Chapter 2

CHAPTER

2

The day after the victory, Bree approached the etched glass doors of Fuller and Johnston with a degree of nervousness. Her mother would no doubt ask why she hadn’t presented herself at yesterday’s press briefing or the client meeting that had followed. She had an answer for that—but it was a pretty scary one.

Well, scary for her. Nothing scared her mother.

Tensing her shoulders, Bree walked through the doors. As she made her way to her office, a couple of people congratulated her on yesterday’s win. There was no sign of either of her parents as she finally reached her sanctuary, tucked away in a quiet corner of the floor.

Her assistant Ken was already at his desk. ‘Congratulations.’

‘Thanks.’ She walked into her office and sat down. The hard part of her day was about to begin.

Ken stuck his head around the door. ‘There’s a message from Ms Fuller.’

‘You can refer to her as my mother,’ she told him for the hundredth time.

‘Yes. Ms Full—Both your parents are out of the office at a meeting this morning. They left a message. Will you join them for lunch at one o’clock? Up top.’ He pointed to the ceiling.

‘I guess I’m free. Tell Mother’s assistant yes.’

Ken nodded. ‘Do you need me this morning?’

‘I do. I need to put together a summary of all the cases I have at the moment. Where they are and what the next steps are.’

Ken raised an eyebrow, but Bree offered nothing else.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Be right there.’

The morning didn’t drag as much as Bree had expected. The work helped with that. But finally it was time. She went into the executive bathroom and, standing in front of the mirror, slipped her feet out of her plain black high-heeled shoes so she could wriggle her toes. How she hated those shoes! They were as comfortable as expensive high-heeled shoes could ever be, but she hated them as much as she hated the pantyhose covering her legs and the smart black pencil skirt she was wearing. She hated the equally smart and costly white silk blouse and the carefully tailored jacket. There were many things she hated about her job, and the clothes she was forced to wear were pretty high on the list. She was happiest in her loose, layered, full skirts, her tie-dyed T-shirts and comfortable overalls. Not the stylish, fashionable overalls that could be found in designer store windows, good old blue denim. Loose. Hard wearing. Worker’s clothes.

Stretching her neck against the restrictions of her carefully caught-back hair, she ran cold water over her hands. She filled her cupped hands with water to splash on her face and wash away the tightness left by a morning of hard work and even harder stress, but then opened her hands and let the water run away. She needed her mask of perfectly applied makeup for the meeting that she was about to have. The most important meeting of her career. One of the last meetings of her career.

Her phone began singing to her; the chorus of a hit single from the sixties and her grandmother’s favourite song.

‘Hi, Nan.’

‘Hello, darling. How are you?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Then you haven’t done it.’

‘Not yet.’

‘You’re still doing it today?’

‘Yes. Am I being a fool, Nan? That’s what they’ll say.’

‘No. You have to do what’s right for you. You’ve been thinking about this for a long time.’

‘Thinking. But I haven’t done anything yet.’

‘Well, then, do something now.’

Bree smiled. ‘I will.’

‘Good. Come and see me later and tell me everything.’

‘Depending on how they react, I might get there early.’

‘I’ll be here. But if they give you a hard time, tell them from me that I’ll have something to say on the matter.’

Bree smiled at the thought of her diminutive grandmother, with her pink hair and her flowing robes, storming into the formal and ordered offices of Fuller and Johnston to defend her. That would be something to see. ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine, Nan. I’ll see you later.’

Expensive shoes back on her aching feet, Bree took the lift to the expensive restaurant on the top floor of the office tower.

The name partners at Fuller and Johnston were waiting at a private corner table with a spectacular view. They looked exactly like senior partners in a law firm should. Bree struggled to see past that veneer to find the parents she had always loved, even when she felt the love was not returned.

‘Brianna, your hair is untidy. That’s not the impression we want to give our clients.’

Margaret Fuller’s hair was never out of place. Her expensive business suits were never creased. And God forbid her subtle but flattering makeup should ever be less than perfect.

