Chapter 18 What the Lawsuit Says
The opera house garden smelled of rain and rosemary, and the Wi-Fi signal was better near the stone bench by the herb bed, which was the only reason Anya was sitting outside in the middle of a Bavarian October morning with a cardigan that was not quite warm enough and a laptop balanced on her knees.
She had chosen outside deliberately. She wanted sky above her when she heard whatever Harriet Fenn was about to say.
The call connected at nine fifty-seven, three minutes before the scheduled time, and Harriet appeared on screen with the efficiency of someone who had been ready and waiting since nine forty-five.
She was in her Holborn office — Anya could identify it now, that pale maple bookcase behind her shoulder, the framed silk map of the Inns of Court — and she was wearing a charcoal jacket that telegraphed nothing more dramatic than Tuesday.
Harriet Fenn, Cassian's solicitor and the woman who had walked Anya through half a dozen press enquiries in the past three months, had the professional gift of appearing entirely calm in proportion to how serious the situation actually was.
The fact that she looked extremely calm today did not reassure Anya in the slightest.
"Good morning," Harriet said. "Before I begin, I want to say clearly — this action is vexatious. That's my professional assessment, and it will be the word I use in any application we file. I want you to hold onto that word throughout this call."
"Vexatious," Anya repeated.
"Meaning frivolous, bad faith, and almost certainly brought to cause distress rather than succeed on its merits. Which doesn't mean we treat it casually. It means we treat it efficiently."
Anya tucked her free hand under her thigh to warm her fingers. The rosemary near the bench had gone silvery at the tips with cold. A single apple had dropped from the tree at the far end of the garden overnight and was sitting on the flagstones, improbably whole.
"All right," she said. "Tell me what it says."
Harriet set a document on the desk in front of her, though she didn't need to look at it.
"Niles Ashford has filed a civil action in the High Court naming Cassian as first defendant and you as co-respondent.
The claim alleges that over the course of your employment as nanny to his children, and subsequently as his fiancée, you exerted undue influence over Cassian's business decisions — specifically, decisions made in the past fourteen months that Ashford claims materially damaged Sterling Tech's share value and undermined fiduciary duty to shareholders. "
Silence. A wood pigeon somewhere beyond the garden wall began its low, circular complaint.
"He is claiming," Harriet continued, precisely, "that your personal interest — specifically, your desire to secure your financial future through your relationship with Cassian — constitutes a conflict that Cassian failed to manage, making you both liable."
Anya heard all of this. She processed it the way you process cold water — a full-body understanding that arrived before any individual thought.
Her name was in a legal document. Her motives were described, categorized, assigned a value.
The woman who had spent twelve years of her life quietly making sure other people were comfortable and cared for and never felt burdened by her presence — that woman was now, in the language of the High Court, an influence with an agenda.
"Harriet," she said, when she trusted her voice. "What decisions? Which specific decisions is he pointing to?"
"Three. First, Cassian's withdrawal from the Holtzmann acquisition in November — Ashford claims you pressed him to prioritize family stability over shareholder return, which he's framing as your financial self-interest in preserving your domestic position.
Second, the delay to the IPO prospectus — he's claiming you created the conditions for the Marchetti disclosure to surface, which stalled the timeline.
Third, Cassian's decision to terminate Declan's employment without board consultation. "
"I had nothing to do with any of those decisions."
"I know that. Cassian knows that. What the filing requires is that we demonstrate it formally, which is where it becomes somewhat — invasive.
" Harriet's word was careful, chosen. "If the case proceeds to disclosure, which I intend to prevent through a summary judgment application, they would be entitled to request your financial records going back five years, your employment history including every position you've held and the circumstances under which each ended, correspondence between you and Cassian during the relevant period, and potentially testimony about how and when your relationship became personal in nature. "
The wood pigeon had stopped. The garden was very quiet.
