“If you eat a snail accidentally in a restaurant, do you think you can sue for negligence?”
Katy blinked at me, and her eyes moved from side to side like shifting curtains. I could see she was thinking. She got to the restaurant before me and was already seated at the table I booked.
“It’s not important,” I said, aware it was taking her a while to reply. “Just a famous case.” I picked up the menu, but put it down as soon as I noticed I couldn’t read it without glasses. “Or infamous case, rather.”
“Umm… I don’t know that one.” Her umm was long and singsong, like she was meditating.
“It’s OK.” I didn’t want her to think I was testing her. I was not. I was making small talk that didn’t involve the weather, which could only be described as British. A bit grey and drizzly for a September day.
I rummaged in my handbag for my Prada glasses case. I felt guilty and protective. She was only a girl. Was I too harsh on her? She was a teenager that I invited out to lunch, and her mum, Jenny, is a very close friend I went to school with when we were growing up in Malaysia.
Jenny’s daughter had decided to “rebel” and “do law”.
“Doing law is not rebelling,” I told Jenny when she called me. She wanted me to be a kind of mentor, since I had gone into law and was in London, to give her an idea of the profession and to give the girl some confidence by convincing her that it was a good degree.
When I suggested that I’d take Katy out to lunch at St Paul’s in the City of London where I worked so that she could get a sense of the city buzz and the legal environment, Jenny was thrilled. She said that Katy liked “Modern European” cuisine. I booked Côte Brasserie at Paternoster Square.
Katy had arrived at Heathrow Terminal 3 the day before, ready to start life as an overseas student. I drove there in my Audi to meet her and give her a lift. I parked in the short-term parking. It was a duty of care thing. I owed it to Jenny. I took Katy to her halls of residence in Southwark. It would have been quicker by tube, but she had tons of luggage, which of course was overweight. Jenny, bless her, had done the Asian mum thing of packing the mobile kitchen (ikan bilis, oyster sauce, laksa paste, salted fish, fried onions, dried shrimp, sambal belacan, Milo etc.) into 23 kg of luggage.
This was a different generation to ours. I saw the Rimowa suitcases, the iPhone (15? 18? I couldn’t even tell), the Nike Air trainers, the Moncler backpack with the fluorescent trims, matching her freshly done LED gelish nails.
When I came here as a student 35 years ago, there was no internet. Nor were there mobile phones. There were not even any debit cards. I had never been on a plane, and yet I was in a country as far away as possible, knowing no one, carrying wads of cash, horse-sized luggage that no one helped with, up and down those immeasurable flights of steps in every tube station, wearing “winter” clothing that was clearly wrong for the winter over here, buying paper tickets with coins and paper money that I didn’t even recognise yet. There were no lifts then either. And of course, not to mention having to ask people all the time because of the fear of getting lost by getting on a train in the wrong direction. Even if I planned it well, I would have no idea when I’d arrive, due to tube delays, bad weather, and other travel issues. I definitely could not know how long it would take, minute by minute. These were things that everyone took for granted nowadays. I resisted the “when I was your age” speech. Jenny would probably have given her that nice and early.
Jenny was an oncologist and her husband Chee Seong, an orthopaedic surgeon. They’d done the middle-class Chinese thing and gone into medicine. They’d both qualified in Edinburgh and met there. It was a big deal that Katy was not going to be a doctor. She had refused to take their path. “Well, she likes reading, and she likes to argue with us a lot!” Jenny laughed. “That means she is going to be a great lawyer!”
I laughed along, but I knew that sounded familiar. It was how Jenny also described me when we were in school.
“Why didn’t you choose medicine? I saw you had the grades.”
“No way, Aunty Lucy,” Katy said.
“Wait. Can you not call me Aunty? We’re in London now.”
“OK lah,” she paused. “But… what shall I call you?” Also a long but, like she was about to sing.
“My name.”
“OK. Aunty,” she repeated, ignoring my request. “Bro. I don’t like blood, and medicine takes too long.” At least, I got her respect. I got “Bro”.
“Fair enough. What was your favourite subject?”
“Music.”
“Music?”
Music, my mind repeated, like I had never heard that word in my life.
“Bro,” she said. “I actually would like to be a musician.”