‘Sorry, Mother.’ The words, like the gesture of pushing her hair back, were an automatic reaction over which Bree had no control. No sooner had she done it than she hated herself for it. Today was not about trying to impress her parents or gain their approval. She was done with that.

‘It’s all right, Margaret.’ Gary Johnston waved Bree towards a chair.

For a fleeting moment, Bree caught a faint echo of the father she had always loved so fiercely and who had loved her back in equal measure. The father who had begun to drift away all those years ago and never come back. She’d never stopped trying to please him. Never stopped failing. She was about to fail again.

‘This is something of a celebration,’ Margaret said, ‘as you missed the dinner with the clients last night.’ She paused, waiting for Bree to give an excuse for her lapse. None was forthcoming.

‘But there’s something else we can celebrate too.’ Gary looked at his wife then smiled at his daughter. ‘We’ve decided it’s time for the firm to move more into wills and estate planning. It’s a lucrative area and we can be sure many of our existing family law and corporate clients will bring their personal estate planning to us.’

He waited for Bree’s reaction. Again, she had none, because this was nothing to do with her.

‘And we thought,’ Gary continued, ‘your mother and I, that you would be the right person to head up the division. The job comes with a partnership. Junior partner, of course.’ He sat back.

Bree felt nothing, except perhaps regret, because this news would make what she was about to do more hurtful to her parents, and that was not what she wanted. She gave herself a minute to ensure her voice was a lot calmer than she felt.

‘I’m flattered. Thank you. But no.’

‘What do you mean no?’ Margaret never raised her voice, but Bree had a feeling she was close to it. ‘This is a partnership. Earned by your excellent work, not because of who you are. And it’s the next step to getting your name on the door.’

‘I don’t want my name on the door.’

Her mother continued as if she hadn’t heard. ‘As we build the division, we’ll need to expand our offices, but for now, the smaller interview room can be converted into a suitable office for you.’

‘I don’t want the office either.’ Bree spoke more loudly.

And this time, both her parents heard.

Her mother frowned. ‘What do you mean? Of course you do.’

‘No, Mother. I really don’t.’

Margaret gave her daughter the look. The same look she’d been giving her since she was a child. A combination of disappointment and disbelief. ‘Brianna? What’s going on?’

Bree gathered her courage. ‘I’m glad we’ve got this chance to talk. Thank you for the offer, but I’m resigning.’

‘Resigning?’ Her father shook his head. ‘Don’t be silly.’

Bree wasn’t sure if his dismissive attitude made her sad or angry. ‘When I graduated, I said I would give you five years. I’ve done that—and more. I’m leaving now.’

‘Have you had an offer from another firm?’ her mother asked. ‘Because we’ll match it. You know that. All we’ve ever wanted was for you to join the firm and become a partner, with a view to taking over when we step down.’

‘Yes, Mother. That is all you ever wanted. But it’s never been what I wanted.’

Margaret raised her hands, palms out as if to ward off some danger. ‘Please don’t say this is about wanting to be a sheep farmer. Or a drover. Or whatever it is you have been talking about.’

Bree was surprised that her mother had actually listened to those conversations. ‘It is about wanting to run my own life. And be the person I want to be. I never wanted to be a lawyer, Mother. You know that.’

‘Then why did you waste all that time at uni? A waste of your time and our money.’

‘It’s all about money for you, isn’t it? Well, not for me. I want to be happy. I went to uni because I was seventeen and desperate to please the parents I loved. I’m old enough now to know I will never do that. So I am going to please myself.’

‘Your grandmother put you up to this, didn’t she?’

The tone of Margaret’s voice horrified Bree. How could any daughter speak of her own mother with such anger and contempt? Bree and her mother were not close, but she could never imagine not loving her. Apparently, that emotion was long gone between Margaret and Rose.

‘It’s my choice,’ Bree said firmly. ‘You’ll have my written resignation on your desks this afternoon. I’ve got a lot on my plate just now. Ken is going through it all with me, so he’ll be across everything. I’ll do a proper hand-off of course. Let me know who you want to take my cases. I should be out of your hair by the end of the month.’

Margaret leaned back in her chair, her face a frozen mask.

