It was half past eight. Proper dinner time. Christine poured herself a glass of wine – just one, albeit a large one. She didn’t want to end up like Linda, her former pupil mistress, still slogging away at the rougher end of the family bar while her protégée had long since leapfrogged her. Married and divorced young and childless, never got over it, Linda drank herself into maudlin misery every night, somehow functioning with a hangover – just. The clerks at her chambers didn’t trust her with decent work. She fucked up too often, but wouldn’t admit it. She said she preferred the rough and tumble of legal aid work, representing those who couldn’t speak for themselves, an advocate for battered wives, illegal immigrants, the underprivileged.

She worshipped Polly Toynbee, with whom she claimed some kind of acquaintance (‘as Pol said this morning’), and tended rather to sneer at Christine’s success. The woman was a desperately lonely alcoholic, and therefore Christine couldn’t quite bring herself to screen her calls – however much she wanted to.

She forced herself to eat up like a good girl, although the fish tasted of nothing, the potatoes seemed to be made of plastic and the salad was about as exciting as her love life. At least the salad was undressed – something Christine had not been for a very long time. When had a man last paid her a compliment – let alone asked her out on a date? As for sex – she could barely remember. Or, to be strictly truthful, she didn’t care to remember. Sex with one’s ex-husband, with whom one has just settled out of court, from whom one is now moving on and glad of it, was not to be advised. It was the sort of irrational behaviour that she looked down on in others – like dogs returning to their own vomit, she used to say of those dumped spouses who dropped their drawers at the merest sniff of interest from former partners. Well, she’d done it herself, what, a year ago? Two years? When Andy had come round to discuss the endless vexed question of Isabelle’s finances and future, when they’d opened a bottle of wine and got talking about the old days, and ended up in, or rather on, what had once been the marital bed. And God, it had been so good. They fitted together so well. She knew every contour of that fine, black body, every sensitive part, every trick to bring him pleasure, just as he knew her. It had been quick, and frantic, and afterwards they both felt strange, and he left quickly, remembering a prior engagement . . .

Never again, she’d said then, little knowing that it meant never again with anyone.

Well, men were a distraction. She had other things to focus on now – like that application to become a Queen’s Counsel. After this case, God and the Judge willing, she would be ready – and they would have to find some damn good reasons to turn her down. Her hands were clean, her record impeccable, there was no scandal or ‘history’ attached to her – and she intended to keep it that way. Work would fill the unforgiving hours at home, alone. With just herself to take care of, there would be more time to prepare her briefs, research case law, find that telling precedent that could be pulled out of the hat at the critical moment . . .