All such I leave to you

“Summer was over, and so were we. So was the marriage. Simple.” Sarah ventured. But she knew that Lulu would never dream of leaving it at that. “Oh, go on then, Lulu, just say it,” Sarah fixed her friend with a stare and prepared for the inevitable dose of told-you-so, preferring to rip off the Elastoplast rather than suffer the wait. After all, it was Lulu she needed, this wasn’t the kind of turd one presented to the vicar for advice on its aroma.

But her friend’s features only softened as, with a manicured hand, she toyed with her slim gold necklace and then the menu in her lap. “Easy mistake to make. I might have done the same,” she said simply, her magnanimity adding further injury to Sarah’s pride. A moment’s silence passed, each suddenly fascinated by their glass of Rías Baixas.

Sarah felt Lulu’s mocking smile before she even looked up from her glass.

“Darling!” Lulu suddenly intoned, in a melodramatic tremolo which drew the attention of the female patrons of the Albariño restaurant, the pair having already secured the attention of the male patrons upon arrival. Lulu threw out her hand expansively, “All such I leave to you!”

Sarah blushed like a fourteen-year-old before suggesting her friend partake in a sexual act of considerable difficulty in a loud stage whisper. Lulu, conveniently putting to one side the fact of her string of ex-lovers and husbands for a moment, was making sport of Sarah’s marriage to the debonair Comte Etienne de Beautemps. As well she might, her advice had proven to be three things: too sage, too prescient and too disregarded.

Now it transpired, in what Lulu had called ‘the smallest surprise in the world’, that the beefy contrat de mariage which, despite Lulu’s strong advice to the contrary, a love-struck Sarah had signed without reading, far from containing ‘nothing more than boring trivialities and trifling French bureaucracy’ required by la Famille before “we can begin our lives in ‘armony and bliss together” actually contained the motherlode of a prenup - a prenup which the Comte had just announced his intention to use to eject Sarah from the family chateau in favour of his new paramour.

A waiter entered from the busy kitchen and, as Sarah watched his shiny black shoes flounce towards them, she noticed, just inside the kitchen, a rusty mousetrap loaded with a tempting morsel of Roquefort. Lulu had spotted it too.

“Oh Sarah,” she said, “who can blame you for piling in? All those good looks and gallic charm, and a castle to help you decide. How were you to know that he would turn out to be such a perfumed prick-about-town? It’s the early bird and all that… but, my dear friend,” Lulu indicated the mousetrap with her breadstick, “it’s the second mouse who eats the cheese.”

Before Sarah could remonstrate at this cold-hearted and entirely fair appraisal of her situation, Lulu managed to simultaneously hold up her glass (“cheers”), make the ‘stop’ sign to Sarah with her other hand, and indicate to a passing waiter, in that infinitely precious moment when he deigns to look at a customer, that they would like another bottle of the same. Not everything one learned at Lady Ashburton’s School of Etiquette was useless, Sarah marvelled.

Lulu continued in a lowered tone, “I’m your friend and I’m not here to gloat – no matter how good a hand you’ve dealt me. Here!” she passed Sarah a business card. It was perfectly crafted in pewter and was almost a work of art. ‘Peevish, Pemberton and Atkins – arcanis scientibus’, it announced, along with a two-line address in Kensington.

- - -

After arranging tea for Sarah in a comfortable waiting room, which bore more resemblance to the drawing room of a minor royal, Adrian Pemberton thanked her for the legal documents she had emailed previously and explained that, having consulted with a French colleague, her situation was clear. He then went into detailed legalese and, when he had finished, Sarah offered a concise summary: “Mr Pemberton, I think you’re saying that the prenup supersedes the generous Will, is as water-tight as a dolphin’s arse and I should count myself lucky if I get out of the marriage with the clothes I’m wearing and my toothbrush.”

“Indeed. You do have something of a way with words,” Pemberton smiled reluctantly, mildly peeved that his scholarly peroration had been so eloquently vulgarised, and regarded his would-be client, knowing that she was digesting the full implications of a life-altering change of circumstance.

Each surveyed their tasteful surroundings, Pemberton with the satisfaction of one who is perfectly at home in luxury, Sarah with the concern of one who has entered it with difficulty and is about to be unceremoniously ejected from it.

Sarah stood to leave, thanked Pemberton for his time and enquired about his payment, noticing that he looked a little discomfited. “I’ll be sure to pay your bill before… before… if that’s worrying you. Because I don’t…”

“Madame, or perhaps, Mrs de Beautemps, forgive my interrupting but… won’t you take a seat for just a moment? You see, it occurs to me that there may be a way to, a way to resolve things on slightly more, erm… more favourable terms.”

- - -

Sarah sat at a table in an alcove of the Flask in Hampstead and, for the fourth time in fewer minutes, checked the Telegram message on her phone: “Flask. Hampstead. Back arches. 1320h Friday.”

At 19 minutes past, an athletic middle-aged man with cropped grey hair and a military bearing approached Sarah and, at her invitation, placed his pint of bitter on the table and sat opposite her. He introduced himself simply as Peter and explained that he had been briefed by Pemberton.