Why are you doing law, then? I should also have been an artist. I was top at Art in school. This generation was going through what I went through; was that even fair? Why did they have to, when in Jenny’s and my time there were no choices, and we didn’t know any better. It was either get married, or be in a top profession, or be in a top profession and get married. I had even narrower choices than Jenny, who was brilliant at Science. I did not want to teach. I was shit at Science; if I did any of the Arts, I’d have to teach. By the process of elimination, and I can’t believe now that I came to this conclusion, law was the only choice. This was in 1983. It was a boom economy in Asia caused by the Four Asian Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong). Law seemed cool. Bish! Bosh! As the youngsters would say, bashing imaginary cymbals.
“I play drums,” she said. There. I knew cymbals would be coming in soon. “I won some prizes for songwriting and DJing. But you know what? I realise I do not like classical music. This means it can only be music production, drumming and percussion for me. My parents said that’s not a university degree. You can do it in a college. You can also do it as a hobby when you are a lawyer.”
“They said that?”
“Yes.”
As Bank of Mummy and Daddy was paying, the music would have to be second fiddle.
“Therefore,” she concluded, “I am doing law to keep my options open,” breaking into a grin, one that was genuinely happy because she was genuinely happy, as a baby is. “I don’t know if I even want to be a lawyer.”
“Ah, yes,” I cautiously replied. “The legal profession gives you, umm, freedom, because of the analytical mindset of drawing both facts and conclusions based on the information.”
“Freedom,” she chuckled. “That’s the only word I heard.”
I did not have the heart to tell her that keeping her options open was the last thing she should do.
I kept my options open, and I was now twice divorced with no children. I did not want to be ‘tied down ’, and my ex-husbands did. I was 53 now. I was still keeping my options open. Speaking of which, I looked around for a waiter.
“Now, Katy, have you decided? Two or three courses?”
“Uhhh… whatever you’re having.” I knew it was her Asian upbringing. Pai-seh to even dare to want anything. If I had said I was not having lunch, she would agree and also not eat a thing. Since she would not say, I had to say it first.
“I am having two courses, only because I am watching the middle-age spread, but feel free to have whatever you want from the set. I’ll have the baby spinach salad and the breaded chicken,” I said, holding my glasses and peering at the menu.
“With the Provençal sauce, rocket and lemon, Madame?”
“Yes, with all that. Thank you,” I flapped the menu shut with such gusto that the wind from the impact blew away a paper napkin onto the floor. “What about you, Katy?”
“Oh, yeah, same for me.” She said, not even looking at the menu.
The waiter took both the menu cards away. “I am just going to pop to the loo,” I said. “You don’t mind me leaving my bag with you? It’s quite heavy as it has my laptop in it.”
She shook her head and smiled.
“Your mother and I were part of that generation in the late 1970s,” I said when I came back and sat down. “School was everything. It was a time of spectacular economic growth. Before rigid ideologies and continual dumb conflicts. Whether or not you made it beyond school was entirely hypothetical, because it was luck. Your mother and I were from that lucky generation. It was not so competitive. Even the very average made it to university. The above-average won scholarships and went to Oxford and Cambridge.”
“I am very average,” she said, looking down at her hands.
“You’re not,” I said. Again, it was her Asian mind speaking. You never accepted a compliment. You always assumed humility, fake or real.
“And in your grandparents’ generation, it was a time of hard slog, zero unemployment. You and I both don’t know what it’s like to go hungry.”
At the word hungry, the salads appeared. I put my glasses down and picked up my fork. My generation had to slog differently. Depression. Medication. Debt. My first husband had endured all three but not very well. With my second husband, it was too late. Round after round of IVF and disappointment. He suggested moving out of London, where the air is cleaner, the wombs more fertile and the living quieter, and giving up the City firm’s grim, filthy and stressful environment. But I wouldn’t. I did not want to be in some village with only white people. I grew up in a city myself. I didn’t grow up in Kuala Lumpur in order to live in a sleepy mock-Tudor village in Sussex and not be able to eat the international food that I liked. Also, it would be boring, though I did not say that to him at the time, and he earned less than me, which would have meant he didn’t mind me stepping down my career a notch to be on par with him and the future offspring, which never came to be.
