‘Oh, you poor thing.’

Gotcha.

‘Please don’t tell anyone. I don’t want my mother to find out. She’d go bloody mad.’

‘Doesn’t she approve?’

‘She’s always on about grandchildren. She’d want me to have it.’

‘That’s ridiculous, darling,’ said Victoria, filing the information away. ‘You have your career to think about.’

Christine had some good news. Her application to become a Queen’s Counsel had been well received by the selection panel, and she had been invited for interview. The date was perfect: by that time she would have steered Rivelli v Rivelli to its rightful conclusion, and would be, without doubt, one of the top three family barristers at the English Bar. They could not turn her down. If they had called her for interview, then all the professional conduct checks had gone through without a hitch, references had been given and found satisfactory, and her application had gone to the panel of the good and the great, starting with the Lord Chief Justice and working down from there. The first big hurdle was past. Nothing could go wrong now. All she had to do was keep her nose clean, and win the Rivelli case.

The papers were already referring to it as the biggest divorce of the year. It had all the makings of classic Christine Fairbrother: an erring husband who looked like a love rat, and a wronged wife, quietly dignified in her Surrey château, nursing her disabled son. Oh, the newspaper readers would be quick to judge that one – but they reckoned without Christine. By the time she had finished, Rivelli would seem like a repentant philanderer, willing to admit his mistakes but driven to it by a cold, grasping wife who used their son as a pawn in her game of emotional and financial blackmail. Her insane demands for money that her husband did not have would be pilloried as the last attempt of a desperate woman to maintain a disgustingly lavish lifestyle that she had never earned. Too greedy to accept Rivelli’s generous offer, she would end up with nothing.

‘You’re absolutely confident of the result,’ said John Ferguson as they had one last meeting to discuss tactics.

‘Of course. I know what I’m doing.’

‘She’s got a lot of sympathy on her side.’

‘And we have truth on ours, in the form of a sworn affidavit. She’s grasping after money which isn’t there.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

‘Why? Have you suddenly got cold feet, John?’

Ferguson took off his glasses, rubbed his tired eyes. ‘No. I’m just exhausted. Ignore me. I’ve signed him off, and now it’s over to you. If you can make the judge feel sorry for Massimo Rivelli, then you are officially a genius.’

‘You don’t like him, do you?’

John scowled. ‘My personal feelings about my clients never influence my professional judgement.’

Was he trying to tell her something?