thorntons had a shop there and she treated herself to a thick bar of fudge.

  She had this love-hate thing with chocolate. During her darkest days, she could never keep it down. Things were so different now. Food wasn’t a problem any more. She inhaled the sweet perfume of the shop, hardly bearing to postpone the moment when she unwrapped her prize. Her skin was in goosebumps just anticipating the taste. Since she’d started working at Hengist Street, she had put on half a stone, but these days she was relaxed about that. It was good to sin, every now and then.

  Creed’s offices filled the seven storeys of Avalon Buildings, a skinny block squeezed in between Savoy Court and Carting House. Reception was a large and airy space, fringed by a jungle of potted plants. Interior designers had eschewed minimalism in favour of comfort and touches of luxury. The armchairs for visiting clients were soft and deep and the aroma of Kenyan coffee wafted from a filter machine in the corner. A feng shui expert had positioned the fountain to perfection. It gushed soothingly as Roxanne walked in from the street. GQ and Granta were laid out on a wrought iron coffee table with a mosaic tiled top picking out the firm’s logo. Glossy brochures describing the firm’s specialities were scattered around, each boasting a foreword by a celebrity client. Large abstract paintings hung on the wall, random doodles of blue, brown and green. Celine Dion crooned from concealed speakers, promising that her heart would go on. Visiting a lawyer had become a lifestyle experience.

  Not, Roxanne told herself, that this was a solicitors’ firm like any other. Creed prided themselves on that. All the literature, the advertising, had this common theme. Lawyers who are different. The firm had earned a reputation as a scourge of both private and public sector employers who treated staff unethically. The partners didn’t handle divorce, property work or criminal law. Their specialism was civil rights in the workplace and clients included trade unions, whistleblowers and a lobby full of equal opportunities campaigners. Advocates from Creed had acted in landmark cases transforming the balance of power at work.

  ‘Creed has three priorities,’ Will Janus had once famously said. ‘Litigation, litigation and litigation.’

  It was a jest, a snippet of self-parody, a reminder of what a self-deprecating, regular guy he was. Professional traditions had passed their sell-by date. Will often evangelised about the need to fight the forces of legalism. He wanted to make justice available for the many, not the few. Creed didn’t so much employ staff as have profit-sharing executive stakeholders. Will preached solving disputes by e-mediation and spreading the gospel via Creedlaw.com. His firm led the way in providing joined-up legal services. Yet everyone knew that, if there had to be an old-fashioned bare-knuckle fight in the courts, there was no better advocate to have on your side than Will Janus. He’d been a winner all his life.

  The catwalk blondes behind the reception desk had scarily perfect smiles. Roxanne did not miss the charm-laden efficiency with which they greeted her by name, even though she’d forgotten to clip her identity tag back on to her lapel. One more thing she would have to learn. So much to do, so many habits that had to become second nature. Even if she had not changed her appearance and name, even if the short CV she had sent to Ben Yarrow had not economised so savagely on the truth, she would have been an impostor. At least she had a chance to become a new woman. Remembering her badge was only the start. She must be Roxanne Wake, every single second that she was here.

  She’d been given a room of her own, even though she was an unqualified lawyer with no track record to speak of and she’d half expected to be herded into a noisy open plan office along with a clutch of colleagues. Lucky. These days she liked being alone. The room was crammed with gleaming computer equipment, installed that morning by geeks bearing gifts from the information technology department. Potted plants with shiny green leaves warded off bad chi, otherwise the decor was limited to a virgin year planner on one wall, an internal telephone list tacked to another. When she’d settled in, she would give her surroundings a little more personality. Better be careful, though, about the personality she chose. No family photographs, no loveable drawings of stick people crayoned by infant relatives. Think Roxanne Wake, she instructed herself. Think Roxanne Wake.

  She closed her eyes and experimented in her mind with colour and knick-knacks. Better play safe and put up a couple of theatre posters and a Monet print. Nothing distinctive, nothing that invited comment or gave chatterboxes with time on their hands an opportunity to ask tricky questions. It was so easy to let something slip. At Hengist Street she had succeeded in keeping herself to herself. Everyone was so busy that few opportunities arose for friendships to build. Roxanne needed it to be the same at Creed.

