Chapter 10
10
It’s not a wobble. A month has passed since John Curbishley’s memorial service and, although I followed Alasdair’s advice and I’ve tried to summon the enthusiasm that I used to feel, it’s just not there. In fact, I feel more and more like someone who’s trapped on a train that’s going in the wrong direction, and there’s no sign of a station where I can get off and change tracks. I’m currently sitting in an airless basement meeting room in Paris, trying to find a way over the seemingly endless hurdles in French employment law, which gives workers so much protection it’s almost impossible to get rid of them. Normally, this kind of thing energises me; a knotty problem that I can really get my teeth into, but I’m just not feeling it. I’m glad there aren’t any windows in here, as I have a horrible suspicion I’d probably let the discussion wash over me while I stared out of them. It’s not helped by the fact that the people on the other side of the table keep breaking off into heated discussions in French.
‘Shall we take fifteen minutes for a comfort break?’ I suggest after one such debate. If I don’t get up and move, I’m in danger of going to sleep.
‘How do you think it’s going?’ Laura, one of the junior associates, asks quietly while we’re getting coffee. I take a moment to study her; she reminds me of how I was at her stage. I can see the same hunger in her eyes that I used to have.
‘Honestly? I have no idea,’ I tell her and see the surprise register in her face. Partners aren’t supposed to say things like that.
‘But we’ll get there, right? I mean, there has to be a way to make these people redundant without making the transaction so costly it becomes unviable?’
‘If there is, I can’t see it. The law is pretty clear. The only way we’re going to get rid of these employees will be to be to offer such a ridiculous incentive that it would be frankly cheaper to keep them on and pay them to sit at home and watch TV. On top of that, I get the distinct impression that the guys on the other side of the table are enjoying running rings around us. Time for a change of tack. I’m going to suggest we wrap things up for now. Our client needs to rethink their approach, and it might just unsettle the other side and make them a bit more cooperative if we call a sudden halt.’
‘That seems a very high-stakes plan.’
‘I don’t know about you, Laura, but I can’t see any benefit in sitting in that room for the rest of the week while they carry on making us look like idiots. It’s not a good use of our time.’ I’m already shutting down, looking forward to curling up in my own bed tonight and spending the rest of the week at home. I’ve always enjoyed travelling, having all the humdrum aspects of life such as food and laundry being taken care of by the expenses policy, but the shine has definitely worn off recently. One hotel room is pretty much like another; yes, they might vary in size and opulence depending on the price, but they all have the same problems. The beds are never as comfortable as your own; the showers always depressingly feeble; the layout impractical for working. I don’t know how I never realised this before.
‘You’re the boss,’ Laura says uncertainly.
‘I am, and I’ve decided it’s time to get the hell out of here,’ I tell her as I pull out my phone to call Janice and get us booked on the next train to London.
I know pulling the plug like this is a risky strategy, and it seems the senior partners don’t think it’s the right one if the summons that arrives before we even reach the tunnel is anything to go by. It takes the form of an email from Helen Armitage, the senior partner who has taken the transaction over from John.
Thea,
I gather you have terminated this week’s negotiations prematurely. Please come to my office at 8a.m. tomorrow for an urgent debrief.
Helen
The phrase ‘urgent debrief’ is a company euphemism. What it actually means is ‘come prepared to have your arse kicked from here to next week’. It’s like being invited to a meeting to discuss ‘future resourcing’, which always means ‘you’re fired’. Although I’ve heard of people getting ‘urgent debriefing’ requests, this is the first time I’ve received one myself. I stare at the screen for a while, trying to work out why the request hasn’t filled me with terror in the way it’s supposed to. Although I’m pretty certain I can defend my decision, I know I’m not going to get the chance to do that. The conversations in urgent debriefs tend to be one-sided and loud. After a few minutes, I close my laptop and stare out of the window at the passing countryside.
It’s dark by the time I get home. Usually, I’d leave my bag in the hallway to be dealt with later and go straight into the study to get on with some work, but the combination of my despondency about life in general and the impending urgent debrief have robbed me of my usual motivation. Instead, I carry my bag upstairs and unpack it before pouring myself a glass of wine and settling in front of the TV. After a bit of channel hopping, I settle on Grand Designs . Tonight’s couple have embarked on an ambitious project to convert a former Welsh Methodist Chapel into a family home for them and their three young children. We’re only ten minutes in, but already Kevin McCloud is confidently predicting that it’s all going to end in tears. Just the kind of schadenfreude I need on a day like today.
