Page 58 of Behind Frenemy Lines

Kriya blinked. I supposed the change of subject was a bit abrupt. Should have worked up to it.

She said: “It sounds interesting. But I don’t know anything about defamation.”

CG: “Me neither. Unfortunately, the Reputation Management team is under the cosh, so we’ve said I’ll pull a draft together and run it past them before it goes to the client. I’ve got a call with the partner later today.”

Kriya: “What have you got in mind for me to do?”

CG: “Libel’s the obvious cause of action, we’ll be focusing most of our fire on that. But there is a possible breach of copyright angle. The other side’s quoted extensively from the client’sdocuments. Ellie—she’s the partner leading the RM team—she also suggested looking into data protection. There might be arguments we could run there.”

Kriya: “So you’re studying up on libel, but I can help by learning intellectual property and data protection law?”

CG: “Right. It would be a huge help. The client wants the note by Friday.”

Kriya: “Farah’s leading?”

Nodded.

Kriya thought about it. “I have got capacity. Arthur likes me to check with him before taking on work for anyone else, though.”

Didn’t say anything, but my face must have betrayed what I thought of this. Would be one thing if Kriya was a trainee and Arthur was her supervisor, but she’s a senior associate.

Kriya: “I know. I think he gets anxious about the idea I might not be available if he gets new work in. This is a time-limited thing, though? It’ll be over by Friday?”

CG: “The initial push will be. Presumably once they’ve had a chance to consider the advice, the client will want to take some form of action. We’ll probably need to move quickly with that.”

After a long moment, Kriya said, “Count me in. Arthur will just have to deal.”

CG: “Great.” Relief that Kriya was up for it. Thought of involving her for her benefit, but it was going to be for mine, too. “I’ll send you the draft I’m working up. You’ll see it’s got sections on the possible intellectual property and data protection arguments to fill out.”

Kriya: “Is there anything else I can look at, to read in?”

CG: “The facts are limited at the moment, but I’ll forward you what we’ve got. The allegations are very sensitive, so Blackmount’s asked us to treat them as the client. The details of the parties involved have been anonymised. We’re to advise onoptions for taking down the existing writings and restraining future publication, making certain assumptions—I’ve set them out in the draft note.”

Kriya: “I see. Understood.”

CG: “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

She smiled at me. Could feel myself blushing, like an idiot.

Kriya: “No, thankyou.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Kriya

Charles’s matter forBlackmount was a good one to get involved in. It was an interesting case; it took my mind off the weirdness with Arthur; and it got me meeting new people across the firm.

While Farah was technically supervising, she was away at a conference and content to leave it to Charles and me to lead. Over the next few days we had multiple calls and email exchanges with the Reputation Management, Intellectual Property, and Information Law teams.

At some point I’d meet the client as well: They had asked for a meeting to discuss next steps, after we’d delivered the note to them. Apparently the contact was an old school friend of Charles’s. It was the kind of networking and profile-raising Arthur and I always talked about me doing, but Arthur had never got around to letting me do.

I was starting to see Arthur, and our working relationship, in a new light. It was something about the faces Charles made when I told him about Arthur. Maybe it wasn’t a harmless idiosyncrasy when, for example, Arthur blocked me from working with other partners, even when I had the capacity to do the work. Maybe itwasweird how possessive he was about mytime. It could be said that there wasn’t a big step from that to Arthur being possessive ofme.

Usually I would have dropped him a line to let him know I was working on a new matter for a different partner. But I didn’t this time. If Arthur had anything for me to do, he could let me know. In the meantime, I had plenty to get on with. The note we’d been tasked to produce could easily have taken a couple of weeks to research and write. We had three days.

I spent them in the office, since I’d worked from home earlier in the week. Charles and I had to be in constant contact, anyway. Working out of the same office made sense.

On Friday, around half an hour before the canteen was due to close at ten p.m., I stood up. The longest I’d spent away from my desk that day was during my trip to the bathroom so I could wash my hands after lunch. Lunch itself had been a sandwich at my desk.

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