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Seventeen and head girl at school, and already striding through corridors like she owned them, Nicola’s mind was set on tennis at lunchtime. The changing rooms by the gym should have been empty, and she assumed she arrived first. But something made her prickle to attention, and she entered quietly. It smelled of gym equipment. The leather of the vault. The showers and plain soap. Sweaty trainers.

The slightest sound though. Kissing.

Lips enjoyed others, slow and gentle. Not the rough desperation of how her boyfriend kissed her. She halted, skin tingling and heart beating, and slowly turned her head to peer up the rack of sports kit and gym bags. Two girls from her year entwined with eyes closed.

She stared, not quite believing. It looked so odd. Girls weren't meant to kiss each other. Like boys didn’t wear dresses and doctors were rarely women. This was how the world was shaped at seventeen coming through the seventies. And though the eighties promised women power, and Nicola embraced that, they weren’t gay.

Strange. Too soft. Where was the strong, forceful man in the equation? Yet it looked sensual and enjoyed by both, as if they knew how to treat each other. She felt that kiss, and her body hummed at the same time as it rebelled, because kisses weren’t meant to look like that.

“That’s disgusting,” came from behind her.

She spun around to find her best friend, Stacy, whose face twisted. For a moment she thought Stacy was revolted by her, but her friend glared at the couple who sprung apart.

A torrent of slurs poured from Stacy’s mouth as she stormed towards them, and only when one covered her head with arms did Nicola come to.

“Jesus Christ. Stop it, Stacy!”

Nicola pulled her friend back, and she never forgot the wildness in Stacy's eyes, full of hatred then accusation.

“If you’ve got a problem, take it to Bradshaw,” Nicola said quickly. “Just report it, for goodness’ sake.”

“That isn’t right,” Stacy snarled at the girls. She pushed Nicola away so hard she stumbled against the wall and a coat hook bruised her shoulder.

“It doesn’t matter,” Nicola shot back. “Lay a finger on them and you’ll get expelled.”

Stacy’s glare turned cold then hot, hands balled by her sides.

“Fuck off, Nicki,” she spat. “Stop trying to mediate. You're not a bloody lawyer yet.”

Sensible heels echoed from down the corridor, ones which paced the school ad infinitum, and they all froze.

“What’s this shouting about?” came the calm, penetrating voice.

And Headmistress Bradshaw appeared at the changing room doors to find two blushing, Nicola rubbing her shoulder and Stacy red with rage.

“They were kissing, Miss. It was horrible.” Stacy pointed at the pair.

Bradshaw stiffened and Nicola saw cool analysis and calculation in her eyes. She wouldn’t have said she admired that about Bradshaw. That wasn't how she framed it then. But it was a model she emulated later.

“Come with me,” Bradshaw said. “My office, now.”

They followed her down the echoing corridor. Nicola's heart pounding. One blushing girl. One crying. Stacy gritting her teeth.

“You can go, Nicola,” Bradshaw murmured to her. “No need for you to be caught up in this business.”

And Nicola peeled away with a nod and a respectful, “Thank you, Miss.”

She walked towards the sixth form common room as if to go inside, then veered off to the loos.

Everything down to the smell lived vivid in memory too. The detergent. The musty chill and condensation. The cold, blue paint, distinctive and bobbled. The shadowy light from high windows into a bank of grass.

All cubicles stood empty and she took the second to the end, no-one liking the last. She locked the door and stepped further inside, so her feet weren’t visible.

She closed her eyes and steadied herself, her hands reaching either side for the partitions. She’d kept her head, pivoting and pitching exactly where she needed to stop Stacy. It was a clarity and quick thinking she’d use often as a barrister, but back then she trembled in its aftermath.

A kiss that looked wrong. A kiss that tickled inside. A kiss that made others violent.

Nicola understood the game she had to play. Already too tall and smart for a girl, there were only so many rules she could break, and she’d reached her limit. You could only stick out so much, and Nicola had been very young when she’d learned this.

