Breaking Cover

11

‘Hi, Jasminder, any chance of dinner tonight? I was thinking we could meet at La Sambuca?’

She was surprised to hear Laurenz Hansen on the phone. She’d enjoyed their second meeting, a few weeks ago, for dinner in Primrose Hill, though she had been a bit taken aback when afterwards he had seen her into a taxi outside the restaurant with only a chaste peck on the cheek for goodbye and no mention of a future meeting. He’d said rather vaguely that he’d ring her, but she had more or less decided that nothing was going to come of the relationship.

It wasn’t surprising he was reluctant to get involved. From the sound of it, his divorce was enough to put anyone off relationships. He and his wife had separated almost two years before and it was only now the divorce was coming through – and that after months of such acrimony that they were only communicating through lawyers.

Jasminder usually found the details of other people’s divorces too tedious to bother with, but she had asked Laurenz why his had become so unpleasant. ‘Money,’ he’d replied. ‘I made some successful investments when I was working in Bermuda and I’d previously worked in Venezuela for a couple of years and have holdings there as well. I declared everything to the court months ago but she doesn’t believe me. She’s hired private detectives to try and find the fortune I’m meant to have hidden away.’

In spite of herself Jasminder had found his candour attractive and she thought that perhaps the divorce proceedings explained some things about him that had puzzled her. If he had private investigators on his tail it was not surprising he hadn’t wanted to call the police after her mugging the other week. And maybe the fact that he’d given her his office number rather than a mobile or a home number had the same explanation.

Now here he was on the phone again, just when Jasminder had more or less given up on him. She hesitated, tempted by his invitation – and the restaurant he was proposing was conveniently close to her flat. But this would be her second night out this week – she’d had dinner with her friend Emma in Covent Garden two evenings before – and there were student essays to mark and a long brief to review for an urgent political asylum case. It wasn’t as if she had a lot of time on her hands.

Laurenz Hansen seemed to pick up that she was wavering. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we scratch the restaurant idea? Let me come over and cook while you get on with your work. We can talk over supper. You do have to eat, you know.’

And eventually she accepted, telling herself that he was right; she could do her work and still make time to see him. She couldn’t remember a moment, not even in early childhood, when she hadn’t felt she had too much to do, and too little time to do it. From primary-school days she had always been busy and hard-working, and it had paid off. She’d won a full fees-paid scholarship to Leicester Girls’ High School and had gone on to Durham. There she’d got a first, then a distinction in her supplementary year at law college in London. She’d had her choice between four firms of solicitors who were vying for her services. All this before she’d turned twenty-three.

Looking back now, she supposed this urgency must have come from her parents, who like so many immigrants to the UK were desperately eager for their children to succeed. Her father had been a successful pharmacist in Kampala, until Idi Amin had suddenly decided that Uganda didn’t need its Asian community any more and had thrown them all out. Arriving in England with hardly any possessions, her father had discovered that his professional qualifications didn’t transfer to the UK. Settling in Leicester, where so many Indian arrivals were living, he had managed with the help of a cousin to buy a tiny corner shop, selling cigarettes and newspapers and, at first, not much else.

Virtually as soon as Jasminder could count, she worked in the shop with her elder brothers, stacking shelves and sweeping the floor, and throughout her school years she had taken money from customers with one hand while doing her homework with the other. By the time her father had died a few years ago, the tiny shop had become a small chain of grocery stores in the city, which her brothers now ran very successfully.

Unlike her brothers, though, there had never been any question of Jasminder joining the business. She had been a bright girl and the apple of her father’s eye – unable to resume his own profession, he had been determined that his youngest child would break through the barriers he had found in Great Britain. The day she’d received the acceptance letter from Durham, her father had spent the afternoon announcing the news proudly to every customer who’d come into the shop.

She’d felt guilty from time to time for disappointing her parents. Her father hadn’t been able to understand why she had chosen to become an academic lawyer and work for civil liberties charities rather than making a lot of money in a City firm. Her mother had been mystified by her failure to get married and provide them with more grandchildren. Jasminder herself wasn’t sure about having children. She liked kids, and was a loving aunt to her brothers’ offspring, especially little Ali, a doe-eyed girl who had just turned seven and was both clever and full of energy. But she was also well aware that being a mother and having a high-powered career was difficult; too often both roles could suffer.

Yet Jasminder knew her parents’ disappointment was minor compared to their pride in her. Even now, years after her mother had moved to India following her husband’s death, she still kept a close watch on her daughter’s career from a distance. When Jasminder had recently made her debut on Question Time, her mother had alerted half the Kapoor clan in the Punjab to watch her famous daughter on the BBC.

