The Break-Up Clause by Niamh Hargan
Chapter Eleven
‘So, you’re Olivia,’ Fia says, after briefly introducing both herself and Benjamin. She injects as much brightness into her voice as she can manage, looking across the conference room table at her new client.
The space is designed so that the visiting party has a view of Manhattan – sunshine glinting off skyscrapers again today – plus a vast bookcase full of hardbound law reports. Fia sincerely thinks these might be literal props, housing nothing but blank pages, but she has to admit they do look the part. Conversely, from the lawyer’s vantage point, there is little to be seen in this room but pristine white walls, glass, and the client.
Olivia Chestnut has blonde and brown hair, trailing down her back in artful waves, and her outfit seems to involve a lot of component parts, all various shades of muted. Add in the designer handbag, and Fia’s first impression is of a very particular kind of Manhattan 40-year-old: the sort of woman who could recommend, loudly, a good serum and, quietly, a good surgeon.
‘Ah-liv-i-a,’ comes the reply. ‘With an “a”. And a “y”. A-L-Y-V-I-A.’
‘… Alyvia,’ Fia repeats, uncertainly. She can’t imagine it’s anything but obvious to everyone present that this sounds exactly the same as her prior attempt. Nonetheless, ‘Alyvia’ smiles her approval.
‘Great!’ Fia continues. She pours from the jug of iced water in the centre of the table, distributing three full glasses.
‘Is this alkaline water?’ Alyvia asks, her brow furrowing as she stares down at her glass.
Fia halts. Alkaline water sounds suspiciously like the sort of thing that rich people might try to pay for in America but that everyone gets accidentally in Ireland, at no extra charge – like grass-fed beef or a sense of community.
‘Uh, I’m not sure,’ she replies, and she watches Alyvia gingerly take a sip. When she swallows, her lips pucker slightly as though she’s sucking on a lemon.
Fia elects to ignore it. ‘So, I understand you’re in the process of separating from your husband,’ she says instead.
Incidentally, she always starts exactly here, when it comes to this conversation. Many people don’t. An expression of sympathy, of regret, seems to trip off the tongue. Fia knows better, though. A divorce is often a sad, sorry thing, but not always.
‘Teddy said you were Irish!’ Alyvia exclaims then, in lieu of a proper answer. Her expression brightens. ‘What a darling he is, eh? He’s really helped me out so much already. Anyway, I love Irish people. Have you been at the firm for long?’
‘Eight years,’ Fia replies, and beside her, Benjamin mumbles something – some indistinct grievance or criticism – under his breath. She shoots a sidelong glance his way, her irritation just barely concealed, then does her best to get on with ignoring him.
‘I suppose you’re like me now then, eh?’ Alyvia continues, obliviously. ‘A proper New Yorker.’
The fact that Fia hasn’t actually spent all of the past eight years in Manhattan feels pretty tangential to the exchange Alyvia evidently wants to have here.
‘How long have you been in the US?’ Fia duly enquires. It’s the call-and-response of immigrants everywhere – or, as she suspects Alyvia might say, of expats. Given her slightly mangled twang – still mostly English, but with a little unmistakable American cadence in the mix – Fia would guess that the other woman has been on this side of the pond for a while. As it turns out, she’s right on the money.
‘Nearly fifteen years,’ Alyvia says. ‘Usual story. Came over from London for work, stayed for love. Much good it’s done me.’
‘Mmm,’ Fia murmurs sympathetically. Then, she seizes the opportunity to get things back on track. ‘On that note, Mr Zelnick … uh, Teddy … he mentioned that your husband has already served you with a divorce summons. Do you have that with you?’
Alyvia appears, in fact, to have come armed with a small forest’s worth of paper. She plucks a document from the top of her pile, handing it over. Fia flips through the pages expertly. She knows enough, by now, to be able to get to the good bits fast. When Benjamin leans in for a look too, the sudden proximity makes her jump. She just about restrains a scowl, passing the document across for his perusal, turning her own attention back to Alyvia.
‘So, this says your husband is alleging adultery on your part,’ she says, not beating around the bush. ‘Is that true? If it is, that’s fine – we can deal with it. You just need to tell me.’
‘Pfft,’ Alyvia mutters, with a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘He was always jealous. As if I can help it that people are, like, sometimes a bit obsessed with me!’ She lets out a conspiratorial little laugh. ‘Anyway. Jonathan has some nerve claiming I committed adultery when he’s the one who’s got a fancy woman on the go already.’
Fia raises an eyebrow, making a quick note on the yellow legal pad in front of her. ‘Okay, so, we’ll contest that. And I presume you want to contest his application for full custody of your son?’
‘You’re fucking right I do!’ Alyvia fires back, before she seems to catch herself. ‘Sorry. I’m sorry for swearing. But, yes, I do. My son will be staying with me.’