The waiter brought our pan-fried breaded chicken. Katy, again, waited until I took the first bite before she picked up her cutlery. She was an FOP (fresh off the plane) since no one got off the boat anymore, unless you came in from Calais. Seeing her deference to me as her senior brought a quick memory of life back home, as sharp as a slice of lime. I hardly saw that now. No young person would even notice me, let alone give me priority or respect. Jenny thought I was successful and worthy of taking her daughter out not because I was twice divorced but because I was a partner in a Magic Circle firm; so that was something. It was something acknowledged by Jenny and her husband, and now Katy.
Katy was tall and fair like her mother, and had a sallow blank expression that these FOP Chinese girls had. Occasionally she adjusted her glasses, which made her look much older. Her long hair was in a loose, messy bun so favoured by young girls. It had been coloured recently; her scalp was stained like beetroot.
I should have taken her for a sandwich and a walk, rather than a sit-down lunch. There was a Wren church I could show her; there was St Paul’s, of course, to climb to the Whispering Gallery, the figure of Justice on top of Old Bailey, with a sword in her right hand and the scales in the left. I didn’t think of that until now because I felt lunch was what Katy wanted, and a few tidbits and legal cases to discuss was what Jenny wanted.
“Coming back to the snail,” I said. “Do you know what negligence is?”
“It’s… ah… it’s the failure… ah… to exercise appropriate and ethical care?”
“OK. Not bad. But if there was no contract, is there still a need to exercise that care?”
“A contract…”
“Do you know what a contract is?”
“An agreement.”
“Correct.”
“Would you like something else, Madame?” asked the waiter. The conversation paused.
“Katy?” I took off my glasses and tilted my chin.
“No, thank you,” she said, without looking at the waiter or me. He cleared away the dishes, and they made clattering sounds which were drowned out by the lunchtime crowd noises. Occasional guffaws and loud sneezes cut through the din. Percussive bangs of crockery and cutlery, phones ringing in different ring tones, foreign languages being shouted into the phones, a single crying baby.
“Can I have the bill, please?” I said to the waiter.
“I think so,” she said suddenly.
“You think so what?” I said.
“I think there is a duty of care when there is no contract.”
“Why?”
“There’s always an agreement,” she replied flatly. “If it was talked about and agreed upon, there’s already an agreement. Yes,” she said, not committing to an answer. Yes, she thought it was correct, or yes, she thought it was wrong. She looked glum, pouting and petulant as only a teenager could. She changed the subject. “Aunty. Where do you work?”
“I’m one of the partners in a Magic Circle firm. Do you know what that means?”
“I know it’s not magic, right?” She screwed up her eyes, searching me for some clues.
“No, it’s not.” So many things I wanted to tell her but could not, such as the fact that I joined at the time my first husband became very ill with depression and alcoholism, ending up in hospital several times. It was my chance to get a top job as a top dog. Or was it a cat? I couldn’t afford not to. In the process, I lost him, and he lost his job because of his illness, and we both lost the house. I heard that he was with someone now, living in Scotland, where it was cheap. Someone who, I guessed, could look after him.
My second husband was also married now, with two children. It was what he wanted. A semi in Sussex, two children, a Pilates class down the road and a tennis-playing wife. Divorce is expensive, I wanted to tell Katy, and save her from being me in 35 years. But chances were, if she stuck to being lucky with men, it would not happen to her, just as it had not happened to her parents. Try to find a husband in the same profession, I thought I should tell her. Then he’d know what he was in for. The hours and the dedication. Law was not a profession you could do “for fun”.
“The Magic Circle is slang for the top 5 law firms of the world.”
“Wow! That’s insane.”
“Not really,” I said, deflecting the compliment, of course. Some habits never left. I changed the subject. “Can you cook?”
“Not really, but I am going to try since my mum has packed all those ingredients I can experiment with,” came the sharp reply. I had become an excellent cook when I was married and entertained friends and colleagues, but in retrospect and grim honesty, it was for show. The GBP30,000 kitchen contained the best appliances in the world and the thickest marble that money could buy. All for nothing. I ate very simple, healthy meals now, with hardly any preparation.
“I can’t,” she elaborated. “But my mum says that next term she’ll send the maid.”
“To stay in the dorm with you?” I said, with a perplexed frown.
“I doubt it, haha,” she said. “So amped up that I’ll be moving out to my own place!” She replied with a flourish.
“Your own place?”
