‘I’d hardly call Grand Night exciting. You’re going off to Scotland for the rugby for two whole days with your friends, so I’m entitled to a girls’ night out, OK? Following which I intend to have a long lie-in, then spend the rest of the day in my dressing gown with the Sunday papers, recovering. I don’t want to have to drag myself all the way down just to eat roast lamb in Surrey.’
He sighed. ‘OK. I’ll see you on Sunday evening.’
She kissed his cheek lightly. ‘Have a lovely time. I hope England win.’
The door of the flat closed. Sarah glanced at her watch. Nearly half three. Only four more hours, and she would be with Leo.
That evening Leo waited inside the arched vestibule of Middle Temple Hall, as the great and good of the Inn thronged past in their evening finery. Cut-glass accents and gentle, confident laughter filled the air. He nodded and spoke in greeting to friends as they passed, but he didn’t allow anyone to catch his attention for long. He was on the lookout for Sarah, combing the faces, aware of an unfamiliar teenage edginess. He could only assume that this was because he knew only too well how fabulously unreliable she could be – and tonight really would not be a good night for her to be late. These formal evenings were always engineered with stopwatch precision, and with the clock ticking towards the kick-off time of half seven, the ushers were already hovering as the last guests trickled in. Where the hell was she?
A taxi coming up Middle Temple Lane swung round, its lights brushing the cobbles. Leo glimpsed blonde hair in the interior. It had to be her.
‘Hold on a moment,’ he said to one of the ushers who stood ready to close the huge wooden doors. He headed towards the taxi. Sarah stepped calmly out, wearing a strapless dress of pale cream silk, and a cloudy-pink cashmere wrap against the cold air.
‘About time,’ said Leo, chucking a twenty at the driver.
He hurried her up the stone steps and across the vestibule, and the ushers closed the wooden doors behind them, the sound causing the guests, milling around with drinks, to turn to look in their direction.
‘I could almost believe you planned this late entrance,’ murmured Leo, picking up two glasses of champagne from a tray and handing one to Sarah, ‘just to grab everyone’s attention. But I think you have it, anyway. You look delectable.’
‘Thank you,’ smiled Sarah. ‘You look pretty tasty yourself.’
They mingled for a short while until the signal came for the guests to be seated, with the minor European royal who was the guest of honour taking pride of place at the centre of the high table. Since Leo was a Bencher, he and Sarah were seated at the high table, too.
‘I hadn’t realised that you’d become an official member of the old farts’ brigade,’ observed Sarah, as they took their places.
‘Pipe down,’ said Leo. But the elderly Bencher on Sarah’s right had either failed to pick up her remark on his state-of-the-art hearing aid, or was too happy to be in the proximity of such warm, enticing flesh to care. He nodded and beamed at Sarah, then delivered some innocuous remark regarding the grace of the occasion. Sarah murmured in agreement, and gave Leo a smiling glance.
After some gavel-banging and the intoning of grace, the meal began.
‘Is the food still as bad here as it used to be?’ asked Sarah, watching the waiters bring in the first course.
‘Actually, it’s improved,’ said Leo. ‘A bit.’
Sarah gazed around at the sombre panelled walls and the stained-glass windows. ‘I haven’t been here in years, literally. Not since I had to eat all those horrible dinners before call. Give or take the odd Christmas champagne party. It’s as dismal as ever.’
‘How can you say that?’ asked Leo. ‘This place is astonishing. It never fails to move me every time I come here, and I’ve been doing that most weeks for the better part of thirty years.’
‘Yes, but that’s because you’re an impressionable grammar school boy from the valleys. It represents everything you ever aspired to, it reeks of intellectual and social elitism. One of the most exclusive clubs in the world, and they let you in. No wonder you love it.’
‘An interesting analysis, but quite some way off the mark. It’s not what the place represents that I love, but what it is. It’s alive with history. Do you realise that this table we’re sitting at is almost five hundred years old, a present from Queen Elizabeth to Middle Temple? Cut from a single oak and floated up the Thames from Windsor Park. And Sir Walter Raleigh came to this very hall, this same hall, and took a standing ovation after tanking the Spaniards at – somewhere or other. I forget. How can you fail to be impressed by that?’