He was rather awkwardly handing me a piece of kitchen towel, a slightly alarmed look in his eye. ‘Oh. Thanks.’ I duly wrapped it.

‘Well, on a very prosaic level, yes. Some sort of penal institution, or rehabilitation. But it’s not just about it being on an individual basis, but on a social one, too,’ he said irritably, understandably baulking at condensing his huge, learned field of study into one sentence.

‘Yes, I see. More than I appear to, actually, because I myself write detective novels. But although I do a lot of research, I’m never a hundred per cent sure I get my facts right. To be honest, Frankie – she’s my editor – isn’t always sure either. But we usually decide – if there’s some really obscure point of law we’re not sure about – that if we don’t know, and we’ve been doing it for yonks, the chances are our readership won’t either. I’m pretty lowbrow, by the way. So we just sort of fudge it. But you would know implicitly, I imagine?’

He was handing me a plaster now. No way was he fixing it round crazy lady’s finger.

‘One would hope,’ he said rather pompously.

‘So how long, would you say, a case of unpremeditated manslaughter would get?’

‘Sorry?’

‘How long would someone get for that?’

‘Manslaughter, by definition, is unpremeditated.’

‘Yes. Of course it is.’

‘And it entirely depends on the circumstances.’

I licked my very dry lips. ‘Suppose they were … very favourable. To the woman. I mean, the criminal. Or victim. No, criminal, obviously. Manslaughter person. Who by mistake … well, no, not mistake,’ I struggled. Regrouped. ‘Who by dint of her appalling circumstances failed to – you know – alert the police, to a dying body. Until it was dead. It’s for my book, obviously,’ I added quickly, but I was sweating. Could feel the dampness everywhere. Running down my back. ‘The one I’m doing at the moment. It’s about a woman married to a horrid man.’

He smiled. ‘That really is a how-long-is-a-piece-of-string sort of question,’ he said, as I smoothed the plaster firmly round my finger, avoiding his eye. ‘It would totally depend on the circumstances. The extent of the duress, the physical or mental cruelty; but as you probably know, at least two women recently, who very definitely murdered their husbands, one with a hammer and one with a knife, were allowed to walk free. So for the purposes of your plot line, I’d say someone who committed manslaughter by failing to provide another person with access to medical assistance, as long as his wounds had not been inflicted by her, could credibly be acquitted.’ He must have seen the relief flood my face, some beatific light fill my eyes. ‘For the purposes of fiction,’ he added, nervously. He was looking at me carefully.