Page 46 of Private Lives

‘Yes, but she’s not the reason I’m here,’ said Rob with a sardonic laugh. ‘She’s a friend. Not a special friend.’

‘Of course not,’ Matt said quickly.

‘She speaks highly of you.’

‘She does?’ Matt couldn’t help but be curious. He knew Rob had approached the firm on Erica’s recommendation and had been contemplating calling her to thank her.

‘When I told Erica about my marriage, she said you were the man for the job.’

‘I’m flattered.’

Rob nodded and looked down at his hands.

‘This is difficult, isn’t it?’

‘Divorce is never easy. I’ve been there.’

Twice actually, he thought. Despite insisting to Carla that he could not represent her in her divorce from David, his ex-wife had never been off the phone with lists of questions and requests for advice. It was proving impossible not to get dragged in.

‘So do you want to tell me why the relationship has broken down?’

Rob sat back in his chair and began to tell his lawyer about his marriage to Kim. How they had met when he had directed one of her videos eight years earlier. About their son, Oliver, who was around the same age as Jonas. And the reasons why they had drifted apart.

‘She wants to get a fashion label off the ground,’ he said. ‘She’s seen Posh Spice do it and thinks she can too, so she’s been travelling a lot. Next year she wants to tour, get her music going again. Kim is one of those sorts of people who always has to be doing something. I’ve always supported her in that, but sometimes it doesn’t make for the most straightforward of marriages.’

He pushed an envelope towards Matthew.

‘This is the petition she sent me last week.’

Matt speed-read the document inside.

‘Unreasonable behaviour?’ he asked.

Rob shrugged.

‘I’m away a lot. Filming takes months, you see. And she’d get jealous of the actresses, but I told her, what am I supposed to do, just make films set in prison? And . . . well, there was a lot of conflict over money. I think Kim thought she was marrying the new Spielberg, but it’s not quite worked out like that. I do my best, but I guess it’s just not good enough.’

Matt glanced up and recognised Rob’s sad, frustrated expression. He’d felt all those emotions himself.

‘Do you want to get divorced?’ he asked gently.

Rob paused.

‘Not really, but it’s a marriage that can’t work. We want different things. That’s what she says, anyway,’ he added, trying for a smile.

‘You could contest it.’

‘Sure, but why be in a marriage someone else doesn’t want to be in?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘No, I don’t want to contest this. I just want to keep things as simple as possible. For my son’s sake. For everyone’s sake.’

They wrapped up the meeting and Diane showed Rob out.

Coffee, Matt said to himself, getting up and heading down to the space-age kitchen area at the end of his corridor. It was full of shiny machines and utensils, but he had no idea where the actual coffee was kept. As he searched around, opening cupboards, one thing Rob Beaumont had said kept going around in his head. ‘I always did my best,’ that was what he had said. Matt thought of that terrible day he’d found out about Carla’s unfaithfulness. He should have gone straight to his lawyers and petitioned for divorce on the grounds of adultery there and then. He could see now that he’d been a fool, but love didn’t work that way. If you got hurt, you still wanted to try and make it better. But Carla didn’t want to make things better. At least not with him.

‘Where is the bloody coffee?’ he said irritably.

‘Here,’ said a voice. He turned to find Anna Kennedy holding up a tin that looked like a time capsule. ‘In the coffee container.’

‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Bad morning.’