Page 2 of Behind Frenemy Lines

THIRTEEN YEARS LATER

Kriya

I paused outside the entrance to Swithin Watkins, gazing up at the building’s sandstone fa c ade.

I was waiting for the traumatic flashback to hit. I hadn’t been here since the day I interviewed for a training contract, in the summer of my second year at university.

That had been more than a decade ago. I was coming to Swithin Watkins now as a senior lawyer, with a track record of court cases won; matters brought to a successful close; difficult clients wrangled into contentment. But the memory of that interview still made me cringe.

I took a deep breath as I stepped through the revolving door, stale apprehension shivering over my skin. Maybe I shouldn’t have followed Arthur here.

When my boss pulled me aside for a chat, a month ago, I didn’t think anything of it.

Arthur and I spoke, on average, three to sixteen times a day.

I assumed he wanted to talk about the class action we were defending for a car manufacturer, or the business development trip we were planning to Hong Kong.

Or it might just have been a check-in. Arthur was going through a divorce with his wife of twenty-five years and it was making him especially alive to the issue of workplace well-being. We’d had more pastoral chats in the past month than we’d had in the preceding eight years total.

“Kriya, I wanted to ask you something,” he said. He shut the door to his office and sat down.

He looked nervous, but that was part of Arthur’s vibe. He was lean, silver-haired, and high-strung, with piercing blue eyes and the kind of nose you’d find on a Roman coin. Trainees always had guilty crushes on him, until they started working with him.

“I’ve accepted an offer to join Swithin Watkins,” said Arthur. “And I’d like you to consider moving with me. It would be a step up in terms of pay. More importantly, it would be on the understanding that you’d be promoted to Of Counsel within the year.”

“Oh,” I said. I was so taken aback I felt winded.

I hadn’t been thinking about promotion. I knew I should—I’d made senior associate as early as the firm allowed, four years after qualifying, and I was now eight years out from qualification.

I needed to start preparing for the next step, or be marked as lacking ambition.

But my attention had been elsewhere for the past few months.

I’d gone too long without saying anything.

“What do you think?” said Arthur.

I didn’t know what I thought. For lack of anything better to say, I said, “You know I interviewed for a training contract at Swithin Watkins? I didn’t get an offer.”

“Their loss.” Arthur tried to smile, fidgeting with a pen. “Joining them as their top new senior associate would be the best revenge.”

His nervousness was starting to infect me. I pushed away the temptation to say yes just to calm him down.

“Can I think about it and come back to you?”

“Yes, of course,” said Arthur. “It’s a big decision. Take all the time you need.”

He leant back in his chair. “So what—I mean, do you have any questions? I don’t have details of the compensation package to hand, but I can dig them up. Give me a moment.”

He started scrabbling around in the chaos of papers on his desk.

“Your phone’s on top of that filing cabinet,” I said absently. “Can I ask…?”

Arthur sat up. “Yes, of course. Fire away.”

“Why move?”

It was the obvious question. Arthur was prepared for it.

“You know I have issues with some of the ways we work here. I want to do things differently, but there isn’t scope for that here.

We’re losing clients to firms that are willing to be more innovative, more flexible.

Swithin Watkins recognises how the market is changing.

I’ll be able to be more entrepreneurial, tailor our offering to what clients are looking for.

It’s a great opportunity. And,” said Arthur, “and I have to say, you know, I’ve been at this firm for more than fifteen years, and I’m ready for a change. ”

I knew about Arthur’s frustrations with the firm—I’d heard most of this before, at one time or another. But I thought, of everything he’d said, the very last line was the truth.

“Are you planning on bringing anyone else over?”

Arthur shook his head. “We’ve got some great lawyers here. If they decide to apply to join us, I’ll be thrilled. But my move is already going to ruffle feathers. I’m picking my battles.” He fixed me with an intense blue stare. “You’re worth fighting for, Kriya.”

I squirmed. Post-divorce, Arthur was given to saying things like this—nothing you could call out as being inappropriate, but uncomfortable all the same. Maybe his therapist had told him he should express appreciation for the people in his life.

If so, I wished his therapist had clarified that I didn’t count as “people in his life.” The firm consumed enough of my life as it was. I was fully committed to compartmentalising my work and personal spheres. All I wanted from colleagues was for them to return the favour.

