Dear Marco (if I may), I believe you know who I am. I hope you will forgive this intrusion, but I am trying to settle a matter of great importance concerning the future: my own but also that of our mutual friend Julia Gault, and perhaps yourself too. As you know, Julia and I have been together for several years and have been planning to get married after I finish my doctorate. I don’t need to tell you that Julia is enormously attracted to you and has possibly fallen a little in love with you. Obviously this has been painful for me to discover. It is painful to acknowledge too. But I accept that these things happen, and I ask you to believe that my greatest concern here is for Julia’s happiness, not my own. I want only what is best for her, and since she is in a state of some confusion about her own feelings at the moment, I feel I should try to bring some clarity to the situation myself. To that end I would like to ask you to give me an hour or so of your time. I realize I have no right to question you about your “intentions,” and that anyway Julia is free to do as she pleases, regardless of what those intentions may be. But it would be enormously helpful to me to meet you in person, and sound you out on this delicate matter. I assure you I bear you no hostility: quite the reverse. I have long admired your work in television, and I am more than prepared to accept Julia’s high opinion of you, expressed to me in a long and very honest conversation we had yesterday, in which she described you as an exceptional human being: “exceptionally decent as well as exceptionally talented.” I do hope this request will not sound too strange to you, and that you will consider granting it. I would be greatly honoured. Yours, Gerald Woolley.

“That’s quite a letter,” I said.

“I know. Even better than I remembered! ‘Exceptionally decent as well as exceptionally talented.’ How extremely helpful is that?”

I was referring to the letter’s honesty and candor, not its practical utility, but I let that pass.

“I mean, I know victims sometimes send weirdly affectionate messages to their attackers,” Marco continued. “The Gomeishi case fell apart because of that. But this is her talking to a third party, not me. And look at the date. That’s after the Belfast program was aired, meaning after that night in the hotel. ‘Exceptionally decent’— i.e., not some fucking caveman. You can imagine how relieved I was to find this!”