An Immoral Code by Caro Fraser Read Free Book Online Page A

lurch in fear and anguish. ‘How do you do?’ said Anthony. ‘Yes, I’m Godfrey’s junior in the case.’ He glanced at Ellwood, then looked back at Sarah. ‘Are you at the Bar?’ he asked with interest.
    ‘Not yet,’ she replied. ‘I don’t sit my Bar finals till next summer. But I’m hoping to specialise in commercial work – if I can get a pupillage, that is.’ She smiled significantly at Anthonyas she raised her drink.
‘You
wouldn’t know of anyone who needs a pupil in a year’s time, would you?’
    Anthony laughed, and ran his fingers through his thick brown hair. Camilla knew that mannerism – oh, how well she knew it and how much she adored it. She knew that it was something Anthony did when he felt himself either distracted or flattered. She wished he would not do it now. She watched as he looked up at Sarah, who was finishing her drink.
    ‘Well,’ said Anthony, who was not unaccustomed to being flirted with, ‘I’ll certainly try to think of someone.’ He glanced at Sarah’s empty glass. ‘Can I get you another drink?’
    ‘Thank you,’ said Sarah, and he took her glass and went to the bar. Sarah widened her eyes as she smiled innocently at Camilla. ‘What a nice man,’ she remarked, and then glanced around while she waited for Anthony to return to the table. She loved the suspenseful excitement of encountering someone new and attractive, and there was the added zest of putting Camilla’s nose out of joint.
    Camilla, who now felt thoroughly resentful, managed to blurt out, as Anthony came back to the table, ‘I hardly think you’ll have much trouble getting a pupillage, Sarah, since your father’s the Recorder of London.’ She had intended this to signify that Sarah got by on connections rather than ability, but Anthony merely looked at Sarah with increased interest as he set her drink down.
    ‘Really? Of course – Colman. I thought the name was familiar when Camilla introduced you. Actually, I appeared before your father a couple of weeks ago …’ He carried on talking to Sarah. Camilla, who was sitting on the other side of him, could not help feeling excluded. She could not join in their conversation without raising her voice and making Anthony turn back in her direction, and she had an unhappy feeling that he might not be much inclined to do that. She nursed herglass and sat quietly pondering the situation. It wasn’t fair that she should feel at a disadvantage, but she did. She should feel superior to Sarah, who was still a student, after all, but it suddenly seemed to Camilla that, far from being superior, her own position was invidious. In Anthony’s company, in Ellwood’s company, she was on the very lowest rung of the hierarchy, a mere pupil. Sarah, however, was not yet part of the pecking order. Anthony did not regard her in any particular light, and Sarah could afford to behave with him exactly as she chose. At that moment Sarah laughed, a very clear, pretty laugh, meant to be heard, and Camilla glanced at her balefully. She suspected that Sarah, even when she had to go through the rigours of pupillage, was unlikely to feel any of the inferiority which she herself felt towards other members of chambers. Camilla sipped morosely at the lemony dregs of her gin and tonic.
    ‘I’d have thought that you might have had enough of lawyers without becoming one yourself,’ said Anthony. The tilt of his chin as he drained his glass gave his glance an unconsciously seductive air.
    ‘Mmm. Depends on the kind of lawyer one meets,’ replied Sarah. ‘Anyway, these things often run in families, don’t they? What does your father do?’
    Ah, the question, thought Anthony. The idle, potent question that hummed throughout drinks parties and over restaurant tables and in crowded hallways at parties wherever people under thirty gathered. It marked out the middle-class, aspiring child so surely. No one ever asked, ‘What does your mother do?’ That would give no indication of