Page 9 of Faking It (and falling in love)

Chapter Six

Philippa was distracted while she walked Dottie down Kings Heath High Street to her school. Her daughter kept tugging her arm.

“Mummy, are you thinking about work again?” she asked, with a clearly visible eye roll.

“Oh, sorry, darling.” Philippa knew she should probably do something about the eye rolling before it got Dottie into trouble – if not with her, then with her teacher. “Yes, there is rather a lot going on at the moment.” She wasn’t going to admit that the main cause of her distraction was the woman who had kissed her cheek at the networking event. She had plenty of cases to think about, too, so it wasn’t an outright lie.

“Well, I won’t be this young for long,” said Dottie. “You need to make the most of me before the hormones descend.”

Philippa laughed out loud. “Before the hormones descend? What on earth do you mean?”

“Hardev’s mum was talking about it the other day,” said Dottie, a serious expression on her face. “He’s got older brothers, and she was saying to Orla’s mum that she was trying to enjoy him before the terrible hormones descend and turn him into agrunting lump like them. But she did say that she wouldn’t mind if he talked slightly less than he does now.”

Philippa stifled a laugh. She recalled the school trip she’d volunteered on with Dottie’s class, when Hardev talking slightly less had been the fervent wish of every adult present. “What have you got in your lessons today?”

“Mr Harvey is going to teach us how to sew a cushion cover,” said Dottie, “once we’ve done our numeracy and literacy. I’m going to make a Taylor Swift one.”

“Of course you are,” said Philippa, who still hadn’t been forgiven for failing to secure tickets for The Eras Tour.

They approached the school gates, where other parents congregated. Philippa had always found it quite uncomfortable being there, never entirely sure how to converse with them. They had nothing in common apart from the school their children were at, and she never knew how to instigate suitable small talk.

As Dottie ran off into the playground to catch up with her friends, Philippa saw movement at one of the classroom windows from the corner of her eye. It was Chrissie, a trainee teacher, waving at her. Philippa waved back, smiling. Engaging with people she already knew was a very different matter from small talk with relative strangers, and Chrissie had become a friend since they’d got to know each other better on that school trip.

The bell sounded and the children lined up untidily for their classrooms. Philippa dropped a kiss on Dottie’s head and headed to the Jam Pot, a cafe she often frequented when she didn’t need to go straight to the office.

The small cafe was the perfect place for a second breakfast and a decent coffee. The wifi was good, too, so she placed her laptop on the table in front of her and logged in.

“Morning, Philippa,” said Seymour, the co-owner of the cafe.

“Morning,” she replied, warmed by the knowledge that she was a familiar face here.

“Your usual?”

“Yes, please,” said Philippa, smiling at the blonde. Seymour always seemed to have everything under control in her establishment, even when it was busy.

A few moments later Seymour brought her a plate of wholemeal toast with strawberry jam and a double espresso. Perfection.

“Thank you,” smiled Philippa.

She had received more than fifty emails overnight, and the first order of business was to scan them quickly and make sure there weren’t any urgent cases or court orders that needed her attention. She donned her turquoise reading glasses and began to sort through her inbox. She took a bite of the sweet toast and chewed as she went.

There was some correspondence about Daria’s financial settlement from her husband’s solicitor. As Philippa had confidently predicted, he was trying to leave Daria with almost nothing. She pursed her lips and drafted a curt reply.Nice try, she thought. She moved onto a series of emails about other cases she was handling, including a complicated one for a father trying to regain access to his children. She always found these cases the hardest. Children and where they resided, who they saw and what they did so often became battle grounds in divorce cases, and it always seemed so unfair. While Philippa found these situations hard, they were rewarding, too: there was nothing like the satisfaction of helping a client get the access they and their children needed.

There was an email from Gerry, too, which reminded Philippa of her fictional girlfriend. She opened it, expecting a routine ‘thanks for coming’ note. What she read, though, was something very different. The words in the email made herstomach twist. She took a mouthful of strong coffee, but it did nothing to calm her nerves.

She picked up her phone and scrolled until she found Alex’s WhatsApp message from a few days earlier. “I meant it,” she had typed. “Happy to be your wing woman any time x”

Philippa’s finger hovered over the reply box. She sighed. Surely this was madness.

Chapter Seven

Philippa took down the magazine from the stand.Diva. She’d eyed it so many times, but until now she’d never had the courage to take it off the shelf.Divawas the British magazine for queer women and non-binary people, and she wanted to see what secrets it held.

She wondered what the man at the till might think as he scanned it, but he barely looked up. Philippa laughed at herself. No one really cared, did they? She put the magazine in her bag and walked home, still pondering the email from Gerry and what she should do about it.

At home, she put her bag into the boot of her electric MG and drove into the city centre. She needed to go to the office for a few hours.

The morning sped by, filled with appointments and meetings. She met a new client who was trying to get access to his child. Philippa spent time listening to his story and learned that his wife had moved away when she separated from him, taking his daughter with her.

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