Reaney's Lamborghini

So slick and sexy. Purred past Temple Bar. That throaty engine advertising punch. All legal London, strolling out for lunch, with turning heads declared, “Now that’s a car!” So many barristers are – if not losers, low earners and slow learners. I was one. I, plodding back from Penge, felt put upon: a plea, a pittance. Now for Holborn’s boozers. That mean machine was not for saps like me. I turned my face towards the threatening rain, and started wearily up Chancery Lane. A cup of tea and, hopefully, a fee awaited me in Chambers. Alloy wheels slid sleekly, silently – stopped at my side. That car again! I watched the window glide wide open. And I almost had to kneel to see the driver. Handsome. Tall and thin. The shirt was pastel pink, the tie was silk. The suit was Savile Row, or of that ilk. His words astonished me. “Well, clamber in!” And then the penny dropped. It’s Alex R! Agility has never been my thing, so Reaney waited, engine idling, as I shoe-horned myself into his car. We’d known each other at the School of Law, but then our paths had radically diverged. Me, in pleas and poverty submerged, and he, the wide blue skies of Libel to explore. “I’ll run you back to Chambers – beat the rain.” He asked me what had occupied my morning. For him, the King’s Bench judges were adjourning. I’d copped a plea in Penge – how to explain? The major stars had Alex at the helm when they unleashed their lawsuits on the press. Defending thefts of bicycles – and less – was my domain. He ruled a regal realm. His clients of the moment, man and wife, were household names. They’d sold their wedding day to paparazzi, who refused to pay. The plaint was something weird, like “Stolen Life”. The man, from Delaware, big hair, and Jewish. They crank out movies like there’s no tomorrow (Chicago, Basic Instinct, Traffic, Zorro): the girl, from Aberdare – think Cher, and shrewish. To talk of money is a vulgar thing, but I was desperate to know his fee. The forty quid I’d earned, I wouldn’t see for months to come. His wrists were dripping bling. We’d be at Chambers in another minute. “So, Alex,” (best to blurt the damn thing out), “a case like that. You’re looking at … about …?” He grinned at me and said, “you’re sitting in it.”