As she put away the vacuum cleaner, Jasminder reflected that she hadn’t actually saved herself any time by agreeing to Laurenz cooking dinner at her flat, rather than going out with him to a restaurant. As soon as she’d got home she’d realised that the place was even more of a bombsite than usual. It had taken her over an hour to make it presentable and she hoped he wouldn’t notice the stacks of papers she had hidden behind the sofa, or open the door to the hall cupboard where she had stuffed two bags of recycling that she had forgotten to put out for collection.

But her anxiety about the state of her place dissolved as soon as Laurenz arrived, with a large carrier bag in one hand and a bunch of early daffodils in the other. After she’d found a vase, he calmly ordered her to go and get on with her work, and by the time he summoned her to the kitchen, she’d marked six essays. He’d made mushroom omelettes with a green salad, and there was a lemon tart and a bowl of berries for dessert, and as she sat down at the table he poured her a glass of Sancerre from the fridge. The conversation flowed easily as they ate and she was glad he kept off the subject of his divorce.

After dinner they moved into the living room for coffee. It seemed natural to sit together on the sofa in front of the fire. He asked her about her lecture, which he had already said he was sorry to have missed, and she told him about the hostile response it had drawn from some of the King’s College audience. She said, ‘I’m getting used to being shouted down now – by both sides. People see things in such black-and-white terms. They either think the Government is intent on spying on every single thing we do – reading all our emails, monitoring our Facebook pages and every Twitter message – or else they think that no one should be allowed to wear a headscarf or a beard, that nothing is being done to protect us and we need vigilantes on every street corner.

‘I’m exaggerating, of course, but that’s how it sometimes seems. Most of those I meet come from the first camp and it is very difficult to persuade them that there is a sensible middle ground.’ She stopped and took a sip of her coffee, suddenly feeling self-conscious. Here she was, sitting next to a handsome man in a romantic situation, and she had to bang on about civil liberties. She said, with a weak smile, ‘Sorry about the monologue. I suppose the point I’m trying to make is that I’m not the firebrand people think I am.’

‘That’s okay. And I don’t think you should care too much about what people think. As long as you know what you are, that’s all that really matters. I’m an expert on misperceptions.’ He suddenly imitated with comic precision the voice of a dinner-party companion: ‘Private banking sounds absolutely fascinating, Mr Hansen.’

Jasminder laughed. For a moment, she wondered if she should tell Laurenz about the head-hunter’s recent approach. Rosamund Butler had originally asked her not to talk to anyone about it, but in their face-to-face she had said Jasminder could mention it to her parents or her partner if she wanted to. Since her father was dead, her mother was in India and she didn’t have a partner, she wondered if she was allowed a surrogate instead. But she told herself it couldn’t be Laurenz, since she hardly knew him…

He put his coffee cup down on the table and moved closer to her. ‘I hope you won’t mind, Jasminder,’ he said, as his arm slid along the back of the sofa behind her shoulders, ‘but I’ve been wanting to kiss you for the last two hours, so you’d better say no right now if you don’t want me to.’

In the morning, while Laurenz was out getting croissants from the bakery across the road and Jasminder was making coffee, she decided to tell him about the head-hunter’s approach. He’d said that he must be off straight after breakfast, which was in some ways a relief (she was thinking of work again) though part of her would have liked him to stay for a while. She felt an ease with him she had never experienced so early on with other boyfriends, yet he retained a slight air of detachment that made him, even in their new-found intimacy, a little mysterious. She sensed there was a lot to Laurenz that she would want to get to know.

So she told him about the strange phone call she’d had, and the subsequent meeting with Rosamund Butler. ‘She gave me all these forms to fill in if I decide to apply. I’m not sure what to do.’

‘Do you know which agency it is?’

‘No. There are only three of them to choose from, though: GCHQ, MI5 and MI6.’

‘Are you sure there are only three?’ he asked teasingly.

‘If there’s another one, it’s so secret they couldn’t be looking for a Communications Director.’

They both laughed. Laurenz put his knife down on his plate, and looked thoughtful. ‘You should be flattered, you know.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Whoever it is, they must think a lot of you to make an approach like that. After all, you haven’t exactly been a public supporter of the intelligence services.’

‘I know. My first reaction was that they must have confused me with someone else.’

‘I doubt it. I have to say, it makes me think a lot more of them to know they’re willing to consider you for this post.’

‘Yes, but should I seriously consider it? I’m not so sure it’s a good idea.’

‘Why not?’ He was eating again, his eyes focused on his plate.

‘Well, you know – if I stay true to my beliefs, it could be a disaster. If I don’t – well, I could become a laughing stock. People will say I’ve sold out, that I’ll be doing the work of the very devil I’m always complaining about.’

Laurenz looked up at her thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know, Jasminder. Life’s not that simple. Sometimes you have to compromise your principles a bit in order to achieve the goals you’re being principled about. Then again, sometimes you have to stand firm. I can’t advise you. I don’t know which way this would go. But in my opinion, it’s worth taking it further. After all, if they do offer you the job, you can always say no.’