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the door, pointing at it angrily. ‘I don’t care what you or anyone else says, I don’t bloody care.’ Then he flung his hands in the air and made a kind of growling noise, interspersed with various swear words.

      I sighed and wondered if in ten or twenty years’ time, one of the toddler’s abiding memories of childhood will be of a Yucca plant and a man shouting at the City Family Court.

      I’d been told to expect a trainee solicitor called Kelly. I looked around for her, then back at the growling man who was now being moved away by a court usher, when she made herself known to me.

      ‘Are you Russell Winnock?’

      I turned around.

      ‘I am,’ I said, ‘are you Kelly?’

      She didn’t smile as she acknowledged me, instead she looked at me with total disinterest. Kelly Backworth was quite stunningly beautiful. She had shoulder-length blonde hair, eyes that wouldn’t sit still and full lips. She had colour and youth and hope and expectation that shone out amongst the grey despondency of the waiting room. I wondered what she looked like when she smiled. I wished she had smiled at me.

      ‘I’ve put Mrs West in a conference room around there,’ she told me and I beamed back at her.

      She then led me into a small conference room where Mrs Phi West was waiting.

      Christ, Mrs West was stunningly beautiful as well. She had a long slick of black hair that made its way down the side of her unfeasibly perfect face and onto her chest. She didn’t smile at me either.

      Kelly Backworth sat down next to Phi West and they both looked at me with grim disinterest, which was confusing – surely, they both need me for what was about to happen.

      ‘Right,’ I said, ‘Mrs West. Can I call you Phi?’ I pronounced her name Fee, as in fee-fi-fo-fum.

      ‘It pronounced “pie”,’ she replied in a surprisingly grating, heavily accented voice, ‘but no call me Porky Pie.’ She looked venomously at me as she said this. ‘He call me Porky Pie. No call me Porky Pie.’

      ‘Of course,’ I stuttered, ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

      I introduced myself, as Kelly started making notes and Phi, not Porky Phi, stared at me.

      ‘Right,’ I said, ‘today’s hearing should be fairly straightforward.’

      I then tried to describe the procedure I think the court will follow. Although, to be honest, it’d been that long since I’d done a Family Court injunction, I could be kidding all of us, so I’m glad when I’m interrupted by a knock on the door. It’s my opponent, Vicky Smith. Vicky is from my chambers. She is friendly, a few years senior to me, and a very good family barrister.

      She smiled at me. ‘Can I have a word?’ she asked, and I mumbled something to Porky Phi and Kelly and made my way out of the room – I have to admit it’s a big relief.

      ‘Russ,’ she said, ‘Clem told me that you were doing this – what’s that all about?’

      ‘Just doing the solicitors a favour,’ I proffered unconvincingly.

      ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘well you’re going to love this.’ She added, ‘Follow me.’

      I followed Vicky into another small conference room further up the corridor. In it sat a nervous-looking man with strawberry-blonde hair. He is Mr Graeme West. He didn’t look at all like I imagined. He looked respectable and normal, handsome too, to be fair, in an outdoors type of way. I find it difficult to picture him leafing through his wife’s iPhone or grabbing her around the neck.

      ‘Mr West,’ said Vicky, ‘this is Mr Winnock, he is representing your wife today. Will you please show him what you showed me earlier.’

      Mr West unbuttoned his shirt and revealed a perfect and newly scabbed burn mark in the shape of a large sausage branded into his chest. Ouch.

      ‘I don’t suppose your client’s mentioned this to you, has she?’ asked Vicky.

      I shook my head.

      ‘Let’s go outside.’ I followed Vicky outside and she immediately adopted a quiet, informal tone – ‘Russ,’ she said, ‘that’s where she attacked him with a pair of curling tongs just the other day after a row about a new car she wanted.’

      ‘What?’ I said. ‘Surely not.’ I wasn’t sure if I could quite picture Porky Phi carrying out such a venomous act of violence.

      ‘He’s absolutely terrified of her,’ Vicky continued. ‘I’ll be straight with you – as soon as a Judge sees that, there’s no way on God’s green earth that he’s going to give you your injunction.’

      ‘I don’t know,’ I said, which I realised straight away was rubbish – Vicky was absolutely right.

      ‘Look,’ Vicky continued, ‘he just wants out. He thinks next time she’ll kill him in his sleep. He tells me that if you drop the injunction, he’ll accept cross-undertakings not to see or hurt each other – and he’ll bung in the house.’

      I considered this quickly before I responded.

      ‘The house?’

      ‘Yes, and it’s mortgage free. He tells me that as far as he’s concerned, she can have it all. It’s a really great offer for her; it’ll mean that when the marriage ends, they won’t have to go through a prolonged process of ancillary relief.’

      I nodded, trying to remember what a prolonged process of ancillary relief was.

      ‘So, let me get this right,’ I said carefully, ‘no injunction, he agrees not to hurt her, she agrees not to hurt him, and he gives her the house.’

      ‘Precisely.’

      I wondered if there was a catch in this, if I was being done up like a kipper by a more experienced hand. But Vicky wasn’t like that, and she was right, any Judge worth his salt was not going to be impressed by the fact that the supposed victim attacked her assailant with a hairdressing appliance.

      ‘I’ll take instructions.’

      I made my way back to the conference room, where Porky Phi and the incredibly aloof Kelly were still sat.

      ‘Hi,’ I said with forced positivity. ‘Good news, I think.’

      Porky’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as she awaited my ‘good news’.

      ‘Mr West’s barrister has told me that if you drop your injunction and the two of you make what’s known as cross-undertakings, which are a promise that you make before a Judge, not to use violence against each other, he’ll give you the house.’

      ‘The house?’ said Phi.

      ‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘That’s pretty good, isn’t it?’

      ‘I have to promise not to use any violence?’

      I nodded again as Phi contemplated this, biting her bottom lip as she did.

      ‘I want the car as well,’ she said.

      ‘The car?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Phi, ‘the shiny silver one with no roof.’

      I looked at her, then looked at Kelly for some kind of reaction – there was none. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘the shiny silver car. Leave it with me.’

      I went back to speak to Vicky. ‘She wants the silver car with no roof,’ I said.

      Vicky’s face formed itself into an expression of exasperation. ‘Bitch,’ she said, ‘I’ve half a mind to tell her to sling her hook and advise my lad to take her on before a Judge.’

      I shrugged. ‘Those are my instructions.’

      ‘Right,’ said Vicky, ‘stay here.’

      Five minutes later, Vicky returned to tell me, grudgingly,

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