Free Judicial Whispers by Caro Fraser Page B

counsel in a case, that was all. This was purely business. Don’t be afraid, she told herself. This is so stupid!
    ‘All right,’ she said, giving him a quick, bright smile. ‘Why not?’
    That was more like it, thought Anthony, delighted to see her expression warm for a few brief seconds. They went out into the fading light of the early October evening, walking together down Bishopsgate and into Leadenhall Market. Rachel felt more relaxed. There were lots of people around. She needn’t feel threatened by the directness of his interested smile. Not for the time being.
    ‘I love Leadenhall Market,’ she said, glancing around the cobbled alleyways beneath the high vaulted roof.
    Anthony nodded. ‘It’s nice. It reminds me a bit of Spitalfields Market. Only it’s a lot cleaner. I used to work in Spitalfields,’ he added ruminatively.
    ‘Did you?’ She glanced up at him in surprise as they crossed the cobbles to the wine bar entrance. ‘What did you do there?’
    ‘I was a porter. Real lowlife.’ He smiled, his face losing its hauteur and looking momentarily boyish. ‘It was just a holiday job.’
    Rachel thought about this in silence as they went into the smokey throng of the wine bar. While Anthony went to the bar, she sat on a stool next to a wooden ledge backed by a high mirror, nibbling at a bowl of crisps and glancing covertly at his reflection as he stood waiting to be served. In an odd way his reflected person seemed less threatening; it put him at a distance, his tall, dark figure, his rather feminine good looks. She watched him as he paid for their drinks. How odd, to think of him working as a market porter. She would have put him down for the usual Oxbridge double first, everything on a plate, taking from life exactly what he expected it to give him.
    He came back with a bottle of white wine and two glasses and set them down on the ledge. Rachel looked at the bottle in dismay.
    ‘You shouldn’t have got all that! A glass would have been fine.’
    ‘You only get rubbish if you buy it by the glass,’ replied Anthony. As he drew up a stool and sat down near to her, his knee brushed the edge of hers, and she stiffened and inched itaway. Anthony pretended not to notice and poured the wine. He gave her a glass and smiled at her, noticing that nervous, watchful look of hers before she returned the smile briefly and took the glass from him.
    ‘Cheers,’ he said, and she murmured in reply.
    ‘So – when were you a porter at Spitalfields?’ she asked. She wore a bright, opaque expression of interest.
    ‘Oh, a couple of years ago. In the summer holidays after Bar School.’
    Now her expression of interest and surprise was genuine. ‘You’re only – what, twenty-three, then?’ She gazed at him. ‘I’m sorry. That sounded rude.’
    He laughed. ‘No, no – that’s right. But I’ll be twenty-four in February. I’m really twenty-three and three-quarters.’
    She laughed, too. He enjoyed seeing her laugh, felt that it was a tiny achievement. He found her interesting for all the wrong reasons – or rather, not simply for the usual ones.
    There was a silence in which she sipped her wine, uncomfortably aware that he was looking at her in a considering fashion. How sure of himself he seemed. And only twenty-three. Rachel herself was twenty-seven. The realisation that he was really no more than a boy lessened her tension.
    ‘From first appearances, I wouldn’t have judged you to be the type to work in a fruit market in the holidays,’ she remarked.
    ‘No? What type would you think me?’ asked Anthony, flattered by her interest.
    Rachel suddenly wished she had not allowed the conversation to take this personal turn. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she replied vaguely, and glanced away.
    ‘What, public school, Oxbridge, money at home, holidays spent skiing in winter, Italy and Greece in the summer – that kind of thing?’
    He had made her laugh again, but a trifle uncomfortably. Sheswallowed the rest of