That was the problem. People liked a Manichean view of the world, a black-and-white perspective on even the most complex questions, to reinforce whatever prejudices they held. Jasminder prided herself on not being like that. She knew that she had acquired a reputation as a radical civil libertarian, but though there was an element of truth to this, she felt it didn’t do her justice. Her position was more subtle. Above all she knew that there was nothing to be gained by exaggerating the flaws she wanted to fix or by impugning the motives of people merely because they took a different point of view.
She hadn’t heard from her rescuer, Laurenz Hansen, and had decided that probably she never would. She had parked him in a mental pending tray but was beginning to think of moving him to ‘Out’. Nothing to be done about that, she told herself – there are other fish in the sea. But in fact her life was fish-less at the moment, since the end of a three-year relationship she’d had with a young barrister from one of the civil liberties chambers. He had been kind and was a good lawyer, but his political sympathies, superficially akin to hers, had not extended to his plans for their relationship. He’d have had Jasminder in a pinny, tending an Edwardian semi in a London suburb, taking their 2.4 children to school and watching the afternoon film on TV until he came home, ready for supper. It had never crossed her mind that anyone with such an antediluvian vision of a relationship was a serious prospect.
Since him, her weekends were spent working, seeing plays or films with her friend Emma, or occasionally going to dinner as the ‘single woman’ with friends who tried to set her up with men who were ‘available’ – which seemed to mean, in most cases, divorced.
She was at the charity’s office in Camden Town reading a deposition from a Somali client. The young woman had come to the UK eighteen months before, and was now facing deportation – something made more likely by her husband’s pending trial for terrorist offences. Yet Jasminder was convinced the woman was innocent of any illegal activities herself, and was busy listing arguments for her release from detention when her mobile phone rang.
Impatiently she took it out of her bag and hit the answer button. ‘Is that Jasminder?’ a voice asked. It sounded slightly foreign.
‘Yes. Who is it?’ Her mind was still on the brief she was composing.
‘You can call me the White Knight if you like.’
‘What?’ If this was a cold call from a marketing company it wasn’t an appealing one.
‘Sorry, it’s Laurenz Hansen. Do you remember me? The week before last. I hope you haven’t been having nightmares.’
‘Oh, hello. I hadn’t heard from you and…’
‘I’ve been out of town or I would have rung sooner. How are you?’
‘I’m fine, thanks. Busy, but fine.’ She wondered what he wanted.
‘I hope I’m not calling you at a bad time…’
‘No, no.’
‘I thought it might be nice to meet up. Maybe go somewhere for a drink?’
She looked a little guiltily at the brief she had been working on. Actually, there was no reason why she couldn’t finish it later this evening. So she said, ‘That would be nice. When were you thinking of?’
‘Could you manage tonight? Or perhaps another evening this week?’
‘Tonight would be fine. I’m working in Camden Town. Where are you?’
They met in a wine bar across the road from Camden Market. It turned out that they both liked to wander round the stalls there on Saturday mornings. Jasminder was wearing an ivory cameo brooch which she’d picked up at one of the second-hand jewellery stalls; he said he’d found a first edition of The Thirty-Nine Steps for a fiver.
Then he said, ‘I hope you don’t mind but I Googled you. I saw you were giving a talk at the university. I would have liked to come but I was away on business.’
‘Do you travel a lot?’ she asked, realising she didn’t even know what he did.
‘More than I’d like. Though soon I should have permanent residency in the UK, and then I hope I can do something that won’t have me on an aeroplane twice a week.’
‘What takes you away so often?’
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ he said with mock seriousness. He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘I’m a banker,’ he whispered.
Jasminder laughed. ‘Don’t worry – your secret’s safe with me. Do you think it’s that bad?’
‘Well,’ he said with a shrug, ‘I work for a private bank. We manage the money of wealthy clients, not the man in the street, so I don’t think anyone can blame the banking crisis on us. My job is keeping rich people rich – though most of them would say I’m supposed to make them even richer. I don’t think it does a lot of harm, but I wouldn’t say it was a noble calling.’
‘Did you always want to be a banker?’
Laurenz looked slightly startled. ‘Good heavens, no. I’m not sure anyone does. I wish I’d studied law. I envy you.’
‘The law has plenty of drawbacks too.’
‘Yes, I’m sure it does for lots of people. But what you do is truly important.’
The waiter came with the bottle of Beaujolais they’d ordered and filled their glasses. When he left, Jasminder said, ‘I don’t know about that. It’s not as if we can always see the effect of what we do. At least you know whether your clients are happy or not.’
‘But I’m not saving them from prison – or, worse, from what an asylum seeker gets if they’re sent back to the country they’re fleeing from.’
‘What brought you to the UK to begin with?’
Laurenz shrugged. ‘Work. The bank is based in Bermuda and that’s where I used to be. But we have a number of British clients and a London office to look after them. When a job came up here I was happy to volunteer, partly because my wife wanted to be in London.’
So, he was married. At least he was honest enough to tell her from the start. ‘Is she British, your wife?’ asked Jasminder, hoping she sounded interested.
He shook his head. ‘Oh, no. She’s Norwegian, like me. She’s back in Oslo now. She found out she didn’t like it here as much as she thought she would.’
‘That must be difficult. Do you get to see each other very often?’
‘No.’ He didn’t seem unhappy about this. ‘We’re only communicating these days through lawyers. Another three months and we won’t have to communicate at all. I may be penniless after that, but it’s a price worth paying. This is not what anyone would call an amicable separation.’
She hardly knew this man, but felt rather relieved to hear he was getting divorced. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to want to talk about it – unlike more than one of the dinner-party table mates she’d been partnered with, who seemed eager to talk about little else, usually with a mix of self-pity and bitter recrimination. But Laurenz carefully steered their talk away from his absent wife, and soon Jasminder found herself describing the particularly difficult case of the Somali woman whose husband had terrorist connections. Laurenz seemed both pleasingly knowledgeable about the issues and interested in the case. Their talk moved on to internet privacy and surveillance by government agencies – flatteringly, he had read an account of her talk at King’s online. For a banker, he seemed very progressive in his thinking, and more sceptical than Jasminder herself about the corrupting influences intelligence services were prone to.