“So, through these letters our attacker was coming into a different sort of focus. He was no longer an evil stranger who had appeared from nowhere to try and destroy us, he was a person, a boy really, who’d been exploited and forced into crime at a very young age. He might have had the courage to try and resist his handlers, as he calls them, and to get on with his schooling, but for the threats made to his vulnerable mother. She was even beaten in front of him if he didn’t agree to do as they wanted.”

She took a breath, and sipped from the glass of water in front of her. “I believe,” she continued, “that were it not for the man who exerted the most malevolent power over him that Archie would have gained the education he needed, and wanted. You’ve heard about his potential and willingness to learn, so who knows what he could have achieved with the right opportunities. He might even have found a way to get himself and his mother out of the negative environment they were in.

“Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. He remained trapped in the grip of a man from whom he had to defend himself and his mother in any way he could. It was to try and keep his mother from harm that he carried out the trafficking that was forced on him, whether it was drugs, weapons, or mobile phones. Then one day he was ordered to break into a house to steal an attaché case believed to be inside. That house was—is—mine and my daughter’s. My granddaughter also lives with us. When he broke in Archie was unable to find the case and that was when he was instructed to burn the place down.”

She needed to give herself a moment now, for she wasn’t really connecting with the rest of the courtroom any longer, only with what she was saying, and possibly with Archie.

“Before I say any more about the arson,” she continued, “I want to tell you about the way Archie’s letters seemed to unlock something inside me. Until I read them my psychological recovery hadn’t been going well. I was unable to relate fully to my family, or to anyone else. I had difficulty finding words, so for the most part I stopped trying. I understood that I was suffering the after-effects of trauma, but even so I remained shut down. I couldn’t see the point of trying to release myself when I looked the way I did. I was no longer me on the outside, and every time I looked in the mirror I felt sure I could never be the same on the inside either.