“She’s a big girl,” she heard her grandmother say. “She’ll find it difficult to find a husband being tall like that.”

“She should learn to keep quiet,” another relative said.

The whispers of women who’d never had a bank account in their own name without a man’s permission, the name being their husband’s or father’s anyway. Those women who trained girls to accept the power imbalance enshrined in law and the unwritten rules of the game.

Nicki was damned if she was going to be restricted by them. But still, don't be a lesbian. There was no power or freedom in that. That was clear in her mind as she left the loos.

Everyone heard about the girls kissing in the changing rooms of course. One stayed at school, with red eyes and pleading it’d been a joke. Just practice kissing. The other had time off, and when she returned she said she’d seen a doctor and was better now. And because everyone had heard, there was the excruciating assembly.

Bradshaw paced the hall stage, looking down on them.

Yes, they were an all-girls’ school, Bradshaw said. And it was a time in their lives when everything was changing. Everyone was growing up. And there were confusing feelings and desires .

The entire throng shuddered at the concept from Bradshaw’s mouth.

And honestly, she continued, boys were smelly and only interested in football. But things would get better. Boys caught up eventually, Bradshaw tutted. So, in the meantime, if any of them were having these confusing feelings, and an inclination to ‘practice’, they should talk to Nurse. Then wait for the real thing when the boys grew up.

So not exactly a lesson on the ‘inalienable right to be gay’ as Thatcher later claimed happened in schools.

Nicola had no intention of talking to Nurse. She jumped into bed with her boyfriend from the boys’ school instead, who was delighted. And it was disappointing at first, considering people raved about sex. But Nicki wasn’t someone to lie back and think of England, and after she’d given some tuition, it scratched that itch just fine. And later, other men were much, much better.

See. She was already mature enough for the real thing. And she was destined for Oxford, marriage and a call to The Bar.

***

Except here she was, decades afterwards, with an undeniable, unrelenting crush on a woman. That beautiful photo she’d deleted of Geeta came straight back in an email thread, and she peeked at the preview of the reply.

“Thank you for these!” it said. Effusive and warm. Very Geeta. “And thank you so much for Monday. I had a lovely time.”

At least Geeta wasn’t saying how surprising it was. Perhaps she saw Nicola as almost human now.

Oh, stop it. She was smiling. And not the way she usually did.

She left it unopened for a day. But it stayed there, tempting in a cropped preview, saying open me, gaze at beautiful Geeta, melt at those eyes that reach inside, making her warm. She tutted and eventually messaged:

“Have you updated your dating profile?”

No reply. Geeta would be busy of course, but it still nagged on Friday as she entered chambers. It was one of two urgent issues she needed to fix. She could at least start with the other.

Nicola strode into the depths of the building, up the oak stairs to the first floor, and barged through the half-open door into Philip’s office.

It overlooked the same garden as her room, and she sat on the corner of a similar partner’s desk. She towered over him while he swivelled in his seat and nonchalantly crossed his long legs towards her.

“Nicola,” he said with a smile. “What can I do for you?”

Few were so composed in the face of an entrance like that. She didn’t expect to intimidate him, but she intended to be heard.

“Why did you encourage me to be a tenant in these chambers?”

His expression turned more serious.

“Because it’s a disaster,” she continued, “and I’m regretting every second.”

“Go on,” he said, concerned.

“There are no meaty cases for the Silks. I’m solely working with clients that come direct, which is fine for me, but junior barristers are fighting for scraps.”

Philip nodded.

“I knew the star of these chambers had waned of late, but this is dire. We are running on vapours here. So, why am I here?”

Philip considered. “You wanted to come back to Oxford, Nicki.”

“I can be a sole practitioner, and I plan on being if this continues.”

