“I save my castigating for the weekdays, Mags. Come find me Monday to Friday. My office hours are nine to five.” I laugh and he smiles. “Okay, tell me how you can defend someone who’s guilty of murder?”

“Well, for a start, I can’t.”

“What do you mean?”

I take another sip of my drink. “By law I cannot defend anyone in court who I know is guilty. They can be creative in that they can ask me hypothetically what they’d get if they actually did the crime, but if they say the words ‘I did it,’ then I couldn’t stand in court and claim that they were innocent.”

“I didn’t know that.”

Our meal arrives, and I sit back to allow the waiter to put the plates on the table. My vegetarian lasagne smells wonderful, and my stomach rumbles. This was a good idea. I already feel lighter and less stiff, and I’ll go back to my work with a clearer head.

When the waiter leaves, Laurie rips off a hank of his bread and dips it into his soup. He makes a throaty sound of pleasure when he takes a bite, and I shift awkwardly in my seat, feeling a tingle in my groin.

He finishes his mouthful and looks over at me. “What about if you hate the client? How do you defend someone you can’t stand? Someone who is quite simply a bad person. Has that happened?”

I fork up a bit of my food. “Of course, it has. Many times. I’ve been doing this for many years. I’ve had a lot of success in my career, and I’ve fought cases where there have been terrible miscarriages of justice. I’ve kept innocent people out of prison. But equally, I have probably kept a lot of guilty people out of there too.”

“How do you square that with your conscience?”

I smile. “I find I don’t have much of that. Fortunately.” His expression is engaged and not at all judgemental, and so I elaborate. “I know the prosecution is seen to be more glamorous. They’re putting away murderers and rapists so the general public are safe. They are superheroes. However, to have a balanced system of justice we must have someone who’s prepared to defend these people and ensure that they get a fair trial. Without a defence, there can be no justice.”

“Do you win a lot?”

“I’ve won a lot, but I’ve also lost a fair few.”

“Do you get upset?”

“At the start of my career maybe. Not so much now. I dislike losing, but it doesn’t go any deeper. I can’t afford to be emotionally invested in clients. It might make me miss something. I have to be cool and collected and accept the fact that most criminal cases end up in a conviction. It’s the nature of the beast.”