Professional Boundaries

I will tell you what I know about professional boundaries.

I have practised at the Bar for seventeen years. I have stood in court and made arguments I didn't personally believe with enough conviction to move juries, cross-examined witnesses I privately sympathised with until they fell apart, and maintained throughout a composure that my colleagues have variously described as formidable, intimidating, and, from one junior who thought I couldn't hear him, actually quite frightening. I know what I am doing in a room. I have always known.

I know exactly what I am doing.

This is what I need to establish before I tell you the rest. I am not a woman who drifts. I am not confused or lonely or mid-life in any of the ways that word gets used to excuse things. I am forty-four years old, I have a husband called Sebastian who is decent and a house in a good postcode that is paid for and two children who are not yet old enough to be embarrassing about me, and I made a decision this year with the same clarity I bring to everything else. The decision was wrong by most reasonable measures.

I made it anyway.

His name is Jordan.

---

He came to me in January on a referral from another chambers. Nineteen, ABH charge, one prior caution, circumstances more complicated than the CPS paperwork suggested. I read his file one evening at the kitchen table while Sebastian was on a conference call in the study and Mia argued on the phone with her best friend and Josh ate cereal at eleven o'clock at night because he was fifteen and that was apparently what fifteen looked like now.

Ordinary life, running on all cylinders around me.

I formed impressions of Jordan from the file and held them loosely.

He came into conference the following morning and sat down with the particular stillness that certain young men have, the ones who've learned to go quiet as a form of control, and looked at me with light eyes that were taking inventory in a way I recognised because I use it myself. He had a neck tattoo, a script I couldn't quite read from across the desk, and the build of someone who spent serious time in the gym, and he was wearing a designer tracksuit, and he smelled faintly of whatever those vapes smell of, something synthetic and sweet, and he looked at me in my court suit at my conference room table and a small smile crossed his face.

I let him look.

Then: 'You've read me wrong.'

He said nothing.

'Whoever you've decided I am, have another go.'

'Okay boss, whatever.'

---

I noticed immediately. I put it somewhere sensible and got on with the work. The CPS case was thinner than it looked and I took it apart over three weeks with the systematic pleasure I always take in that kind of thing. He came to two further conferences, answered my questions directly, watched me work with that quality of attention I was not examining too closely, and at the end of the second one: 'You actually enjoy this.'

'Yes.'

'Not just the winning.'

'The dismantling. The winning is the confirmation.'

He looked at me for a moment.

'Decent.' As if I'd answered something else entirely.

The charge was dropped six weeks before trial. I rang him with the outcome and he was quiet for a moment. 'Cheers darling.' Plain and direct.

'Don't thank me, the case was weak. I made sure the right people knew that.'

'Still, fucking great news.'

The pause that followed went a beat longer than professional courtesy required.

I said goodbye and put the phone down and sat in my office with the ordinary sounds of chambers around me and thought about nothing in particular for slightly longer than I should have.

The Bar Council's guidance on relationships with former clients is unambiguous. I have read it. I helped revise it four years ago.

I knew exactly which side of the line I was standing on.

---

He texted on a weekday towards the end of May, mid-afternoon. *Can I see you.*

I was still in wig and gown, just out of court, a sentencing that had run long. I was standing in the car park reading it on my phone with my bag over my shoulder.

*Not in my professional capacity*, I wrote back.

Three minutes.

*I know*, he wrote.

I looked at that for a moment. Then I texted him the name of a wine bar on Northgate Street and told him seven o'clock, put my phone in my bag, drove home, changed, told Sebastian I was meeting a colleague, and drove back into town.

I had dressed carefully. Dark pencil skirt, fitted, just below the knee. White silk blouse, properly tucked. Court heels. Stockings, sheer black with the seam up the back, the good ones I kept for difficult days.

I looked at myself in the mirror before I left.

Forty-four years old. The body that came with it, which I had stopped apologising for some time ago.

I went.

---

He was already there when I arrived, at a corner table, tracksuit gone, in black tight jeans and a fitted black t-shirt, and he looked up when I walked in and the look was slow and thorough and took in the skirt and the heels and everything else without any attempt to make it subtle. I sat down.

'You look well fit.'

