Chapter 19


‘Fancy an outing to court for your last day?’  Roger Teece, senior partner at Howard Teece & Thomas, roused Emily from her covert list-compilation.  She swiftly filed her list – ‘Things to take tomorrow’ – in her handbag, grateful for the diversion. 
Pondering on whether lipgloss and perfume constituted vital accoutrements for a Peak District hike would only spur thoughts of Rowan and the ethics of trying to impress him when Dominic was not entirely off the scene.  This in turn churned her indecision over these two contrasting men.  Yes, a nice court hearing was an altogether serener option.

Roger was the most convivial of the partners, with his bluff Black Country tones and chaotic hair.  In his pipe-smoke scented, file-strewn car, he appraised Emily of today’s case.  It transpired by coincidence to be the saga recited by Sylv months earlier, of Lorraine from the petrol station’s aunty’s friend – or friend’s aunty, she forgot which – tumbling in the Chill Cabinet.

‘Maxine Sloper’s our lady.  She skidded on an oven chip she says must have dropped out of a bag that had burst in someone’s trolley and started to defrost.  Went flying, whacked her head on the side of a freezer, stunned herself – lucky they had plenty bags of peas handy, eh?  She got some nasty bruising on her head and her arse too – seen some charming pictures of that!’

‘I heard something about this actually.  The head honcho there lives in Upper B.  I also know a girl who almost married into the clan.’

‘Lucky escape for her then.  That Ronnie Poole’s a bugger.  And his son’s a bozo by all accounts.  Won’t accept any liability.  Made no offers of compensation.  Reckons Ms Sloper or her partner took the chip in with them and dropped it themselves; set the whole thing up to wangle a few grand out of him.’

‘As if anyone would do that!’  Emily was dutifully indignant on the client’s behalf, already hating the callous tycoon defendant.

‘The Chill Cabinet swear blind their girl had just checked that particular aisle and seen no objects on the floor.’

‘Because if the chip was there, they’d have a duty to wipe it straight up.’  Emily drew on her personal injury law knowledge.

‘And put a ‘wet floor’ sign there.’

Roger parked up by the huge court building in Wolverhampton, snapped his crook lock on and sifted through his cluttered glove compartment for some pay and display change.  ‘Ready?’  He slapped his ticket on the windscreen, and patted down his jet black comb-over.

As they walked to the court in the clement June breeze, Emily could never have guessed she was being observed ruefully by the man she knew as Dominic Osbourne.  He watched her as he had in the Raffles eight months ago: her springy walk; her hair gushing down her back.  It was a radiant day again, though she looked all important this time in a beige suit, as opposed to her summer strappies.
 
She and Roger disappeared through the straggle of defendants and witnesses milling outside, including an exceptionally scrawny, trembling girl with a cigarette.  Inside, they boarded the lift to the county court section where they met Maxine Sloper and her partner Mark Noden.  Roger located them a meeting room where they could discuss today’s proceedings in confidence.

The Poole twosome were meanwhile striding across from their car, Ronnie with the testy air of someone terribly busy whose schedule has been selfishly interrupted.
‘We could do without this, son, and no mistake, especially now, with all this to-do about our Ben and Erin.  Dear God, you can’t credit it, can you!  Hey up Keeley – ’ this to the thin girl outside court whose sallow fingers quivered as she gripped her cigarette – ‘you all right chick?  You’re as white as lard.’

Keeley jumped.  ‘Bit nervous about giving evidence, Mr Poole, that’s all.’

‘Nah, piece of cake.  Just tell the truth.  That Sloper baggage hasn’t got a leg to stand on.’  Ronnie guffawed at his scandalous pun, oblivious to Warwick’s glare.  ‘Now shall we go in and get this crap out the way?’

‘All parties in the case of Sloper versus The Chill Cabinet to court four, please – that’s all parties in Sloper versus The Chill Cabinet to court four.’

‘Come on then, love,’ Mark had his arm around the ashen Maxine as the four of them made moves from their meeting table, ‘just gotta keep calm and tell ’em what happened.’