  ‘Everything all right?’

  Even before he spoke, she knew that Ben Yarrow, head of the Ethical Employment department, had opened the door. His aftershave was unmistakable. Eurotrash by Wal-Mart, or some such. It smelled as if he soaked in it. He wore a wedding ring and she wondered why his wife hadn’t urged him to douse himself less liberally or at least with better taste. As for his dress sense… but perhaps Ben wasn’t accustomed to taking advice. He spent too much of his life giving it.

  She opened her eyes and switched on a smile. Not simply because Ben was one of Creed’s senior partners, and her ultimate boss. What mattered was that he was the man who had picked her out, given her the chance to change her life. She owed him.

  ‘People have been very kind,’ she said.

  He fiddled with the ends of his blood-red tie. ‘I have something for you. Joel Anthony is working on a new discrimination case, writing up the statements. You can help him interview the witnesses.’

  ‘What sort of discrimination?’

  ‘Specifically, sexual harassment. Alleged sexual harassment.’

  His puckish face creased into a grin. He was a small man, balding, with a ginger beard. In her mind she reinvented him as a troll, lurking under a bridge and plotting mayhem. She bit her lip, not wanting to give a hint of what was passing through her mind. She doubted whether his talents encompassed a capacity to laugh at himself.

  ‘Who are we representing?’

  Ben chuckled. ‘We’re on the side of the angels, Roxanne. That’s the first thing you need to learn here. Our clients are always the victims of circumstance. Even blue chip companies bleed. It will make a change for you, not having the chance to embark on a crusade on behalf of a wronged applicant. Oh, one more thing I have to tell you. As it happens, the allegations concern a director colleague of Ali Khan. Remember him?’

  How could she forget? A few weeks earlier, Ben and Roxanne had fought against each other at a tribunal hearing in Woburn Place. Roxanne’s client, Tara Glass, had worked in the finance department of Thrust Media. Thrust was owned by the legendary entrepreneur Ali Khan. After ten days Tara was sacked, the stated reason her bad attitude. She kept coming in late and spending half her time on the phone to her boyfriend. Tara said the truth was that she’d threatened to blow the gaff on Ali Khan for bribing people of influence and putting his personal bills through the company’s accounts. The company offered big bucks to settle, but she wanted her day in court. What’s the claim worth? she had asked. Unlimited compensation, Roxanne told her, if the case was proved.

  At first Ben’s cross-examination was gentle, almost sympathetic. Maybe he wasn’t so fearsome after all, Roxanne thought, or perhaps he was simply smart enough to recognise when he was on a loser. Then suddenly, the questions started coming like machine-gun fire. Why hadn’t Tara walked out the moment her conscience was troubled by the frauds?
Why wait until she was sacked before speaking out?

  ‘Or perhaps the brown envelopes you talk about never existed,’ he suggested, casting a sly glance at the tribunal members.

  ‘I saw them,’ Tara insisted. ‘I had to wrestle with my conscience every day I was in that office.’

  ‘Your conscience, yes.’ Ben shook his head. ‘So, Ms Glass, you believe in always telling the truth, do you?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ She leaned forward in the witness box, meeting his gaze. ‘Passionately. I wouldn’t be here otherwise, would I?’

  ‘Sure about that?’ He paused. ‘Would you care to turn to page fifteen in the bundle, Ms Glass?’

  Sitting in silence in the stuffy tribunal room, Roxanne felt her heart begin to pound. Where is this going?

  All at once, as she leafed through the pack of documents in front of her, Tara’s hands began to shake. As if she could see an abyss opening up, but could not help plunging towards it.

  She whispered something inaudible.

  ‘Speak up,’ the tribunal chairman insisted.

  ‘I have the page,’ Tara said with difficulty.

  Ben smirked. ‘It’s your job application form, isn’t it? See the box where you said you had no previous convictions? Were you telling the truth when you filled that in?’

  Tara’s cheeks were ashen. ‘All that stuff was a long time ago.’

  Ben’s eyebrows shot up. ‘A little less than five years?’

  ‘I was a student then.’

  ‘Who earned part-time cash selling her body to businessmen in a hotel near Russell Square?’

  ‘I was broke! Up to my eyeballs in debt. You have no idea.’

  ‘And the incident eighteen months ago, when you were caught smoking heroin in your boyfriend’s flat? Too relaxed to recall that when you signed the drugs-free declaration?’

  ‘You bastard!’ Tara choked back a sob. ‘This has nothing to do with my case!’

  ‘Ms Glass,’ the chairman said in a warning tone. ‘Mr Yarrow is merely doing his job.’

  Roxanne felt an emptiness in her stomach. The case was haemorrhaging in front of her eyes. She’d been so fired up with the injustice of what they had done to Tara, so determined to make the company pay. Meanwhile Ben Yarrow had been doing what Ali Khan paid him handsomely to do. Digging deep.

  ‘Easy, isn’t it,’ Ben said coldly, ‘making loadsamoney out of rich businessmen? But you graduated in more ways than one, didn’t you? You moved from working for those sad punters in Bloomsbury to taking a post with Ali Khan’s company. A colourful figure, isn’t he? Ideal for your purposes, I suggest.’

  ‘I had no purposes!’

  Ben’s face darkened. Roxanne thought he looked like something small and nasty out of Peer Gynt. ‘You had the prospect of a quick buck if you claimed your boss couldn’t keep his fingers out of the till, smeared him as corrupt and dishonest. Very useful for someone with an expensive habit to feed.’

  ‘He did those things! It’s true, everything I said is true.’

  Ben shook his head. ‘We’ve already established your difficulties with the truth, Ms Glass.’

  Tara Glass ran out of the courtroom in tears. All her fight was gone. Roxanne caught up with her in the corridor. She didn’t have the heart to ask why Tara had never mentioned the heroin. Tara said she was withdrawing her claim. She wished she’d never been born, she sobbed, as she fled from the building.

  Roxanne’s instinct was to hate Ben Yarrow for the ease with which he’d destroyed the woman. She still felt sure that Tara had been telling the truth about the brown envelopes. Yet a still small voice of calm told her he was only doing his job. On the way out, she had to share the lift with him. To her surprise, he didn’t gloat the way most company lawyers did after a crushing victory. When he asked if she’d ever contemplated working in private practice, she found herself feeling oddly flattered. Disappointed, too, that having raised the subject, he said goodbye without making any attempt to take it further.

  A month later, he’d called out of the blue and asked if she was interested in joining Creed. At first she’d played for time, said she needed to think it over. She didn’t regard herself as street-wise, but she knew enough about career moves to realise it was a mistake to sound too eager. Inside, she’d always known that she would say yes. Creed was a firm which had its heart in the right place and Ben Yarrow was offering her the opportunity to make the new start of which she’d dreamed. The biggest gamble of her life, but a risk she had to take.

  The department needed an extra pair of hands at a busy time. The firm had more work than it could handle and employment lawyers with advocacy experience were in short supply. She’d won most of the cases she’d handled at Hengist Street. A two-in-three success rate was worth shouting about, given the number of no-hopers with which she’d been lumbered. He interviewed her along with his junior partner, Joel Anthony. An old-fashioned question and answer session. No psychometric tests, thank God. She didn’t want anyone exploring the secrets of her personality. When they offered her the job, Roxanne’s only qualm was that perhaps she should have come out up front and told them everything. She was so much more of a phoney than poor Tara Glass. But did it matter? She’d earned the offer on merit, on the strength of her own performance before Tara’s case fell apart. She might be a novice joining the ranks of a renowned human rights practice, but that proved that the firm’s commitment to its equal opportunities recruitment policy was more than skin deep. Besides, it was too late to tell them who she really was.

  ‘You needn’t worry,’ she said. ‘I went on a crusade for Tara Glass but that doesn’t mean I won’t fight to win for Ali Khan’s companies. That’s what lawyers ought to do, isn’t it? Put their personal feelings to one side and do their best for their clients?’

