Conviction(42)

Once I’d made it clear to my mother on the phone that my mind was made and I wouldn’t be giving Marcus a second chance, she ended the call, but only after telling me that I’ve never failed to disappoint her.

The meeting with the lawyer goes well. He is rather looking forward to going up against another lawyer and I wonder whether Marcus will use someone from his own practise to represent him. Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was my own brother. I can only assume that because they specialise in corporate law that it won’t be.

Nathaniel Attwood is charming, amusing, and intelligent, he is also very well versed in all things pertaining to the laws of divorce. He also happens to be around thirty-five and smoking hot. Sophie and I spend the first fifteen minutes of the meeting with our mouths hanging open and imagining lots of things involving him, us and his big wooden desk, instead of listening too much of what he was actually saying.

“Mrs. Newman?”

Shit, I’m looking right at him, but totally oblivious to a word he’s just said to me. He tilts his head to one side and smiles. He has a sparkle in his blue eyes as he rolls his pen around his thumb and index finger of each hand.

I’ve answered the usual stuff, like name, age, occupation and address whilst on auto-pilot. I must’ve then zoned out as thoughts of sex with Nathaniel Attwood, preferably on or over his desk enter my head. I don’t know why my thoughts have turned in such a sexual direction, I’m not usually like that. I’ve only ever slept with two men in my life, and they both let me down massively.

“I’m sorry Mr. Attwood. It’s been a stressful couple of days, I zoned out a bit there for a minute.” I can feel a blush creep up my neck and over my cheeks as his eyes don’t leave mine. I hear Sophie clear her throat from beside me as I realise we’re just staring at each other in silence.

“I totally understand. Would you both like some coffee?”

“Coffee would be great,” I tell him.

He lets out a long sigh, still not taking his eyes from mine and presses the intercom on his desk and asks someone to bring in coffee for the three of us.

“So, Mrs. Newman—”

“Please, Mr Attwood, can you not call me that? My name’s Nina, Nina Matthews. I stopped being Mrs. Newman in the early hours of Saturday morning when my husband punched me in the face.”

His smile and the sparkle in his pretty blue eyes is gone in an instant.

“Your husband hit you?”

I nod my head, yes.

“Did you report this to the police?”

I shake my head, no.

“I took photos of her face,” Sophie adds, “but she refused to get the police involved.” She turns toward me. “You need to tell him the rest. You need to tell him what happened Friday night and you need to tell him what happened at the park on Saturday.”

The secretary knocks on the door at that moment and comes in with the coffee. She sets the tray down and leaves.

“Ms. Gardner is right. You need to tell me everything, Nina, even if you don’t want us to use it, we still need to know.”

We sit quietly for a few seconds whilst sipping on our coffee. Nathaniel puts his cup back in its saucer and says, “This interview is just meant to be a preliminary meeting where we take down your basic details and decide if we can work together.” He tilts his head from side to side. “I think we will get along just fine, Nina. But ultimately, it’s your call on whether you want to retain us to represent you.” I look over at Sophie and she nods. Nathaniel continues, “This shouldn’t really be about anything personal, on my part at least so I’m going to remain as impartial as possible. But given what you’ve just revealed Nina, I want to represent you and I really want to kick this f*cker’s arse and achieve the best outcome that we can for you.”

“Fuck yeah,” Sophie says from beside me.

“I would also like to achieve this as quickly as possible.” He looks at me, eyebrows raised, expecting an answer.

I take a deep breath. “I just want to be able to draw a line under this and not be married to him anymore. If he wants to be an arsehole about things, then just let him. I just want a divorce and I want it as quickly as legally possible.”

He keeps staring at me, blinks a couple of times and asks, “Do you have time to go through all of the paperwork now, or shall we make another appointment and get things finalised then?”

Nathaniel cancels his next appointment and we spend the following hour going through everything I need to submit my divorce petition to the courts. If Marcus agrees and doesn’t contest anything, I could be divorced within the next eight weeks.

Nathaniel is confident that he can lodge the petition within the next couple of days so, hopefully, a copy of the petition and something called The Acknowledgement of Service should be with Marcus by the beginning of next week. I leave his offices feeling a little less stressed about the whole thing and confident in his ability to push my divorce through quickly. I was worried beforehand that because of what Marcus does for a living, no one would want to represent me, but Nathaniel seems to see Marcus as a challenge. I like him, under different circumstances, we could probably have been friends.

We leave the offices of Attwood, Chalmers and Co and head for the nearest pub. Discussing the various ways we had imagined Nate with the big nob, as Sophie has christened him, could take us in his office. Against the wall and over his desk being the two most preferred methods. We end up on the last train back to Surrey, a little worse for wear after the three bottles of wine we consumed.