Her phone rang; it was Linda.

‘Hello Linda, how are you?’

She was in a bar, of course. Christine could hear the braying, the clink of glasses, the glug of wine, the din of the legal profession at play.

‘I’m fine.’

Christine did not like the emphasis. ‘Good. So when . . .’

‘But how are you?’

‘Very well, thanks. Just swotting up on the new ancillary relief stuff. God, it’s complicated.’

‘That’s not what I hear.’

Christine declined to be drawn. ‘So, we really must get together some time, Linda.’

‘How about right now?’

‘As I said, I’ve got a bit of work to finish off, and . . .’

‘Don’t worry. I’m not suggesting you should come out anywhere public.’

‘Look, Linda, I’ve got to go, my . . .’

‘I’ll come to you. Be there in five minutes.’ She put the phone down, and silence fell again.

Linda was as good as her word; she must have run up the Strand. She was drunk, of course, but not at the falling-over stage. She’d had a bottle and a half, maybe; that, for Linda, was a basic operational level. She’d appeared in court with much more inside her.

‘Who’s been a silly girl, then?’ she said, as soon as she walked into chambers.

Christine felt her cheeks burning, her scalp contracting. Thank God she knew how to keep her voice even. ‘Where shall we go, then? I feel like getting out of here. All this new legislation is doing my head in.’

‘Sit down, Christine.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Sit down. Lindy needs to talk.’

She stood there, her dry, bushy hair sticking out from her head, her smudged glasses perched unevenly on her nose, smelling of wine – a ridiculous figure, one of the sad by-products of the legal system, a person to pity rather than respect.

But Christine sat.

‘You know what everyone is saying, don’t you?’

‘I shudder to think. The usual vicious nonsense, I suppose.’

‘They say that you and Massimo Rivelli were lovers.’

The words hung in the dim, golden light like a fart in a lift.

‘Oh,’ said Christine, at length. ‘Do they, indeed.’

‘Yes. And what’s more, they’re suggesting that you knew . . .’

‘Careful, Linda.’

‘That you knew about Rivelli’s . . .’

‘That’s enough.’ Christine slammed a hand down on her desk. ‘How dare you come in here repeating the drunken slander of the clerks?’

‘Drunken?’

‘If you have something to say to me, Linda, come out and say it. You think I’ve been guilty of some kind of professional misconduct? Is that it? You believe that I’m part of a conspiracy?’

‘I didn’t say that . . .’

‘What exactly are you saying, then? That I screwed my client?’

‘That’s what they’re saying at Pennington and Blythe.’

‘Go on.’

She stared straight ahead, waiting for the words to come.

‘Chris, I’m just trying to help . . .’