She’d packed only a capsule wardrobe, confident that she’d be spending a good deal of her time in New York naked. The bulk of her luggage was a large faux-fur coat – it wouldn’t do to die of hypothermia on the streets of Manhattan in March – and a selection of shoes. There were three dresses, each variations on a basic theme of Dress to Kill. Plan A, for the subtle, sophisticated approach, was a pewter-grey Stella McCartney with a jewelled neckline, which showed off her legs and had the added advantage of making her look young. Plan B was a fitted black knee-length sheath by Jasper Conran, with transparent lace across the upper chest and the shoulders, more obviously seductive. And she was ready for emergencies with Plan C, a tiny little black Marchesa number, the lightest, sheerest silk, the tiniest straps, flaring gently around the knees. All it needed was the diamond earrings and the Azzedine Alaia shoes and for Rivelli to use his imagination – not that it left much to that.

Which one to wear? It was the Whitney, not a nightclub, and therefore good taste seemed to dicate A or, at a pinch, B. But then again, if she failed tonight, she could kiss her future goodbye. It would be back to London, and the long uphill slog to find another boyfriend, starting at the bottom again, ten years older, less able to pick and choose.

She stepped into the Marchesa, jabbed in the diamond earrings, a dab of Envy behind each, and she was ready to hail a cab. She’d thought of calling the office to arrange a car – but that might be pushing it.

She had not thought of walking. In Azzedine Alaias?

Middle Temple Hall is the Holy of Holies of the legal profession, the inner sanctum, the place that most perfectly expresses the mixture of tradition, conservatism, fair-mindedness and fogeyism that makes up life at the bar. When Christine first stepped into that four-hundred-year-old, wood-panelled interior, the walls lined with shields, the elaborately vaulted ceiling leading the eye up to the stained-glass windows, she felt simultaneously humbled and hysterical. Humbled that she, a law student in her early twenties whose idea of a posh night out was Pizza Express, could possibly have got to such a place on her own merits. Hysterical because – well, because it was all so fake, like a film set, everyone pretending that there was nothing odd about a profession in which men still wore wigs, in which sitting down to oxtail soup in the room where Twelfth Night was first performed was the most natural thing in the world.