“For sure. In Bloomsbury. My parents have bought an apartment, but we don’t own it yet. In a few months, we will. It will be ready for renovation, and then I’ll be able to move in.”
“You’re very fortunate,” I said. She was. I’d only managed to buy a brand-new penthouse suite in Pimlico. I’d lost my suburban homes twice. They were renovated beautifully, all grey, slate, even a bamboo reflective garden in each.
“Yes, so the maid can come for 90 days at a time to clean and cook.”
“Amazing,” was all I could say, shaking my head at being bereft of any better adjective.
“I’m so hyped, bro. I’m copping a drum kit as soon as I move in.” Suddenly she became animated, as if she had just woken up. Her dull eyes pinged into action.
“A real kit?” I asked. She knew that I knew that real was the wrong word. I meant acoustic.
“No lah. An electronic kit. You can’t play an acoustic kit in a flat in London.” She let out a huge, dirty laugh like a toddler.
I laughed too. I had not laughed for a while. I felt my makeup crack open.
“Thank you for lunch, Aunty Lucy.”
“You are welcome. Don’t call me Aunty.”
“Oh. Aiyah, sorry. I have to.”
“OK. All the best, Katy. Make sure you let me know how you get on, hah?”
“Can. All the best to you too.” She reached out for a fist bump, but I was distracted by my phone, which buzzed with WhatsApp messages. I ignored them. She got up, and I noticed that she did not have the Nike backpack with her, but rather a tiny Michael Kors crossbody bag with a gold chain, and smart red boots. She obviously made an effort because she was meeting me.
“Are you going to the Tube?” I asked. It was a Chinese habit. Make sure you check with your guest that they are OK leaving. You didn’t actually mean it. It was small talk again.
“Yup.”
I watched her wriggle to put on her jacket. There was a tattoo of a diamond on her inner left arm. We left the restaurant together. That synthetic bubblegummy waft of teenage girls. Lip gloss. Clean hair and skin. God, I love that smell. It was old but new. It lingered in the air for a few more seconds before it evaporated like rain.
In the suddenness of leaving, I remembered I didn’t get to discuss the outcome of that snail case. Or that I was being made redundant in six months. They were discussing the packages now. Many reasons. Brexit, Trump, dented egos, financial crisis and most importantly, don’t even worry about AI, because I’d stepped on someone’s toes. The first thing they told you in law school was: a) shut the fuck up, b) do not fuck up. The second thing they told you was: Kill all the lawyers (Shakespeare). The third thing they told you was: Now you may laugh.
She went in the opposite direction to where the Tube was. I stared at her a while longer to make sure she knew where she was going. My maternal instinct asked me: Did she know where she was going? She didn’t see me looking because of the crowd of working people in black, with black umbrellas. I followed her from a distance after she checked that I was not looking. She slipped like a flap of wind into Indelibly, in St Paul’s Churchyard, a boutique that specialised in curated premium stationery, elegant notebooks, artisan greeting cards, and thoughtful “gifts”. What was she looking for?
“Madame! Madame!” A male voice came from behind me, and I heard running footsteps.
I spun around.
Did the card decline? At fifty-three, with thirty-five years in the City and a partner’s equity draw, the Asian fear of public shame still appeared like a sore. Pai-seh.
“You left this on the table, Madame.”
He held out the black Prada glasses case.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice shaking with too much gratitude, as though he had saved my life. “Thank you so much.”
I unzipped my handbag to put the case away. My fingers jabbed the structured interior of my Marc Jacobs. I felt my Charlotte Tilbury pressed powder compact, the house keys, the leather cardholder and then brushed across the narrow satin pen loop stitched into the calfskin lining.
I patted my coat pockets, feeling the stiff silk lining. My hand flew to my throat, and I sagged, like an old shirt.
The fountain pen was not an expensive Montblanc, but it was metallic purple, a gift from my dad when I graduated. It was his nod to my artistic nature. The only nod I was ever going to get from my dad. I had carried it around with me since.
It was when I “popped to the loo”. Drum roll. Cymbal. I wish she’d taken my laptop instead. Won’t need it very soon, when I lose this job. Also, all laptops were the same. What could she possibly need? She had everything in the world.
The pen brought me joy every day. I doodled on receipts. I sketched birds. When I re-zipped up my bag and looked through the windows of Indelibly, Katy had flown.