Fia’s jotting that down, too, when Alyvia speaks again. Her voice has returned to its normal volume, but the slightly affected, sing-song inflection she arrived with seems suddenly to be gone. In the glint in her eye, the steadiness of her gaze, Fia can see the steel in this woman now.
‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ she continues, ‘when this hits the press, the story will not be that I cheated on Jonathan. If it’s the last thing I do, the story will be him – how he’s sabotaged me, how he’s tried to ruin my business, kill my career …’
Fia frowns, struggling to follow. She’s handled divorces for some of ZOLA’s well-known corporate clients before. But such clients tend to be Forbes-magazine famous. Their business deals will get a mention in there, and – in due course – perhaps their deaths. Their divorces, though? Not so much. And that’s normally exactly how they like it. By contrast, Alyvia seems almost enthused to arrive at the point of airing her dirty laundry in public – or, rather, Jonathan’s.
‘Sorry, let’s just … rewind a bit here,’ Fia says. ‘What is it that you do exactly?’
‘Well, gosh! I suppose I’m a jack of all trades, you might say. I’m a content creator – and curator, really. I’m a luxury brand ambassador, and I work a lot with companies on their consumer outreach and so on. But it’s all very much passion driven. I’ve got quite a large following across various different platforms and verticals.’
It takes Fia a moment to process this, piece it all together. She squints across the table. ‘Are you an … influencer?’
The descriptor seems to leave a slightly sour taste in Alyvia’s mouth. ‘I suppose you might say that.’
‘What do you do, Instagram, or …?’
‘Mostly Instagram, yeah. BabyGAndMe is the account, if you’ve heard of it?’
Fia definitely hasn’t heard of it, and she conveys this via a sheepish smile. ‘Do you mind if I just …’ She gestures at her iPhone, currently resting face down on the table. ‘Just to get an idea, you know? Might be the quickest thing.’
This is true, but also, she finds she’s just plain intrigued. Once she pulls up the account, the first thing she notices is that it has almost three million followers. She tries to keep her face impassive and professional as she takes in that number – perhaps, then, the notion of press interest is not so out of the question as she’d thought. Rapidly, this case feels like it is expanding, stretching into new and unfamiliar territory.
Below, on the Instagram grid, Fia scans dozens upon dozens of photographs of a little boy: him wearing burgundy braces and a bow tie, him atop a wooden rocking horse, him grinning over a cupcake mixing bowl. Every twentieth post or so is a photograph of Alyvia alone or perhaps a meal or a landscape. But mostly, it seems to be the kid. He looks about 10 or 11 now, by Fia’s estimation, but as she scrolls back through time, she can see his entire childhood, or some version of it, before her eyes.
‘So, this is … BabyG?’ she asks, sliding the phone towards Benjamin. It’s less through any genuine desire to involve him in proceedings and more on account of the need to keep up an appearance of collegiality. Not to mention the need to keep him out of her personal space.
‘That’s my Gus, yeah,’ Alyvia replies fondly. ‘And’ – she hands over all her other paperwork – ‘this is really why I’m here.’
Again, Fia thumbs through the pages. On them are screenshots of some of the photographs she’s just seen, all re-posted by another user this time – Silverfish29. Below each re-post, Alyvia has highlighted the accompanying captions in yellow marker:
Guess what she has to do to make the kid keep taking these pics
Lol this isn’t even ur real house
Ask Alyvia what happened litrally five minutes before this though
What you see isn’t always the truth remember that
Hahahaha everyone can tell Gus fucking hates doing this
Fia gets the gist. Whoever is behind this account, she wouldn’t give them any major points for spelling or eloquence, but for sheer dogged consistency, they cannot be faulted. Again, she passes the sheets Benjamin’s way before turning back to Alyvia.
‘That’s my husband,’ the other woman says, a slight waver in her voice that she swiftly moves to correct. ‘Or my soon-to-be ex-husband, I should say. Silverfish29 and Jonathan Chestnut are one and the same.’
Huh. Fia couldn’t say she’d seen that one coming.
‘I can’t have this,’ Alyvia continues intently. ‘I mean, it’s just plain defamation of character, isn’t it? And it’s harming my brand. I’ve had emails about it from sponsors – some companies have already started using me less. For a while it was just comments under my posts – I could delete those. That’s when the separate account popped up. And enough people seem know about it now that I still have to deal with the fallout on my feed, too. I’ve got people, like, debating in my comments whether I’m an unfit mother. Thousands of people. Every day. It’s sort of ironic, really, because I’ve never had as much engagement and yet so little actual work coming in.’
Her outrage seems to be contagious, because – as Fia absorbs this new information – she begins to feel more than a little exercised herself. For all Alyvia’s … quirks, it seems undeniable that she has good reason to be aggrieved here.