Not the opening I had anticipated.

'Thank you.' Because what else does one say to that.

He smiled. 'Didn't think you'd actually come.'

'Well here I am.'

'Here you are. Proper brave, that is. Or proper something.'

We had two drinks. He was not what the tracksuit and the neck tattoo had suggested, or he was, but he was also quick and direct and he said things without decoration and he watched me talk the way he'd watched me work, and he didn't defer, and that was the thing that mattered, because deference was what I encountered all day and had been encountering for seventeen years and I was, I understood that evening with a clarity that was not entirely comfortable, very tired of it.

His eyes went to my wedding ring once, early in the first drink. A quick, assessor's glance, there and gone. I noticed it and said nothing. I told myself he was simply the type who clocked things, who catalogued rooms and people and objects as a matter of habit, who had grown up needing to know what was in front of him.

I was right about all of that.

He vaped outside between the wine bar and the car park. I stood beside him in my court heels on the pavement and watched him exhale and thought about what I was doing here and decided to stop thinking about it.

He caught me watching. 'Want a go?'

'No, gosh no thanks..'

'Didn't think so. Don't reckon you do anything you haven't decided to do first.'

'That's perceptive.'

'Yeah. I'm full of surprises.'

He put the vape in his jacket pocket and kissed me against the wall of the wine bar, his hand at my throat, not asking, and I kissed him back and the gap between his world and mine was not lost on me and I kissed him anyway, and longer than I'd planned to.

He was not afraid of me.

I had been waiting for that for quite some time.

Walking to the car park I stopped and he stopped and I kissed him again properly, my hand at the back of his neck, and he kissed me back and pressed me against a wall and got both hands on my waist and kissed me until I stopped thinking about anything useful.

He pulled back and looked at me.

'My car's on level three.'

'Yeah. All right then.'

---

The Range Rover was in a corner bay of the car park, three quarters empty at half eight on a Wednesday, the nearest car ten spaces away. I am a barrister. I notice exits and sight lines. I had noticed all of that before I said *my car's on level three*, which tells you everything you need to know about how deliberate this was.

We got in. I sat in the driver's seat and looked at the concrete wall and the strip lighting and thought: *here then.*

He leaned over and kissed me, slow this time, his hand at the back of my neck, and I kissed him back and put my hand on his thigh and moved it to where he was already hard against his jeans.

I pulled back.

'Look at me.'

He looked at me with those light eyes, face tight.

I undid his jeans, got him out, wrapped my hand around him. His head went back.

'Keep looking at me.'

'Fucking hell.' Not compliance, but he brought his head forward and looked at me, and I started moving my hand and watched his face and the watchfulness dropped away and what was underneath was open and unguarded and very young, the face he probably hadn't let show since before he'd learned it wasn't safe to.

After a while: 'Please for fuck sake. Come on.'

'Please what.'

'You know what. Stop fucking teasing.'

'Ask me properly Jordan.'

He looked at me. A beat. Then: 'Let me touch you. Want to know if you're wet.' Straightforward. No embarrassment. 'Bet you're absolutely soaking.'

I reached under my skirt and took my knickers off. Not gracefully, a pencil skirt and heels in a Range Rover is not a graceful situation, but I managed it, and I held them out.

He looked at them.

'Open your mouth.'

He opened his mouth and I placed them on his tongue and he closed his mouth around them.

'Both hands on your own legs. Touch me and I stop.'

He put his hands flat on his thighs.

I kept going.

---

I worked him slowly and watched him hold himself together with less and less to hold on to, and he sat with his hands exactly where I'd put them and made muffled noises and looked at me, and I looked at this nineteen-year-old with his neck tattoo and his gym body sitting in my car unable to speak and doing exactly what I told him, and felt powerful and certain.

I leaned across and kissed his neck, felt his pulse under my mouth, and he tilted his head and I bit him once and he breathed hard through his nose.

I changed my pace and looked at him.

He came hard, his hips pressing up, hands still flat on his thighs because I'd told him to keep them there, and I watched his face through all of it.

I kept my hand where it was until he'd finished.

He sat for a moment. Then he reached up and took my knickers from his mouth and looked at them, then at me. 'That was unreal.' He leaned across and kissed me, hard and direct, and his hand went under my skirt.

