Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan

KATE
2 December 2016
One
My wig slumps on my desk where I have tossed it. A beached jellyfish. Out
of court, I am careless with this crucial part of my wardrobe, showing it the
opposite of what it should command: respect. Handmade from horsehair
and worth nearly six hundred pounds, I want it to accrue the gravitas I
sometimes fear I lack. For the hairline to yellow with perspiration, the tight,
cream curls to relax. Nineteen years since being called to the Bar, my wig is
still that of a conscientious new girl – not a barrister who has inherited it
from her, or more usually his, father. That’s the sort of wig I want: one
dulled with the patina of tradition, entitlement and age.
I kick off my shoes: black patent courts with gold braid on the front,
shoes for a Regency fop; for Parliament’s Black Rod; or a female barrister
who delights in the history, the rigmarole, the sheer ridiculousness of it all.
Expensive shoes are important. Chatting with fellow counsel or clients,
with ushers and police, we all look down from time to time so as not to
appear confrontational. Anyone who glances at my shoes sees someone
who understands this quirk of human psychology and who takes herself
seriously. They see a woman who dresses as if she believes she will win.
I like to look the part, you see. To do things properly. Female barristers
can wear a collarette: a scrap of cotton and lace that acts like a bib – a false
front that goes just around the neck – and that costs around thirty pounds.
Or they can dress as I do: a white collarless tunic with a collar attached by
collar studs to the front and back. Cuff links. A black wool jacket and skirt
or trousers; and – depending on their success and seniority – a black wool
or wool and silk gown.
I’m not wearing all of that now. I have shed part of my disguise in the
robing room of the Bailey. Robes off. Collar and cuffs undone; my medium-

length blonde hair – tied back in a ponytail in court – released from its
bobble; just a little mussed up.
I am more feminine, rid of my garb. With my wig on and my heavy-

rimmed glasses, I know I look asexual. Certainly not attractive – though
you may note my cheekbones: two sharp blades that emerged in my
twenties and have hardened and sharpened, as I have hardened and
sharpened, over the years.
I am more myself without the wig. More me. The me I am at heart, not
the me I present to the court or any previous incarnations of my personality.
This is me: Kate Woodcroft, QC; criminal barrister; member of the Inner
Temple; a highly experienced specialist in prosecuting sexual crimes. Forty-

two years old; divorced, single, childless. I rest my head in my hands for a
moment and let a breath ease out of me in one long flow, willing myself just
to give up for a minute. It’s no good. I can’t relax. I’ve a small patch of
eczema on my wrist and I smear E45 cream there, resisting the desire to
scratch it. To scratch at my dissatisfaction with life.
Instead, I look up at the high ceilings of my chambers. A set of rooms in
an oasis of calm in the very heart of London. Eighteenth-century, with
ornate cornicing, gold leaf around the ceiling rose and a view – through the
towering sash windows – of Inner Temple’s courtyard and the round
twelfth-century Temple Church.
This is my world. Archaic, anachronistic, privileged, exclusive.
Everything I should – and normally would – profess to hate. And yet I love
it. I love it because all this – this nest of buildings at the edge of the City,
tucked off the Strand and flowing down towards the river; the pomp and the
hierarchy; the status, history and tradition – is something I once never knew
existed; and to which I never thought I could aspire. All of this shows how
far I have come.
It’s the reason that, if I’m not with my colleagues, I slip a hot chocolate –
with extra sachets of sugar – to the girl hunched in her sleeping bag in a
doorway on the Strand whenever I grab a cappuccino. Most people won’t
have noticed her. The homeless are good at being invisible or we are good
at making them so: averting our eyes from their khaki sleeping bags; their
grey faces and matted hair; their bodies bundled in oversized jumpers and

Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan