Clare Maurice is a delight to talk to: ‘We’ve been very busy and wondering when the summer lull will come over us. It tends to be coming up now – in the old days there was no email or anything so [clients would] sit and plot at home, and you wouldn’t hear from them until they got home. Now they’re sitting in their deckchairs!’
Maurice says her work has come from three different streams. First, a number of
clients are worried about their immigration status following Brexit. ‘We’re shadow-boxing a bit. We’ve had more clarity recently: it looks as though people will be all right.’ There’s also a pervasive concern about politics. ‘[Clients say], “Oh my God, we’re going to have a Corbyn government!”’
And the third stream? ‘It’s just this general apprehension around the world. In families there’ll always be spats: the old lion is dying and the young lions are preparing themselves.’ But Maurice points to activities in Saudi Arabia as a particular concern – and, of course, the perennial question of Brexit. ‘It’s so uncertain,’ she says. ‘But I’m not sure Germany is better, in France Macron hasn’t delivered, and Trump – no one knows what to think about that!’
And yet this is a happy practitioner: ‘We’re busy, we’re so busy!’ she says.