Roxie Cooper - The Law of Attraction - the perfect laugh-out-loud read for autumn 2018

‘I don’t think I’ll be joining any time soon.’

‘And that’s another! Richard, do you remember the evening I joined Circuit?’ he yells ahead of me.

‘When you got so drunk you fell off the chair and broke your wrist? How could I forget?’ Skylar recounts.

‘I still finished my speech, though…’ Sid says proudly.

‘Yes… in the ambulance,’ Skylar recalls disapprovingly.

‘No way?!’ I squeal.

‘Oh yes. Sid caused me no end of trouble in pupillage. I almost got rid of him on countless occasions. Only reason I never went through with it is because he’s one of the best bloody barristers I’ve ever come across.’

Coming from Skylar, that’s quite the compliment. I’ve never seen him speak so highly of anyone before.

‘Oh, come on, Richard. I wasn’t that much trouble,’ Sid says, playfully.

Skylar gives Sid the look I’ve come to know as the Look of Death and Sid just smiles cheekily at him.

‘Yes, you were. I get ALL the troublesome pupils…’

‘Erm, what’s that supposed to mean?’ I ask, mock-offended.

‘You’re both “characters”,’ Skylar says with a worried look on his face.

Sid and I both glance at each other.

‘Anyway, come on, Amanda. We have an early start tomorrow.’ Skylar points out as he heads off towards the car.

‘See you both tomorrow,’ Sid says, doing a kind of ‘see you later salute’. Probably the lighting and the fact we are standing in the darkness with the stars and whatever, but oh my goodness, Sid looks super-dreamy tonight. And he’s in his three-piece suit with his tie off. And his eyes really are so twinkly. I watch him walking away, ridiculous grin on my face.

Skylar interrupts and cuts it dead.

‘Don’t go there, Amanda.’

‘What?!’

‘I saw the way you were looking at him.’

‘I was doing no such thing.’

‘I’ve warned you about this,’ he says in his best dad tone.

‘Oh, Richard. Honestly. Stop it. I am not a lovesick teenager. I am a woman completely in control of my emotions and I do not form crushes on work colleagues.’

Even as I’m saying it, I make a mental note to file this quotation under ‘I Don’t Fancy Sid Ryder and Other Lies To Tell Your Pupilmaster’.

The conversation naturally ends with the revelation that Skylar has received a parking ticket, which sends him into a furious rage. Nothing upsets him more than having to fork out money, especially for something which is unavoidable. He witters about it all the way to my flat then barks at me that I need to be in Chambers ‘BY 7 a.m.’ because we have a big sentence.

It’s almost midnight by the time I crash into bed and I’m physically and mentally drained from the evening’s events. But one thing’s for sure: it’s given me a valuable insight into my colleagues, the people behind the wigs and robes, the ones I’ll be working with and who I’ll have to impress to win this tenancy, and that can’t be a bad thing.

CHAPTER 7

Before I know it, Halloween tat is starting to fill the shops and I’m glugging pumpkin-spiced lattes like nobody’s business. There’s that lovely late afternoon sun in the sky, the one which casts beautiful, bright, tangerine-orange light over everything at about 3 p.m. A little pop-up stall on the Quayside has appeared, selling jacket potatoes, chestnuts and other cold-weather fodder, and it shoots all kinds of delicious aromas around the area whenever I leave Chambers on an evening.

When did it suddenly become autumn?

One thing which has amazed me in recent weeks is the amount of hoop-jumping one must do as a pupil – it really is never-ending. In addition to going to court, all the work Skylar sets for me and remembering everyone’s names (still only mastered approximately eighty-seven per cent of Chambers, which is rather shameful), I also have to attend various pupil courses. Forensic accounting, advocacy, ethics… you name it, there’s a course for it. To make it worse, they’re usually held in a conference suite miles away and I’m exposed to other pupils all day, most of whom are only interested in bragging about who is the most intelligent/loudest/irritating (always Marty).

By the end of October I’ve been on three of these courses and I’m starting to wish I had a vice to turn to which was stronger than wine but not quite heroin. I’m sure there must be a happy medium somewhere on the vice spectrum… hmm… Absinthe, perhaps?

Ultimately, being governed by the Bar Council, Chambers must comply with various regulations if they want to take pupils on year after year. In practice, this means they have to assign senior members to various roles and responsibilities.

One rainy Monday morning, Skylar drags Marty and I into a conference room, sits us down and glares at us both from across the table. Seems he is the designated Chambers person to deal with procedure and complaints.

‘Pupils,’ he declares, with a fancy hand movement. It’s utterly impossible to ever know where he is going with these chats. Since the Mess, I’ve had to endure all kinds of nonsensical talks. He leans back in his chair, making his now signature ‘temple’ with his hands, resting underneath his chin.

‘Back in the olden days when I joined the Bar, things were a lot simpler than they are now. The Bar Standards Commission et al weren’t necessary. If someone in Chambers gave you the ‘glad eye’ you simply got on with it. You either shagged them or told them to “ fuck off… ”’

The way Skylar says ‘fuck off’ is exactly the same way my mam says ‘lesbians’ when she’s gossiping about the neighbours on her estate; an extremely overexaggerated mouthing of the word, barely even a whisper.

‘…But now you have all sorts of rights , apparently, and so I am here to tell you all about them.’

Crikey. Doesn’t sound like Skylar is perhaps the best person to be doing this chat but, as it’s obviously a box-ticking exercise, I don’t think Chambers are too bothered by it.

‘Okay,’ he sighs. ‘So discrimination on the basis of gender, race, religion or any other factor is NOT acceptable within this Chambers. It will not be tolerated either directly or indirectly,’ he goes on. ‘Understand?’

‘Yes,’ Marty and I say in unison.

‘Right, that’s that done. Next – harassment…’

God, this is painful.

‘Obviously, you must never harass anyone else in or out of Chambers – sexually or otherwise…’ he warns, looking directly at Marty. ‘But if you should find yourself the victim of such behaviour you must first inform your pupilmaster UNLESS they are the perpetrator of such unwarranted behaviour…’

Lord alive. I dare not even imagine.

‘…In which case, you must direct your complaint to the Head of Chambers. Okay?’

‘What if he’s the perpetrator?’ I ask, genuinely wanting to know.

‘What?’ Skylar hisses at me.

‘Well, what if it’s alleged he’s the one doing the sexual harassing? To whom does one complain then?’

‘Erm, well it’s all hypothetical anyway...’

‘But shouldn’t we know? Just in case?’ Surely Richard Skylar isn’t lost for an answer?

He looks momentarily puzzled. He clearly can’t be arsed with this.

‘Amanda, Mr de Souza is a very busy man,’ he clips. ‘He has better things to do than concern himself with chasing skirt around Chambers.’

‘Right, okay. I’m glad we cleared that up.’ I smile.

‘One more thing. Not so much guidelines… ’ – he says ‘guidelines’ with contempt as he waves his hands about, almost as if he is wafting the word away like paper in a breeze – ‘…as sound advice…’

I am intrigued. There’s something about senior barristers giving pupils unscripted advice. The stuff that doesn’t come from a book at law school. Passed down through the profession, through generations, learned only through years of experience and hard work…