The Last Testament Read Online Free PDF Page A

again after, after . . . everything that had happened, she had dreamed of a similar future for herself. No more war zones, no more anonymous hotel conference rooms, no more twenty-hour days fuelled by coffee and cigarettes. On the wrong side of thirty-five, she would settle down and have a family life. Fifteen years later than the girls she had gone to school with, admittedly, but she would have a family and a life.
    ‘You finished, Brett? What about you, Kathy?’

    THE LAST TESTAMENT
    21
    ‘There’s a lot to get down here.’
    ‘Remember, not everything’s a red line. You’ve got to be selective. All right, Kathy. Give us your three red lines.’
    ‘Three? You kidding?’
    ‘Selective, remember.’
    ‘All right.’ Kathy began chewing the top of her pencil, before she realized it wasn’t a pen and pulled it out of her mouth. ‘Child support. My kids have to have financial security.’
    ‘OK.’
    ‘And the house. I have to have the house, so that the kids can have continuity.’
    ‘And one more.’
    ‘Full custody of the children, obviously. I’m having them.
    There’s no shifting on that.’
    ‘For Chrissake, Kathy—’
    ‘Not yet, Brett. First you gotta give me your red lines.’
    ‘We’ve been over this like a thousand times—’
    ‘Not this way we haven’t. I need three.’
    ‘I want the children with me at Thanksgiving, so that they have dinner with my parents. I want that.’
    ‘All right.’
    ‘And spontaneous access. So that I can call up and say, I dunno,
    “Hey Joey, the Redskins are playing, wanna come?” I need to be able to do that without giving, like, three weeks’ notice. Access whenever I want.’
    ‘No way—’
    ‘Kathy, not now. What’s number three?’
    ‘I have others—’
    ‘We’re doing three.’
    ‘It’s the same one I said before. No child support unless Kathy is a full-time mom.’
    ‘Are you sure that’s not just saying no to Kathy’s first red line? You can’t just block hers.’

    22
    SAM BOURNE
    ‘OK. I’ll put it this way. I’ll pay for child support only if I’m getting a five-star service for my money. And that means the kids get looked after by their mom.’
    ‘That is not fair! You’re using our kids to blackmail me into giving up my career.’
    And they were off again, back to shouting at each other and ignoring Maggie. Just like old times, she thought to herself with a smile. After all, this was what she was used to. Negotiating a divorce between people who couldn’t stand the sight of each other, who were tearing each other’s throats out. An image flashed into her mind, which she quickly pushed out.
    But it helped. It gave her an idea, or rather it made her see something she had not realized until that moment.
    ‘OK, Brett and Kathy, I’ve made a decision. These sessions have become useless. They’re a waste of time, yours and mine. We’re going to end it here.’ Maggie snapped shut the file on her lap.
    The two people on the couch opposite suddenly turned their attention away from each other and stared at her. She could feel their eyes on her, but she ignored them, busying herself with her papers instead.
    ‘You don’t need to worry about the paperwork. I’ll get all that to the Virginia authorities tomorrow. You’ve both got lawyers, haven’t you? Course you have. Well, they’ll take it from here.’
    She stood up, as if to usher them out.
    Brett seemed fixed to the spot; Kathy’s mouth hung wide open.
    At last, Brett forced himself to speak. ‘You can’t, you can’t do this.’
    ‘Do what, exactly?’ Maggie had her back to him, as she put the file back on the shelf behind her.
    ‘You can’t just abandon us!’
    Now Kathy joined in. ‘We need you, Maggie. There is no way we can get through this without you.’
    ‘Oh, don’t you worry about that. The lawyers will get it sorted.’
    Maggie kept moving around the room, avoiding eye contact.

    THE LAST TESTAMENT
    23
    Outside she heard the buzzer go again, and the