‘Well, we can absolutely make sure the court factors that into any assessment of alimony and child support,’ Fia says, scribbling frantically on her notepad. ‘I mean, this is just … it’s ridiculous! If Jonathan is deliberately reducing your capacity to earn a living and provide for your child, believe me, we’ll be making sure he pays for that. Literally.’
Alyvia nods enthusiastically, and Fia senses herself well and truly on a roll now, a familiar sort of energy ramping up inside her. Divorce cases don’t represent the bulk of her practice or anything close to it, but on the occasions they come up, she knows that Celia Hannity’s assessment of her is probably an accurate one. She knows that she is tenacious, unyielding – propelled by some swirl of emotion that she absolutely never encounters when drafting a will or administering an estate. Perhaps that is just the nature of a divorce – inherently more adversarial than her other work. Might Fia also have a particular capacity for empathy in this domain? Might she have a personal well of resentment, all ready to tap into on behalf of her clients?
It’s possible. She can acknowledge, if only to herself, that it’s possible.
‘And we’ll cite “cruel and inhuman treatment” as our grounds for divorce,’ she continues now. ‘Not adultery. It’s like you said. He doesn’t get to control the narrative here.’
Alyvia murmurs her approval, and Fia again scrawls on her legal pad, this time with the pleasing sense of a plan coming together.
Then, into the silence, suddenly a third voice inserts itself into the mix. ‘How do you know it’s your ex?’ Benjamin asks calmly. He’s still scanning the pages of screenshots, but soon looks up. ‘Behind these posts. How do you know it’s him? Has he admitted it?’
Fia turns to stare daggers at him, any effort to maintain the appearance of united front suddenly forgotten. His input is about as unexpected and about as unwelcome as an objection at a wedding.
Alyvia, too, looks fairly taken aback. ‘Well, obviously he doesn’t use his name when he’s trolling me,’ she replies, with all the emphasis of the recently insulted. ‘And no, he hasn’t told me he’s doing it. But I know.’
‘Has he told you he doesn’t want Gus featured on your page?’ Benjamin continues.
‘He had no bloody problem with it when we were still together, that’s for sure!’ Alyvia snaps. ‘When he was seeing half the income. Who d’you think was taking most of those pictures? The fucking ringlights don’t set themselves up, I can tell you that!’ This time, she does not apologize for swearing. Instead, she lets out a sour laugh. ‘These past six months, with Jonathan and me … it’s been brutal – in more ways than you could possibly imagine. Who else would want to hurt me like this? Plus, who else would even know th—’
She cuts herself off, and somehow the silence that follows feels very loud indeed. Fia is attempting to formulate a response – something to smooth things over, right this ship – when again (again) Benjamin takes it upon himself to chip in.
‘The thing is, Alyvia, for something to be defamatory – in the legal sense, I mean – it doesn’t just have to be unflattering.’ Benjamin gestures with the paperwork in his hand. ‘Obviously we’ve, uh, cleared that hurdle with these statements. It has to be unflattering and untrue. Is this stuff untrue?’
It’s not accusatory, the way he asks the question. His tone remains perfectly neutral, in fact. And, if it occurs to Fia that this is a bit of a turn-up for the books, for Benjamin to prove so measured in this scenario …
If there is some tiny portion of her that can’t help but be impressed …
Well, she squashes that quickly. Their client, more importantly, is not one bit impressed. She looks completely aghast.
‘Oh my gosh! Gussy loves our shoots! Are there times when he’s a bit tired or a bit grumpy or whatever? Well, yes. I mean, he’s 11 years old. Does he like some products better than others? Of course he does. But I incorporate that into my honest reviews! All this bullshit from Jonathan is just bullying – and it’s misogyny, frankly – and I don’t see why I should have to stand for it.’
Benjamin cocks his head. ‘Well, I—’
Fia scrambles to intercept. ‘You shouldn’t have to stand for it,’ she says firmly, with another deadly glare in Benjamin’s direction. ‘And you won’t have to. That’s what we’re here for.’
Somewhat mollified, Alyvia takes a large sip from her water, its pH levels evidently forgotten by this stage. When she sets the glass back down, it meets the table with an audible clink, and she looks between Fia and Benjamin for a moment.
‘Are you guys married?’ she asks then. Fia senses her entire body seize, before Alyvia lets out a titter of laughter. ‘Not to each other, obviously!’
That’s better, but not by much. Still, Fia just can’t quite seem to formulate a response, and this time it’s actually a bit of a relief to hear Benjamin piping up beside her. He answers in the negative for them both.
It’s another potential black mark in their personnel files: misrepresenting themselves to clients. Another big reason – if one were needed – to ensure the truth of their relationship never leaks.
Across the desk, Alyvia just nods. ‘Good,’ she replies, a world of disenchantment in that one gesture, that one word. ‘Don’t ever fucking get married.’