"Sorry — could we get a coffee in here? Just a white, no sugar."
The client had said it to Yasmin.
There were nine people in the room. There was a trainee by the door whose entire function that morning was to be near the door. There was a paralegal with a laptop. There was Yasmin Haddad, who had drafted every one of the four hundred and eleven pages on the table, who had been at Brenner Hale for eighteen years, and who was standing at the head of the room with the clicker in her hand.
"Of course," said Yasmin.
She put the clicker down. She walked to the sideboard at the back, poured a cup of coffee from the jug, walked the length of the table, and set it down in front of him.
"Thanks," he said, without looking up.
"Not at all." She went back to the head of the table and picked the clicker up. "Now. Page one hundred and six, which is the reason you are going to lose forty million pounds on Thursday."
His head came up.
It took her eleven minutes.
She did not raise her voice, because she never did, and she did not enjoy it in any way that showed. She took him through the change-of-control clause his last firm had waved through in 2019, and what it did the moment his parent company restructured, and then she took him through the three ways out of it in descending order of expense, and then she stopped and waited.
The room was very quiet.
"Why didn't anyone — " He stopped. "Nobody has mentioned this."
"No."
"For four years."
"No."
He looked at the coffee in front of him for a moment.
"Right," he said, and had the grace to go slightly red. "Ms Haddad. My apologies."
"Not necessary," said Yasmin. "Page one hundred and eleven."
Afterwards, in the lift, Priya said, "You should have let him sit there."
"Why?"
"Because he asked you for coffee. In front of everyone. You're — " Priya made a frustrated gesture that took in the whole building. "You're you."
"And if I'd said no, what would he be telling people about me right now?" Yasmin watched the floors go down. "He'd be telling them I was difficult. That's the entire word. Not wrong, not rude — difficult. And it would follow me around this firm for two years and it would come up in a room I'm not in."
"That's so — "
"Yes."
"Doesn't it make you furious?"
The lift stopped at the fourteenth floor and the doors opened on the corporate department, and Yasmin picked up her folder.
"It used to," she said.
Duncan Reid was waiting outside her office, which he never did.
"Yasmin. Good. Two minutes."
He did not sit down, which meant it was going to be less than two minutes and she was not going to like it.
"You know we've been looking at the shape of the department," he said. "Long term. Succession, that sort of thing."
"Mm."
"We're bringing someone in. Laterally. From Whitcombe's." Duncan smiled at her, warmly, the way he had smiled at her for eleven years. "Corporate. Bit of a star, actually. I think you'll like him."
Yasmin put her folder down on the desk.
"When does he start?"
"Monday," said Duncan.