By the time we reach the end of the programme, the wine bottle is two-thirds empty and I’ve also polished off a chicken madras with rice that I found in the freezer. The chapel conversion is stunning; after a few false starts, the couple realised that the best way to get around all the various planning restrictions and other issues thrown up by trying to convert what was basically a poorly insulated barn with pretty windows into a home was not to convert it at all. Instead, they put an entire new ‘skin’ inside the chapel, ensuring they didn’t compromise the structure in the process, and then constructed their home within the skin. They are, of course, horrendously over budget and there were times when their marriage hung by a thread, but even the famously gloomy Kevin can’t fault it. I particularly like the way they’ve aligned the glazing on the inner layer with the stained-glass windows on each side of the chapel. Their other stroke of luck came when the east end of the chapel, where the altar was, proved to be in such a poor state that the only option was to demolish it and replace it. After a bit of to and fro with the council, and yet more overspend, they’ve installed a glass wall that floods that end of the house with natural light.
For a moment, I’m tempted to see if I can find another episode on catch-up, but I can feel my eyelids beginning to droop so, after clearing away the remains of my meal, I head upstairs to bed.
Initially, it seems as if Helen doesn’t seem to have got the memo on how to conduct an ‘urgent debrief’ because she’s not shouting. Instead, her voice is suspiciously calm and reasonable.
‘I was a little surprised,’ she begins, ‘to be informed by Monsieur Duchamp that you had cancelled the remainder of this week’s sessions and pulled the entire team off site. Talk me through your decision process.’
‘It’s a genuine impasse,’ I reply. ‘As you know, the deal is only viable to our client if they can shift the software development offshore to their team in Hyderabad.’
‘Yes. They’ve been very clear about that.’
‘Unsurprisingly, the French aren’t very happy about their developers facing the axe, and the law is on their side. The only way they can get redundancies approved by DIRECCTE, the work inspectorate, is to prove that the company is having economic difficulties that can only be resolved by reducing the workforce. Even then, the workers have to consent. The books clearly show that the company is healthy and they’ve made it clear there’s no way the workers are going to consent. We’re out of options and there didn’t seem to be any point in sitting there while they said the same thing over and over again. They were enjoying humiliating us, so I decided to take back control the only way I could think of, by calling a halt to the negotiations while we re-grouped. I didn’t really see what else we could do.’
‘But you made an executive decision to pull our client out of the process without even consulting them. How do you think they feel about that?’
Uh-oh. Here we go.
‘Here’s my problem,’ she says, and her voice is positively saccharine, making me jump when she suddenly starts shouting. ‘It wasn’t your decision to make, you fucking imbecile . Do you have even the first idea how much damage you’ve done? Quite apart from the loss of billing revenue, you’ve made a laughing stock out of both us and our client. If you think I’m angry, I’m not a patch on them. They’re not only threatening to ditch us for literally any other law firm, but they’re also talking about suing us to recoup their spend so far.’
‘I think that’s a little?—’
‘Shut up! I don’t want to hear you say another word. You’ve fucked this so badly, I don’t even know if it’s unfuckable. What you’ve done is sailed into the battle of Trafalgar and then promptly run away because the French “looked a bit fighty”. How do you think that looks?’
‘What was I supposed to do? I told you we were getting nowhere.’
‘For starters, it might have been a good idea to talk to me before you went off half-cocked. I’d have told you to stay in that fucking room, nodding and smiling, while the associates worked their arses off behind the scenes to find a way around it and I got new instructions from the client. What you were not, I repeat, not supposed to do was pull the fucking plug and flounce off site without consulting anyone. What the hell is the matter with you?’
She’s right. I should have talked to her before pulling the team. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but now there’s nothing I can do except sit here politely while she hurls a torrent of abuse at me. I’m strangely calm about it though, because somewhere between the point where she compares my intellectual ability unfavourably to a woodlouse’s and her detailed description of the anatomically challenging things the other senior partners want to do to me, something inside me has very quietly snapped, a bit like one of those strands of mozzarella when you pull a slice of pizza away.
‘Do you understand?’ she finally concludes. I’m not sure I do, because I’ve tuned out most of the last five minutes, but I have no desire to prolong this meeting, so I simply nod my head.
‘Good. Get out. I’ve got a deal to save.’
‘Are you OK?’ Janice is waiting for me in my office. ‘I walked past Helen’s room a few minutes ago and she certainly wasn’t holding back.’
‘I’m fine, thanks, Janice.’