"They want to reconstruct my entire biography," Anya said. "So they can argue I arrived on his doorstep with a plan."
"That is the insinuation, yes."
She thought about her Tube carriage. It was an involuntary image, the kind that came up from somewhere underneath rational thought — herself at twenty-four, cold coffee going translucent in its paper cup, hand gripping a pole, wondering how she'd come to be here, in this city, doing this job, being looked at by a stranger across the carriage.
She had been so — temporary then. So contingent.
Everything she'd had could fit in two suitcases and the back of a minicab.
She thought about her mother already having seen a news alert.
She thought about the comment sections she had stopped reading at chapter thirteen.
She thought about the family bakery in Derbyshire — Pemberton's, the one Cassian's company had once nearly cost them and then helped save.
She thought about her graduate degree, which she had earned with a distinction and never used, sitting in a certificate frame in her mother's spare room alongside a photograph from secondary school and a drawing Petra had done of a princess that had — because the world was occasionally generous — captured something truthful about the way Anya looked when she was happy.
All of it, evidence. All of it, processed. All of it, re-described in language designed to make a life of small kindnesses look like a long con.
"When you say summary judgment," she said, "what does that process look like? Timeline?"
Harriet looked almost pleased by the question — the pleasure of a professional whose client is asking the useful thing.
"We file an application arguing that even taken at its highest, the claim discloses no reasonable cause of action against you specifically.
In straightforward terms, we argue that co-respondent status requires a demonstrable legal connection to the alleged breach of fiduciary duty, and that living with a man and later becoming engaged to him does not, in law, constitute such a connection.
I expect the application to succeed. I would estimate six to eight weeks for the hearing. "
"And in the meantime, the filing is public record."
"Yes."
"And my name is in it."
"Yes."
Anya looked at the apple on the flagstones. It had a bruise on one side from the fall, a soft depression in the skin like a thumbprint. Still whole, though. Still itself.
"Is there anything," she said, "that you need from me before you file?"
"A formal statement confirming that you did not participate in, advise on, or have prior knowledge of the three decisions listed.
I'll send you a draft by this afternoon for your review.
I'll also need you to preserve any correspondence — WhatsApp, email, anything — from the relevant period.
Don't delete anything. Don't tidy anything. "
"I don't delete things."
"Good." Harriet paused, then added, with what was, for her, a noticeable degree of warmth: "Anya.
For what it's worth, I have reviewed the underlying claim in some detail.
There is nothing here that a judge with any experience is going to receive sympathetically.
Ashford is doing this because it costs him relatively little and it costs you and Cassian considerably — in time, attention, and peace of mind.
It is designed to be a nuisance. The correct response is to remove it as quickly as possible and decline to give it more oxygen than it requires. "
"Thank you," Anya said. "I'll watch for the draft."
She closed the laptop.
The garden held its quiet for a moment and then resumed its ordinary activity — a blackbird working at the soil near the rosemary, the apple still on the flagstones, the light moving westward across the stone wall at the pace of a slow decision.
She did not go inside immediately.
She sat on the bench and let herself feel it — the specific, distinct humiliation of having your goodness questioned in a document.
Not your judgment. Not your choices. Your goodness.
Your motives. The woman who had stayed late to read to children who were not hers, who had learned Felix's favourite pasta shape and Petra's fear of thunder and kept both pieces of knowledge as carefully as she kept her own — that woman was, somewhere in the records of the High Court, a co-respondent with suspect intent.
A person who had to be formally proved innocent of her own kindness.
It was not the same as the tabloid. The tabloid had been noise — sharp and bright and quickly recycled into the next day's entirely different noise.
This was paperwork. This had her date of birth and her employment history and an allegation that would sit in a legal database long after the filing was dismissed. This could be found.
Her mother had already found it.
She pulled her phone out and opened the message her mother had sent at seven forty-three that morning, before the Harriet call, before the coffee, before Anya had been quite awake enough to construct a response: