Trying to avoid catching sight of her reflection, she stepped into a pair of black sweat pants and a white t-shirt; it was like a fitness version of court dress, she suddenly realised, and wondered how long it had been since she last wore anything colourful. She tied up her brand new trainers, bought after long deliberation with an assistant in John Lewis who blinded her with science and persuaded her that the most expensive pair would be ‘an investment’. The bouncy soles felt peculiar, as if she was walking on a bed. She tied her hair back with a band, closed her locker, took a deep breath and surveyed the result.

Well, she certainly didn’t look like a lawyer any more. She didn’t look successful. She looked – nothing. Ordinary. Just another woman.

Her confidence crumbling with every step, she peeped out on to the gym floor, uncertain of how to proceed. Christine, who could negotiate the Byzantine complexity of courtroom etiquette without a second thought, never wrong-footed, was suddenly without a compass.

‘Christine?’ A male voice, an Australian accent. Not ‘Miss Fairbrother’ or ‘my learned friend’ or ‘counsel’. Just ‘Christine.’

‘Yes.’ She turned round quickly, and almost collided with a man in a tight black t-shirt, the words PERSONAL TRAINER in large white letters across his chest. ‘Oh, I see. You’re . . . him, then.’

He shook her hand. His forearms were thick, not massive but noticeably powerful, and covered in brown hair. ‘Joel Warner. I’m going to take you through the assessment today. So if you’d just like to follow myself to the treadmill.’

Myself? Oh, young people and their use of grammar. Not to mention that irritating Antipodean upturn that made every statement into a question. That would never pass muster in court.

But she wasn’t in court now. She wasn’t making the rules or laying down the law. She followed Joel, and couldn’t help noticing what an extraordinarily firm, round, upstanding backside he had. But he was out of bounds. She would never do anything as crass as dating a trainer.

Especially when he was so much younger than her – what, thirty-two? Thirty? Possibly – horrible thought – still in his twenties?

‘Well, what about your mother?’

‘Oh God, I can’t ask her again. Every time I ask her for anything she gives me the third degree. She practically wants to read over the bloody contract. She’s obsessed by the small print.’

‘Well she’s a lawyer.’

‘Yeah. Tell me about it.’

‘It won’t do any harm to have some legal brains in the business.’

‘We are not letting my mother have anything to do with this, thank you very much.’

Isabelle scrunched up her sandwich bag, brushed the crumbs from her lap, and walked over to the bin. Talk had turned to money, or rather their lack of it, and she didn’t like it. Her fingers were itching for fabrics and shears and pins and needles. Business talk extinguished her creative fire.

She returned to Will, and sat cross-legged on the grass, her skirt just brushing her knees. There was a welcome blast of sunshine, but it only served to highlight her rapidly darkening mood.