‘Bree. Are you really sure this is what you want?’ Gary had always been the more reasonable of the pair. Or perhaps simply the one most willing to give up and let go.

‘Yes, Father. It’s what I want.’

‘And what are you going to do? For a living, I mean.’

‘I’ve built a small but high-quality herd of alpacas. I plan to buy my own place and build that into a business.’

Her father ignored her mother’s snort of derision. ‘Is it viable? Do you know enough?’

‘It is and I do.’

Her mother shook her head. ‘You’ll never make a living at that. You’ll be knocking on our door asking for your old job back before the end of the year.’

‘No, Mother, I won’t.’ Bree put as much bravado as she could muster into the words.

‘Very well.’ Gary assumed the role of peacemaker as he so often had. ‘If this is your final decision, Bree, I respect that. I hope your new life proves to be everything you hoped. And you’ll always have a place here if you decide you want to return.’

Margaret snorted again at that and muttered something under her breath. Bree chose to ignore it. Instead she simply nodded to her father and got up to leave the table. She couldn’t sit through lunch. Not without crying, and she wasn’t going to do that. At least, not in front of her mother. She needed to get away. She’d be arriving early at Nan’s after all.

***

Anyone looking at Rose Fuller would pigeonhole her pretty quickly. With her long salt and pepper hair liberally decorated with locks of startling pink, her lined face devoid of any makeup and her wrists encircled by numerous, brightly coloured bangles, she wasn’t everyone’s idea of a grandmother. Her batik-print skirts and fading tie-dyed tops would suggest she was an ageing hippy with not a lot of money and even less business sense.

Such assumptions would be wrong in every possible way.

Bree kicked her heels off and curled herself into the corner of the big cream sofa that dominated the living room of Nan’s apartment. As always, she felt the tension falling away as she looked out the glass doors onto the balcony and beyond that to the glorious views over Sydney Harbour. She watched her grandmother carry two steaming mugs of strong black coffee across the room. Nan paused by the well-stocked bar and opened a bottle, adding a dash from it to both cups.

‘Nan! It’s a bit early. And what happened to the peppermint tea I was hoping for?’

‘Rubbish. It’s never too early. And today is not the day for herbal tea. So—are we celebrating or commiserating?’ Nan delivered the spiked coffee and sank into the armchair opposite Bree, her many necklaces clinking as she did.

‘Definitely celebrating.’ Bree wrapped her fingers around the mug. It did smell good.

‘Excellent. Tell all.’

Bree recounted the events of the meeting. ‘It could have been a lot worse. I think Father saw that I wasn’t fooling around. I sometimes think he would have been quite happy with a very different life if he hadn’t married my mother.’

‘Meeting your father was good for your mother. However driven she is now, she was much worse before he came along. I think when she started arguing in court, she tried too hard to hide any “female” emotion in a man’s world. She never really found it again when she got home at the end of the day. In their own way, your parents care deeply for each other. And for you. Of course, she’s always seen me as a dithering fool.’

‘Nan!’

‘Oh, it’s all right, Bree. I know she was embarrassed by her unconventional mother. She never understood what someone like your grandfather saw in me.’

Bree heard the sadness in Nan’s voice. After all these years, she still missed the man she had loved for half a century. ‘I understand.’

Nan smiled. ‘Just as I understand why you’ve taken this decision. So, what’s next?’

With that simple question, the enormity of her decision hit Bree like a hammer. She caught her breath and her heart pounded. ‘Oh, Nan. What have I done? I’ve quit and I don’t have a next step. I have a handful of alpacas that require money to pay for their board and keep. One of them is expecting twins, so that’ll mean huge vet fees. I say I want to breed alpacas, but I don’t own a farm. What am I going to do? Keep them in my flat?’

To Bree’s surprise, Rose chuckled. She felt a flare of indignation, then she too started to laugh.

‘That’s what I’ve been waiting for,’ Nan said. ‘All right, it’s time you went to work. Your new work. What’s your first priority? Finding a farm or whatever?’

‘I … I guess so.’

‘Well, then, time to consult Google.’