Maxine was forty-two, with a dated mousey hairdo and a denim jacket; her lover Mark a good ten years younger, stocky and docile.

They seem genuine, assessed Emily as she gathered up her notepad, taking most seriously her task of minute-keeping for Roger.  Can’t imagine them being the types who’d plant a squidgy chip to bring a bogus lawsuit.

Roger ushered them out of the tiny, hot conference room along a corridor to the courtroom.

She didn’t notice him immediately.  She was arranging her notepad, pen and emergency pens on the bench as though about to sit A-level English, and thereafter following Roger’s whispered ‘who’s who in court this morning’ commentary.

‘That’s Nicola Homer – ’ his opposite number, with a witchy black bob and a suit Emily’s student grant for the year might have just about funded, nodded austerely at him – ‘she’s from Nathan Lillicrap, representing dear Ronnie over there.’ 

So this is the old toad then!  I actually have sympathy for Heidi.  Emily had to stifle a grin at his exact resemblance to how she’d visualised him.  Like an offal-chomping Tudor aristocrat. 

‘And next to him’s his son Warwick.’

The ‘bozo’ of Roger’s disparagement, on the bench behind Nicola, was just a leg initially, obscured by his father’s bulk.  Like the villain in a mystery – fittingly enough – whose identity is unmasked in the closing frame.

Then Ronnie reclined in his seat.  Emily gasped.  Warwick Poole displayed remarkable nonchalance about their encounter, though.  He might even have been expecting this.  That today the authentic identity of ‘Dominic Osbourne’ would be unmasked.

‘You OK, Emily?’ Roger asked.

‘Court rise!’  The parties stood up ceremoniously upon the Judge’s arrival.  Duplicitous lovers would have to wait.  The court was in session.

Emily had no idea how she maintained professional composure; how the half-attentive notes, which she transcribed back in the office, managed to form an authentic minute of what turned out to be a sensational hearing. 

She dripped like a candle in the court’s greenhouse humidity, as the players in this surreal theatre floated through.  She took autopilot shorthand, zoning in and out of it all.

Dom – my Dom – is Warwick Poole.  The man I’ve dated for six months, who told me he was an orphaned student teacher, is a loaded businessman whose parents are alive and well.  And he was once engaged to Heidi Chance.

She paid hazy heed as Maxine Sloper delivered her tremulous testimony, and then as Keeley the chain-smoking shop assistant astonishingly caved in under Roger Teece’s cross-examination.

‘You neglected your duty that day, didn’t you?  You failed to clean up a hazardous spillage, with the calamitous consequence that this lady customer slipped on it, sustaining concussion and other bodily injuries.  Fearing discipline or dismissal from your employment, and to conceal your abscondment from duty on an elongated break, you maintained that you had surveyed the aisle in question only moments prior to Ms Sloper’s fall but that no waste matter was present.’

Dominic Osbourne is Warwick Poole.

‘You then, rather than admit your inattention, seconded your employer’s frankly preposterous theory that Ms Sloper entered the store carrying the oven chip, with the intent of bringing a sham lawsuit against the company.’

Ronnie Poole’s face was ferocious as Keeley – for whose mental state Emily feared despite her own distraction – crumpled and wailed an admission that this was indeed the case.

Dominic Osbourne is Warwick Poole.

Emily felt she were floating like a helium balloon and watching down at Ronnie turning maroon as the Judge ordered him to pay ₤4,000 compensation to Maxine Sloper (A scant drop in the ocean for you, you bastard!); Roger Teece’s smile of quiet triumph; Maxine and Mark shaking his hand gratefully; the grim stripe of Nicola Homer’s ruby mouth; Ronnie blustering out of the courtroom, barking ‘No comment’ at the pouncing reporters, with the eye contact-evading Warwick in tow.

Much later, it struck Emily that she could have solicited one of the reporters herself, with a beefier story.  She mentally scripted the lurid tabloid-ese as she sat numbly on the bus that evening.  ‘A millionaire supermarket heir who deceived his girlfriend by posing as a penniless student had his cover shockingly blown today in a chance meeting during a court hearing.’

Then she got home, and socked his number into her phone.