Speaking for Myself by Cherie Blair

thought,
I’ve put myself out for him, so he can bloody well lump it.
    We arrived at the same time. It wasn’t a great start, admittedly, but at least I had the moral advantage. And he paid for the taxi.
    I don’t know now what I’d been expecting, but the house wasn’t remotely grand. I knew a bit of the backstory already, and it was really tragic. When Tony was only ten, his father had a stroke. He’d been a lecturer in law at Durham University and a part-time barrister in Newcastle. He’d been planning on going into full-time practice as a barrister when it happened, with a view to becoming a Tory member of Parliament (MP). Tony’s mother, Hazel, had died of throat cancer the previous year, just two weeks before Tony left university. His parents had always talked about moving to Shincliffe village and had finally found this house, which they really liked. But Tony’s mum had died before they could move in, so it was all very sad.
    Only a few hours before, I had been in Ferndale Road, and now I was here. I surprised myself at how easy it was to move from one world to the other.
    All five of us at the house were “legal”: Leo, Tony’s father; his brother, Bill, who had a commercial practice in the Middle Temple; Tony and I; and Sarah, who was then at Oxford reading law, though not entirely happy with it, as I soon found out. Looking at the lineup of Blairs in the kitchen, I was surprised at how tall Tony was in comparison with the others. He was a good six feet, while his father and brother were almost six inches shorter, as was Sarah.
    She and I hit it off immediately. Leo turned out to be fairly right-wing, so sometimes he would come out with something completely outrageous. I would inevitably rise to the bait, then Sarah would join in, the pair of us taking the feminist stance. But it wasn’t just women versus men. I never forgot that Tony was the competition, and I was trying to counteract the notion that anyone who wasn’t from public school and Oxbridge didn’t cut the mustard.
    I can’t imagine what his family made of this rather odd girl who, having stunk the kitchen out with the smell of cheap disinfectant, proceeded to harangue their father about why women are as good as men, while their sister cheered from the sidelines. I could certainly hold my own. My mum, having trained at RADA, had always spoken well herself, which had served to temper the Scouse that was all around us — though no one could doubt that I was a northern lass. In addition, the nuns had seen to it that we had elocution lessons. Those things were important if you were going to get on in life.
    The moment Tony and I were back in chambers, Derry started a big case. Unusually for him, it was a criminal case concerning a huge scandal in Singapore. Derry was representing the Singapore government, which was trying to extradite a number of British businessmen to stand trial for fraud. The two key individuals involved were Jim Slater, the main protagonist, represented by a famous criminal barrister, and Dick Tarling, managing director of Slater Walker’s Singapore subsidiary, represented by Michael Burton, fellow tenant of 2 Crown Office Row. The case was being heard at Horseferry Road Magistrates Court in central London, and Tony and I went along. Our job was to see that Derry had what he needed, passing him the necessary papers, taking notes, and doing whatever else was required. The court was close to the Tate Gallery, so every lunchtime Tony and I would go to the museum, and it was then that he really began to open up.
    He talked to me about his mother, whom he missed tremendously. Also about religion, which was obviously very important to him. Although the Blairs were not a churchgoing family, the two boys had been sent to the Chorister School, attached to Durham Cathedral. He told me that he had been confirmed during his time at Oxford. His father wasn’t a believer, however, perhaps explaining why Tony hadn’t been confirmed