  ‘You’re an idealist,’ Ben said with a smile. He lifted a hand as Roxanne started to say something. ‘No, no, it’s a compliment. Really. This firm was built on ideals. Don’t forget, Ali Khan wasn’t always the celebrity he is today. Will Janus’s greatest success as a young immigration lawyer was when he acted for Ali, the first time he wanted a visa to stay on in the UK.’

  ‘I remember the passport application case. It was a cause celebre.’

  ‘You know, Roxanne, that’s the trouble with this country.’ Ben sat down on the edge of her desk. Invading her space, ever so slightly. ‘So many people hate success. Then there’s the racism. Ali is a powerful man these days – and he was born in Karachi. No wonder he’s unpopular in some quarters, especially with the jingoistic Press. With our help, he won each battle and finally the war. He got his British citizenship. But he didn’t always have money, he had to claw his way up. He’s suffered discrimination all his life. And I tell you this. If there’s any truth in these sexual harassment allegations, you can help Joel make sure the culprit is hung out to dry.’

  ‘I’m touched by your faith in me.’

  ‘Don’t be. I picked you out, remember? It may seem like a gamble, but I’ve never been averse to the occasional punt at long odds. I’m not afraid of backing my own judgement.’

  It struck her that he and Joel Anthony had taken an extraordinary risk in recruiting her. Nine out of ten of the other lawyers she’d met in Avalon Buildings were seasoned solicitors. Yet Ben had offered her a twelve month contract and a fat pay cheque after watching her lose a case for a client who had expected to win. She’d heard about the recruitment crisis in her field of law, but hadn’t guessed it might make her such a sought-after commodity. It was a fresh experience to be so wanted. A single reference from Ibrahim, her boss at the agency, had sufficed; Ben hadn’t even asked for copies of her exam certificates. She supposed he often advised his clients on the importance of adhering to punctilious recruitment procedures. Handwriting analysis, competency tests, questions about her attendance record. Yet the laxity wasn’t surprising. Lawyers never acted themselves in the way they advised others to behave.

  ‘What’s this?’ The voice belonged to a woma
n who was peeping around the door. Roxanne had an immediate impression of red hair in a bob, pale powdered cheeks and vivid scarlet lipstick. ‘Dumping a sure-fire loser on the new kid on the block, Ben?’

  Far from appearing to be offended, Ben chortled. ‘Practising the noble art of delegation, as it happens. Management in action. Roxanne, have you met my ill-mannered personal assistant? This is Chloe Beck.’

  Chloe Beck trotted into the room, high heels going click-clack, click-clack. She was tall and skinny and her black skirt barely existed. Roxanne saw Ben’s eyes feasting on Chloe’s legs, but the girl took no notice. As if she expected nothing less.

  She studied Roxanne through Calvin Klein spectacles before putting out a ringless hand with long cool fingers. ‘Hello, Roxanne. I missed you on your whistle-stop tour of the office. I work for Ben and Joel Anthony.’

  ‘And from now on, for you as well, Roxanne,’ Ben Yarrow said. ‘I’m sure you’ll make good use of our voice recognition system when you start dictating letters and stuff. The technology is cutting edge. But we all need secretarial support from time to time and Chloe will be glad to help.’

  Chloe gave Ben a sidelong glance. ‘The computer wizards haven’t managed to phase me out altogether yet. You’ve come from an advice centre, then, Roxanne? I gather you were at Hengist Street.’

  Unaccountably, Roxanne felt a chill of unease. Or perhaps it wasn’t so unaccountable. ‘You’re very well informed.’

  ‘The grapevine here is marvellous,’ Chloe said. She was weighing Roxanne up, as if trying to decipher a code.

  ‘Chloe is the grapevine,’ Ben said. He was smiling at his PA with every appearance of amiability, yet Roxanne sensed a tension between the two of them.

  ‘Don’t listen to him, Roxanne. Everyone says I’m nosey, but I’m simply interested in people. Joel Anthony keeps encouraging me to qualify. He says I’d make a good lawyer, simply because I’m so fascinated by other human beings. Never mind all the technology we have here. A litigation department’s business is all about people and the way they behave. Finding out what goes on in their minds.’ Chloe gave a teasing giggle. ‘Uncovering their darkest secrets.’