'Told you. Absolutely soaking.'

'Don't be crass.'

Not unkindly: 'You love it.' He kissed me again and got his fingers inside me and I stopped thinking about it and put my head back and let him.

He was good. Better than I'd expected. Attentive and learning and his mouth at my throat saying things: '*Love your tits*. Look at you. Bet your husband doesn't do this, does he.'

'Don't.'

'Why not.' He curled his fingers, and I stopped telling him what to do.

His fingers and his mouth at my neck and I came with my hand gripping his wrist and my face pressed into his shoulder and my skirt around my waist and I said something entirely undignified and meant every word of it.

We sat in the fogged car afterwards and said nothing.

He kissed me again, slower, his hand resting on my bare thigh above the stocking top. I kissed him back and felt the evening settle back around us.

'Saturday. How about your house...I want to fuck you in your bed.'

I looked at the windscreen.

'I'll think about it.'

'You've already thought about it.'

He was right and we both knew it. I retrieved my knickers and he sorted himself out and I started the engine and drove him to his car and he kissed me once more before he got out, thorough and unhurried, and then he was gone.

I drove home.

I told Sebastian the meeting had run on.

I lay in bed that night with Sebastian asleep beside me and thought about Saturday and did not sleep well and was not sorry about why.

---

He arrived at two on Saturday. Sebastian at golf, Mia at her grandmother's for the weekend, Josh at a friend's until six. The house mine in the way it rarely was.

I opened the door and he stood on my doorstep and looked at my house the way he'd looked at everything since that first conference, reading it, deciding. He had a fresh vape in his hand and he took one last pull and pocketed it and looked at me, and I saw something in his face I hadn't seen clearly before. Something behind the patience. Something that had not needed to show itself until now because until now I'd been in charge and it hadn't been relevant.

I understood that I had let something in. He wasn't threatening. But he wasn't what I had taken him for, either. Something that had never once deferred to me and was not about to start in my own hallway.

He had grown up in rooms where deference got you hurt. I understood that in the abstract. Standing in my own hallway in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, I was beginning to understand it rather more specifically.

He came in and I opened my mouth to say *living room* and he kissed me against the hallway wall, both hands at my face, and I stopped talking. He pressed into me and his hands moved to my hips, his mouth at mine. 'Been thinking about you all week. Thinking about getting you upstairs. Getting that skirt off you.'

'Have you.'

'Since January, if I'm honest. Sitting there in your office in that suit. Thinking about what you'd be like.' He kissed me again. 'Knew you'd be like this.'

'Like what.'

'Gagging for it, under all that.'

I should have said something sharp. I kissed him instead.

He pulled back and looked at me.

'Upstairs.' Not a question.

I turned and went upstairs and he followed.

---

I had dressed carefully that morning knowing he was coming at two.

Dark pencil skirt, a good inch shorter than I'd normally wear. Sheer black stockings, seamed. White silk blouse, thin enough to be interesting.

He came into the bedroom and looked at it, the ordered surfaces, the good furniture, the photographs on the dresser. Sebastian at a black tie dinner, the two of us. The children small and sunburned on a beach in Portugal. The family on the ski trip last February, all four of us in salopettes on a mountain in Val d'Isère, squinting into the sun. He looked at the photographs once and looked away without comment, which was worse somehow than if he'd said something. More settled. More certain of himself in this room.

Sebastian's Rolex was on the dresser beside the photographs. The anniversary present, worn for occasions and left there between them. I had thought that morning about putting it away. I had thought about other things instead.

He came close and kissed me, his hands going straight to my blouse buttons, and I let him open it and draw it off, and then he turned me round with that certainty that simply didn't ask, and unclasped my bra and took it off, and turned me back and looked at me.

'*Fuck me*.' Low and plain. 'Look at you.'

He put his hands on my breasts and I let him, and he kissed me again, his mouth at mine. 'Love your tits. Honestly. Proper perfect.' He kissed my throat, his mouth moving down, and I put my hand in his hair and his mouth at my breast: 'Knew they'd be like this.'

'You thought about this a lot.'