“So, I should take my toothbrush and run?” Sarah asked. “No, Mrs de Beautemps. My speciality is post-prenuptial… revision. Permanent solutions to difficult marital obstacles.”

He handed her a concise, single-page document headed in Latin Pactum de Contrahendo and, feeling she had nothing to lose but her toothbrush, she signed at the bottom.

“Excellent. Just a few questions and I’ll be off. The French legal documents you shared with me are all up to date, correct?” Sarah indicated that this was indeed the case. Your husband, Comte Etienne de Beautemps, he’s not a Comte by the way, the closest he came to… apologies, I digress… has no children?” Sarah replied that her husband was unable to produce children, “though not for the want of trying.”

- - -

“A month in the country to stay ‘off the radar’ - a mere formality while the legal process runs its course.” How could she have been so gullible? Clearly these unscrupulous bastards had been working for Etienne all along. Still, they hadn’t killed her yet.

“There is no way on earth he can hear it”, Sarah repeated to herself, listening to the hammering of her heart as she flattened herself against the wall of the room which had, effectively, and despite the old-world courtesy, been her prison for the past thirty-one days.

She heard the familiar sound of the locking pin being removed from outside. After a month of incarceration, she knew every sound of the farmhouse by heart. The Suffolk latch of the old oak door clicked open, and the familiar large man made his way across the threshold into the darkness of the room. He paused, exactly as she had planned, taking in the duvet Sarah had used as a blackout, which rendered him temporarily blind.

This was her moment. She ducked low and barged past him, sprinting for the surrounding forest. All was proceeding as expected until she realised the large, silent man was not alone. She lurched to the right, blinking in the bright sunlight, her hand tightly gripping the sharp piece of broken porcelain, her backup plan, a trickle of blood dripping to the ground.

“Sarah?” the second man asked, his calm, educated voice betraying a mix of contrived confusion and, surely not… was it amusement? Something else was wrong, wasn’t he holding a cat basket? Sarah decided to keep her options open, winning a critical twenty metres of distance before, aware no one was pursuing her, she turned to decide whether her escape-from-kidnapping scenario was perhaps off key.

“Sarah, you seem to be rather in haste. Do though, please come and say hello to Tiberius before you leave, he’s been most anxious to see you,” the man said. Now she was sure, the cat in the basket was none other than her much-loved Tiberius Purrington. Sarah frowned, recognising the man a moment after the cat. “Mr Pemberton?” she asked. Even in this charged situation, she was aware of the incongruity of calling a kidnapper by his surname.

Ten minutes later, the scene was entirely transformed. Tiberius was now prowling in tight, satisfied circles on Sarah’s lap, the only member of the quartet who had actually been held hostage.

The large man who had spent a month bringing meals to her door set down a chunky wooden tray with a China teapot and a plate of Chocolate Oliver biscuits. Pemberton glanced at his watch, nodded to him and he poured out three cups of tea.

"Assam," Adrian Pemberton announced, unbuttoning his tweed jacket and loosening his old school tie. "I find a four-minute-twenty brew is just right. Some say it needs a touch of Ceylon to bolster it, but I rather find it has no need of its famous neighbour and carries the milk… I assume you do,” he paused, holding the milk jug above Sarah’s cup until she nodded her assent, “better alone.”

Sarah sipped the tea, her hand still slightly trembling from the adrenaline of the quasi-chase. "Mr Pemberton, the tea’s delicious but, if you’re not my kidnappers, you owe me an explanation. Why not start with how you retrieved Tiberius and why you locked me up?"

"All Peter’s doing that, not my department," Pemberton replied mildly, taking a chocolate biscuit and offering the plate to Sarah. Peter is an excellent field-agent, martial arts, all that rough stuff you see on the telly. But he is, first and foremost a cat lover. In fact, it was he who insisted we take possession of, erm, Tiberius before the main, the main erm, negotiation of the revised settlement, commenced.”

Sarah stared at him over her cup. "Revised?"

"Indeed. For certain tiresome legal reasons, it was imperative that you remain entirely off the grid and with a rock-solid alibi while Peter handled the, the negotiations in France. We use the cottage, I do hope it wasn’t too uncomfortable, for this kind of thing. No phone signal, you see. Marvellous fishing too but then…”

Interrupting himself, he produced a fountain pen and a thick sheet of paper from his Papworth attaché case, smoothing it out on a leather writing pad before Sarah.

"As it stands, you have the option to resolve the dispute on significantly improved terms." He donned his reading glasses and referred to his notes. "You would be left with the family chateau in France, with which you are, I believe, familiar, a rather charming ski chalet in Switzerland…”

"A ski chalet?" Sarah interrupted. "I didn't even know…"

"… and liquid assets just a trifle short of twelve million pounds." Pemberton sat back in his chair and, with admirable nonchalance, indicated that the large man should pour more tea, this being in his estimation, clearly the most pressing item on the day’s agenda.

