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drawer, pyjamas and toiletries. On the back of the door, an entire outfit for a working day, ready to go at a moment’s notice. Down the hall there were lavish bathrooms with power showers, and catering could be summoned up by lifting the phone any hour of the day or night. All designed to keep us happy, keep us working and, most importantly, keep us in the office.
    And I had been good. I barely had a life. All weekend, every weekend. Evenings. Early mornings. In the last couple of years, I had made few arrangements to meet friends and broken those commitments I had allowed myself to risk. I had given away tickets to the theatre and concerts (all gifts to me from grateful clients, but still, it rankled occasionally when a thank-you email gushed about how it had been the performance of the decade).
    I stared at the big phone on my desk, wanting to ring Rebecca’s mobile again, just to hear her voice. I settled on calling her work number, letting it ring on speakerphone as I carried on crafting an exquisitely dull but effective email destined for my opposite number on the other side.
    ‘This is Rebecca Haworth. I’m not at my desk at the moment, but please leave a message and I’ll return your call as soon as possible. If your call is urgent, please press zero for the Ventnor Chase switchboard and ask for my assistant, Jess Barker.’

    Less lively, more polished, equally warm, very assured. My lovely friend Rebecca. My oldest friend. My least reliable friend, currently. But then, who was I to criticise her for that? I had missed emails from her over the past few months, losing them in the welter of work that pulsed into my inbox every minute of every hour of every day. If I didn’t tackle the emails that day, they were gone for ever, pushed into obscurity and archived by the firm’s inexorable system. Every hour was accountable; I didn’t have time for personal email, I told myself. There was nothing to feel guilty about.
    Except that now, when I wanted to talk to her – to her, not a machine – there was no reply.
    The phone had beeped while I was thinking about Rebecca, and I found myself leaving a quick, half-mumbled message that she should call me, that I was thinking of her, that we needed to see one another soon, to catch up. I reached out and pushed a button to end the call, feeling my face burn as I thought back over what I had said, and how. Stupid, to be what anyone would see as a high-powered lawyer while lacking the confidence to talk on the phone. Ridiculous, to feel my heart jump every time it rang, to have to wipe my palms on my skirt surreptitiously before reaching out to answer it. I didn’t like it, though. I didn’t like how unguarded you could be on the phone. I didn’t like how you could find yourself saying what you really thought. I had trapped people that way before, reading more than they knew into what they had given away to me on the phone. I had made suggestions that had won cases for the firm. I knew better than most that we were engaged in a high-wire act that most days, everyone managed to perform. Now and then, someone fell.
    A brassy head came around the door.

    ‘Knock, knock. Want a cup of tea? You’ve got that meeting in five minutes. Have something first. Put a bit of colour in your face.’
    ‘I’m OK, Martine. But thanks,’ I said, looking up for a second before returning to the screen in front of me.
    Martine, my secretary. Thirty years of experience, eight shades of red in her hair, an unlimited source of gossip, good humour and unsolicited advice. It wasn’t her fault that I tensed up when she came into the room, or that I, alone among my colleagues, found her intimidating. She had seen lawyers come and lawyers go, and I was too young to be able to feel comfortable about asking her to do things for me. I thought she didn’t like me and she certainly didn’t rate me as a lawyer. It made me work harder, and buy her elaborate presents at Christmas or for her birthday.