Arthur looked away.

“You have to decide if it’s the right choice for your career, of course,” he said.

So here I was now, back at Swithin Watkins. Funny how life worked.

My friends had doubts about the move. (“So because your boss is having a midlife crisis, you’ve got to uproot yourself?

” said Zuri.) But it made sense. I’d worked almost exclusively with Arthur since qualifying into the Product Liability team at Brown, Rosenburg and Cushway.

I didn’t have the same relationship with other partners in our department—they didn’t know and trust me the way Arthur did.

And when he moved, he’d be taking his clients with him.

If I stayed at my old firm, either I’d be fighting him for business or I’d have to find myself a new client base.

Whereas if I followed Arthur to Swithin Watkins, I got a pay rise and a guaranteed promotion, and I’d be well placed to make partner.

If I wanted to. I wasn’t sure I did. Arthur wasn’t exactly a great advertisement for the life of a City law firm partner. Sometimes, working with him, it was like there were three of us in the office: me, Arthur, and his divorce.

Hopefully the change would do us both good. Arthur wasn’t the only one reeling from a catastrophic breakup. It had been six months since Tom had broken up with me, and I still felt raw.

Waiting in the lobby of Swithin Watkins while a receptionist searched for my newly issued staff pass, I felt a glimmer of hope. This was what I’d been needing: a fresh start.

I’d been feeling stuck ever since Tom had flown off to California without me, for a dream job—and, it turned out, a dreamy coworker.

In fact, if I was being totally honest with myself, I’d been feeling stuck even before Tom left.

Maybe that was why he’d decided to blow up our relationship, after more than a decade together.

He could see I wasn’t going anywhere he wanted to be.

Thinking about Tom made me too sad. It was easier to think about work. I had to go pick up my new laptop, and then I was headed for the sixth floor, where Swithin Watkins’ nascent Product Liability team was based.

Arthur had been pleased with himself for managing to secure me an office.

“They revamped the building a couple of years ago, it’s mostly open plan now,” he’d said. “Offices are like gold dust. You’ll be in with someone from their Commercial Litigation practice, they’ve got the desk by the window. But at least it’s an office.”

I hadn’t shared an office in a while. The junior associate I used to share with at my old firm had left to go in-house the year before, and the firm hadn’t got around to allocating her desk to someone new before my own departure.

It would be nice to have company again, even if I was going to have the desk closest to the door, traditionally assigned to the less important occupant.

My new office was pretty similar to the one I’d had at my old firm. Against one wall, two large L-shaped desks faced each other, with matching monitors and docking stations tucked into the corner of each L. Filing cabinets and shelving ran along the opposite wall.

The window was behind my new roommate’s desk, so I had the better view. He was sat looking out on the corridor.

Though he was on a call when I walked in, his back turned to me. It was the back of someone who worked out, the shoulders broad under the crisp white shirt. The hair under the headset he was wearing was thick and dark.

I’d registered this much when he swivelled around in his chair, raising a hand in greeting.

Our eyes met.

The man across me was East Asian, with perfect skin and absurdly long eyelashes.

He was wearing glasses with thick black rims, the kind a Hollywood starlet playing a nerd wears when the film’s pretending she’s ugly.

The glasses obscured the tiny mole under his right eye, dropped by an overly generous god along the line of one high cheekbone. But I knew it was there.

My smile froze. He lowered his hand, giving me a look of unalloyed horror.

It was a look I was used to by now, after ten years’ worth of run-ins with Charles Goh.

I turned around and walked right back out.

Arthur had a spacious office to himself at the end of the corridor: lots of space, floor-to-ceiling windows.

The light was nice, though the windows didn’t yield much of a view.

Grey streets, office buildings, and people walking fast, with their coats buttoned up to their chins and Pret bags dangling from their hands.

It had been chilly all the past week, even though it was early June.

Arthur had already put up a couple of family photos. I’d grown used to the one he used to have on his old noticeboard, featuring him, his now-ex-wife, Kelly, and the two kids bundled up and beaming, on a skiing holiday.

It took me a moment to realise what was different. The pictures he had up now were of the kids alone. Kelly was gone.