Part Fourteen of The Unseen Sea

With the flickering of the cottage’s log fire behind her, Maria looks in on her father, snoozing on his bed after their spat. The stone wall – adjacent to the double bed and covered in red hessian – has four pictures on it, arranged in a line. She’s never asked him about them, but they appear to be a time sequence from the present back to her childhood.

The most recent depicts her on the day she took the ‘silk’ route upward from being a mere barrister. In the photo, the new QC stands proud and severe, her tightly-bound hair and burnt-ochre horn-rimmed glasses as polished as the performances that got her noticed, and shortly after, invited to the Queen’s Council. In the photo, the silk court-robes flow off her shoulder and wrap the lawyer in cascading folds, concealing the shapely figure beneath. Within…