"If you find the revision agreeable, we will simply need,” here he returned his attention to the document, “your signature… just… here.” He tapped the document. “Our driver is at your disposal and one would imagine, given the awful traffic, the funds will be cleared into your account comfortably before you reach London, with the formalities in regard to the property deeds taking, perhaps a month or two - the other party now being most keen to acquiesce sans délai. Could I tempt you to another biscuit?"

Sarah looked at the document, a small drop of blood dripped from the cut on her hand into the signature space and she glanced at Pemberton, who waved a hand and pursed his lips to indicate that it would not be a problem.

An image of her mother working the checkout at the local supermarket popped into Sarah’s mind, bright and vivid, and was gone. Churlish, she thought, to go looking this particular gift-horse in the mouth, it being quite a climb from a toothbrush and a lost cat to a life-changing fortune.

She signed with a small flourish, the blood mixing with the black ink from the fountain pen but somehow leaving its colour unchanged, and Pemberton gave a thin smile of approval.

- - -

Sitting at their usual table, Sarah enjoyed watching the room as Lulu made her entrance. Could it even be possible that only five weeks had passed since their last meeting?

Lulu sat in fascinated silence as Sarah recounted the events since her first meeting with Pemberton. She was so focused on getting all the detail in, the chateau, the return of the cat, the £12m and the chalet in Gstaad, along with the toothbrush (“love that toothbrush”), that she had not even noticed that Lulu was, while she prattled, studying the legal settlement which Sarah had left on the table.

“Wait, wait, wait just a minute!”, Lulu jabbed the document with a finger. “This is a bloody disaster!”, she squealed. “Ninety percent! Who on earth agrees to ninety percent fees to a law firm? You feckless… oh… oh I know… you bloody signed that one without reading it as well, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

“I, well, well yes I did but I’ve got everything I wanted and more and…”

“Everything you wanted and 10% of what you should have had.” Lulu replied, putting her phone to her ear.

Sarah sipped her wine and regarded Lulu, disappointed and impressed in equal measure at her friend’s clear-sighted and ruthless opinion of the matter.

“Put me through to Adrian, please,” Lulu instructed. “Yes, yes, ‘Mr Pemberton’ to you but not to me, my dear. Well then, he’ll need to come out of the meeting, won’t he? He can hardly be expected to speak to me from the meeting. Fine. So, you tell Adrian that it’s Lulu Blackwood de Montfort. Do it now, please, Eleanor – assuming you enjoy working there… or indeed anywhere.”

There was a very short pause.

“Adrian... I’m very well, thank you. Unlike my friend Sarah who is, as I believe I made clear to you, very much under my wing and whom you have charged a ninety percent fee! Clearly this was a mistake, made quite possibly by that daddy-sponsored-dimwit I just spoke to, and so I’m calling to… yes, fine, well it so happens she’s here with me now and I’ll be happy to give her any message you like but let me assure you…” there was a pause as Pemberton, clearly either bolder or more reckless than Sarah had credited, interrupted Lulu.”

“He’s asking to be put on speaker so that you can hear”, Lulu said, “he says you’ll understand the situation better.”

Sarah glanced around. No one was near enough to hear. “Fine with me,” she said.

Lulu placed her phone on the table between them and instructed Pemberton to go ahead.

“Good afternoon, Mrs de Beautemps. Well now, it’s really quite simple from our perspective. Since you already signed a Pactum de Contrahendo with us, any changes would be handled by our Revision Department and you would need to deal with them direct.”

“Then put me through,” Lulu snapped.

“Regrettably,” said Pemberton, his voice betraying not the slightest hint of regret, “that won’t be possible at this moment. Peter is currently… visiting a client.” There was a moment’s pause. “Incidentally, Mrs de Beautemps,” he went on, “I do feel I rather skipped over your question about how M. de Beautemps was persuaded into his more, erm, generous position. In truth no persuasion was required. It was… his Will.”

Cold realisation washed over Sarah. Peter's ‘permanent solutions’, the need for an ‘alibi’… she snatched the phone from the table and muted the speaker.

“Mr Pemberton, I think there may have been a small misunderstanding. I would like to confirm that I am entirely happy with your fee structure and do not wish to pursue the matter further… quite so, neither now nor at any time in the future.”

Lulu was indicating with increasing vigour that Sarah should give her back the phone when Sarah suddenly swatted her hand away, thanked Pemberton profusely and ended the call.

“Lulu, I would like to thank you for your help and request that you do me one last favour,” Sarah said. Lulu frowned to indicate that she was listening furiously. “Drop the matter this instant and never discuss it again with me, Pemberton or anyone else. In return, in future I’ll take your excellent advice and read the contract instead of trusting the man.”

She called the waiter, who arrived at their table and gave her a look which stopped just short of open invitation. “We’re celebrating,” Sarah announced, “and we’ll need something aggressively overpriced and sparkling.”

“Oui, Mademoiselle. Would you care to see the carte des vins, we have an excellent selection of both French and English sparkling wines from…”

Sarah winked at the charming Frenchman.

"You know what,” she said, “I'll leave that to you."