‘Of course you are. If it’s any consolation, she may have barked but she’s not going to bite. Not hard, anyway.’ She lowers her voice even though we’re the only two people in the room. ‘She missed a filing deadline once when she was a junior partner. The fines were astronomical, and Martin was so angry we thought he was going to have a stroke.’
I know she’s trying to make me feel better, but I just need five minutes alone. ‘Janice,’ I say. ‘I know it’s not your job, but would you mind very much fetching me a flat white? I’d rather not be around other people right now.’
‘Of course.’ She bustles off and I open my laptop and start composing an email. It’s brief and to the point, and I read it a couple of times before clicking send. I haven’t even finished my coffee before I’m summoned to see Helen again.
‘Sit down,’ she instructs, closing the door behind me. ‘Look. I realise I may have said some things in the heat of the moment earlier which might be considered upsetting, but I think this is disproportionate.’ She holds up a printout of my email.
I stay silent.
‘You must have realised that HR would send it on to me,’ she continues when she clocks that I’m not going to say anything. ‘I’ve had a chat with them and they agreed not to take it any further until I had the opportunity to talk to you. Obviously, nobody is going to try to coerce you if you genuinely feel this is what you want, but I’m begging you to reconsider. Today is just a bad day in the office; we’ve all had them. Yes, I’m pissed off, but I think I’m allowed to be in the circumstances, and the good news is that I’ve already had a couple of phone conversations and it looks like it might just be fixable. Don’t do this, Thea. Learn from your mistakes and do better. You’re a good lawyer who made a mistake. You’re not the first, and like I said, it looks like we might be able to get things back on track.’
I stay silent.
‘Why don’t you take the rest of today off and think about what you want to do? I can probably sit on this for a day.’
‘I have thought about it,’ I tell her firmly. ‘I’m sorry, Helen, but this is what I want.’
‘You realise that the next person to see this will be Martin. He’s not going to react well.’
‘As someone said to me only a few minutes ago in this very room, I can’t go to the battle of Trafalgar expecting a cup of tea and a biscuit.’
‘That’s not quite what I said, but are you absolutely sure?’
‘I am.’
‘OK.’
The summons to see Martin comes so quickly that I barely have time to sit back down at my desk. ‘What the hell have you done?’ Janice asks when she relays the message. ‘The office rumour mill is in overdrive. Everyone knows something big is going down, and that you’re at the centre of it, but beyond that it’s all increasingly wild speculation.’
‘I’ll fill you in as soon as I’ve talked to Martin, I promise,’ I tell her as I head for the lifts.
‘Go straight in,’ Margaret tells me when I reach Martin’s office on the eighth floor. ‘He’s expecting you.’
Martin is sitting behind his desk and gestures to the chair in front of it as Margaret softly closes the door.
‘What,’ he growls, waving the printout of my email, ‘the bloody hell is this?’
‘It’s my resignation.’
‘I can see that. Please tell me this isn’t some kind of hissy fit because Helen shouted at you. You’re made of stronger stuff than that.’
‘It’s not a hissy fit.’
‘What is it then? Someone made you a better offer? I’ll warn you now, they’ll likely retract it as soon as they hear about the little stunt you just pulled in Paris.’
‘Nobody’s made me any offers.’
‘Then I don’t understand.’
‘This isn’t a knee-jerk reaction to my meeting with Helen, I promise. I get that I fucked up and I completely deserved most of what she said. The truth is that I don’t want this, Martin. Not enough, anyway. You’ve always said that a good corporate lawyer has to be hungry for success. I’m not hungry any more. I’m tired, fed up, and losing interest. I fucked up the Paris deal because I was bored, and that’s not good for me or Morton Lansdowne.’
He stares at me for an age, and then sighs.
‘I get it. I’ve seen that look before. Believe it or not, you’re not the first person to do this. There was a guy in my intake, absolutely fabulous lawyer who streaked ahead of the rest of us. He was the youngest senior partner ever appointed and then, one day, quite out of the blue, he just decided he’d had enough. I remember desperately trying to persuade him to change his mind, but he had the same look in his eyes that you have.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He left, bought a house in Dorset and took up beekeeping. He never looked back. I hope this proves to be a similarly serendipitous decision for you, Thea. We’ll miss you.’
‘I haven’t gone yet,’ I tell him. ‘I have three months’ notice to serve.’
‘I don’t think it would be in either of our interests to for you to do that, and I’m sure it wouldn’t be good for general morale. It’s probably best for everyone if we wrap this up quickly. We’ll honour our contractual obligations, naturally. I’ll leave the HR department to take you through all of that.’ He stands and holds out his hand for me to shake. ‘Goodbye, Thea, and good luck.’