‘Get back together again? Oh Joel,’ said Will, putting his shades back on, ‘don’t let’s ask for the moon, and so on. At the moment, I’m getting used to the idea of being alive. I don’t think I’m quite ready to talk about “us”.’

The Rodean trial opened on a Monday, with crowds outside the Royal Courts of Justice, some simply to gawk and take photos, others angrily chanting, holding placards with such peculiar slogans as JUSTICE FOR ROCKY. When Jessica arrived, accompanied by John Ferguson and her brother, the crowd howled and spat as a forest of raised arms holding mobile phones sprouted above their heads. When Christine arrived, sober in her black wool gown, one hysterical sixty-year-old, who had been in love with Rocky Rodean since first she saw him on Ready, Steady, Go!, screamed ‘How can you sleep at night, you bitch?’. Christine remained calm. She had heard it all a thousand times before.

The entrance hall to the RCJ opened above her and around her. She had clicked across those marble floors a thousand times, and never given it a second thought. Today she felt as she’d felt when she and Andy first visited St Peter’s in Rome, as if the whole weight of the building was pressing down upon her, dwarfing her, ready to collapse and bury her beneath the weight of authority and tradition. It was her first appearance since Rivelli v Rivelli, when she’d skulked out the back way and beaten a hasty retreat to John Ferguson’s office; she felt as if she’d been in hiding ever since. This was her comeback, no less significant, if less spectacular, than Elvis in black leather in 1968, or Ali’s rumble in the jungle. It was with those two apparently inappropriate images in her mind that Christine Fairbrother took a deep breath and pushed open the courtroom doors to face the judge.

When Isabelle saw Dan waiting for her at arrivals at Tokyo Narita International, there was no point in pretending that she wasn’t pleased. Her heart fluttered, and the blood rushed to her head, and instead of hiding it all in a display of fashionably detached cool as she would once have done, she let her luggage trolley roll along unguarded and threw her arms around his neck. Dan managed to catch the trolley, catch Isabelle by the waist and receive a big kiss on the lips without falling over or bursting into tears, which he rather felt like doing. He busied himself with the luggage and getting her to the car, while she prattled happily about funny things that had happened on the flight, and they both felt quite extraordinarily happy.

‘Right,’ he said, as the driver took them smoothly out of the airport, ‘here’s your schedule.’

‘My goodness,’ she said, flicking through the pages, ‘you have been busy.’

‘Well, someone’s got to take care of you.’