Without embarrassment: 'All the time. Every session. Sitting there in that office. You in that suit going on about the CPS and me thinking about getting you out of it.'

He stood back and his hands went to my skirt, unzipped it, let it fall. He stepped back and looked at me in just the stockings and heels and nothing else. 'There it is. *Fuck me*, Frances.'

My name in his mouth like that, rough and low, did something I wasn't expecting.

He walked me back to the bed by my shoulders and sat me down and stood looking at me and I understood then what that quality had always been. Not patience. Certainty. He had known from the first conference how this ended and had simply been waiting for me to arrive at the same place.

He leaned down and kissed me, slow and thorough, and I put my hands to his chest and kissed him back and his hands moved over me and I stopped thinking about anything practical.

'Lie back.'

---

I lay back.

He knelt and unslid my heels, dropping them to the carpet without a sound, before he moved up over me.

He undressed and knelt over me and kissed me and I pulled him down and kissed him back properly, and he kissed my throat and worked his way down and I stopped managing myself immediately.

His mouth on me and his hands and nothing composed about any of my reactions. My hand in his hair pressing him where I wanted him. His name, plainly, then less plainly. The headboard when I reached for it. The Saturday afternoon bright against the curtains.

He came up and kissed me and I kissed him back hard. 'Come on. Now.'

'Ask me nicely.'

'Jordan.'

'Nicely.'

'*Please*.'

'Please what. Say it properly. Want to hear you say it.'

I said it. Plainly and specifically and in terms I would not normally use and I felt him respond to it immediately, the sharp intake of breath. 'Yeah. That's it. That's you, that is.' He kissed me hard.

---

He sat up and reached down and unclipped one of my stockings and drew it slowly off my leg, watching my face.

He held it and looked at it and then at me.

The room was very quiet. Sebastian's photograph on the dresser. The children on their beach. The ski trip on the mountain, all four of us.

I didn't move.

He folded the stocking carefully and reached for both my wrists and drew them above my head and wrapped it around them in a figure of eight and tied them to the headboard rail. Not tight enough to hurt. Tight enough to mean it.

I pulled once to feel it.

It held.

He watched me test it and his face was completely calm and I understood properly then what I had let into my house. This room where Sebastian slept and the children came on Sunday mornings. I had let this in here, past every line I drew and every piece of guidance I helped write, and he was already reaching for the second stocking.

He unclipped it and folded it into a band and looked at me.

'Tell me to stop and I stop.'

'I know.'

'Say you don't want me to stop. Want to hear it.'

'I don't want you to stop.'

'No. You don't.' He glanced at the dresser, the photographs, and back at me. Something deliberate in it. 'Look at that. Frances the big fancy barrister with her hands tied to her own bed.' He kissed me once, hard. 'Filthy bitch.' The words were not cruel, they were something else, and I felt them somewhere deep.

He drew the folded stocking between my lips and knotted it at the back of my head, and I breathed through my nose and lay with my wrists above me and felt the full weight of it, my things, my room, my house, this boy with the neck tattoo who had walked into my conference room in January and read me correctly in the first five minutes.

He pressed his hand flat to my stomach and looked down at me.

Then he leaned across and turned the photograph on the dresser towards me. The ski trip. Sebastian and me and the children in the snow on the mountain, squinting into the bright Alpine sun, all four of us in our expensive salopettes, the perfect family photograph.

He made sure I was looking at it.

'Keep your eyes on that. Want you looking at that.'

He moved over me and into me and I arched hard against the ties and made a noise into the gag that had nothing composed about it and gripped the rail above my head.

He was not gentle. No reason to be, nothing asked for. He moved with a certainty that answered everything, every buttoned-up professional year, every careful decision, every *we'll see*, answered now in my own bedroom without negotiation. The headboard knocked against the wall. I pulled against the stocking and wrapped my legs around him and made noises I was not managing and the photograph was right there on the dresser, Sebastian and the children and the mountain and the clean Alpine light.

'Proper fit milf,' low against my ear. 'Look at you. Know your type. Needed this for years, haven't you, and he hasn't got a clue.' He moved harder and I pulled against the stocking. 'Done this before, with women like you. Know exactly what you want. Know exactly what you are.'