It would be a pain to manage the administrative side, and she’d miss guiding people through pupillage. She enjoyed that. And while she’d considered easing into retirement in a few years, she wasn’t done yet and still craved challenge. She loved thriving chambers, with the cross-pollination of ideas, ways of working and networking. But this was not it.

Philip breathed in. “Bernard’s retiring and there's an opportunity to turn this organisation around.”

“That won’t happen overnight.”

Philip raised his hand. “And I hoped you’d be interested in becoming head of chambers.”

OK. She’d not expected that.

She narrowed her eyes. He knew her too well, dangling a carrot and challenge like that in front of her. Yes, she had ideas about shaking up these traditional chambers, with Oxford prestige but in urgent need of modernisation. Her mind ticked over.

“Why not you?” she said. “Aren't you interested?”

He nodded, slowly. “Sometimes. But I’ve been here too long. This place needs fresh impetus and blood and you, my dear,” he smiled, “have both clout and a new face to drive through change.”

“You think there’ll be resistance?”

“Tons!” He laughed.

She mulled it over. The chambers’ tenants were skewed, many barristers in residence for decades, then a gap until more junior members.

“Too many of the old brigade?”

He nodded. “I don't have your relentless drive to bulldoze changes through if necessary. And they are necessary.”

She knew him well enough, though, to spot other reasons haunted his eyes.

“And some,” he added, voice quieter, “don’t want an old queer heading chambers.”

She paused at the phrase, not letting her body twitch at Philip’s plain-spoken reason. She opened her mouth to reassure him.

“Don't say things are different now, Nicki,” He cut her off. “It’s not all gone. The veneer of acceptance is thin in places, outright hostile in others, and they’re in residence here.”

She mentally flicked through the tenants and clerks. Some bristled at her presence as a high-ranking woman, and she imagined them difficult with Philip too.

Was she any better than them? Really?

She’d known Philip a long time and over many changes, the two of them odd students at college, she realised – Philip gay and Nicola an early woman at the former men’s college. She’d thought of the eighties as modern and without limits, when women could have it all. But many Oxford colleges only opened fully to women a handful of years before.

“I’m not going to say it’s an even playing field,” she said, “but things have changed.”

“They have.” He pursed his lips and nodded. “But I’m tired now. And some days it feels like it could all flip back.”

Guilt gnawed at her. She’d followed the narrative of real and normal, and expected it from every aspect of her life. Hers, Philip’s, her daughter’s. She hadn’t understood or supported him, and he looked weary now.

“Why did you stay friends with me?” she said, suddenly. “Over the years. Why did you stay in touch?”

He looked at her, sharp eyes seeing through her guilt. “You weren’t as bad as the rest, Nicki,” he said, more kindly than she deserved. She hadn't been physically dangerous, like some at college. He was correct about that.

“And the queers I knew from the scene? Well...” he drifted a moment. “A lot of them died.” He shrugged. He said it so matter of fact, that it was more affecting. “I know hardly anyone from back then. The eighties tore through us.”

They gazed at each other, decades of loss and change uncomfortable between them. Then he smiled, giving her a reprieve.

“I’m going to take a comfy back seat on this one.”

She tilted her head. Seeing through each other went both ways. “You’re going to watch me get hammered by the old guard.”

“Exactly.” He chuckled.

“I will...” she smiled, “think about it.”

“Good.”

“And...” Guilt gnawed again. “Do you and, erm, Jonathon want to come round for dinner?”

His eyebrows shot up.

She hadn’t really acknowledged his husband. Not ignored him either. But the Philip she knew was different with him. She’d never reconciled the professional lawyer with the smiling husband who hugged his spouse and laughed with gay abandon, not seeing them as a ‘proper’ couple.

She should have tried harder for her oldest friend.

“Please spare us, Nicki.”

“What?” She laughed.

“Let’s have Jonathon cook instead.” He smiled. “Come round to ours.”

She skewered him with a look. “Very well. But I’ll have you know, some people appreciate my cooking.”

One person did. One curvy, beautiful person who was causing issues right now.