And she had a grandson under the kitchen table, emitting occasional squeals and yelps and almost-words, who, every day and in every way, grew more obviously the fruit of Ben’s loins, from the curly hair to the ready smile and the chubby arms and legs. Ben had been a bonnie baby – that was the accepted euphemism for ‘fat’ in those days – and so was Felix. His limbs looked like strings of sausages, his face was wider than it was high, and his bottom positively wobbled. Like Ben, he would doubtless grow into a lean six-year-old and a gangly fourteen-year-old and strapping great man by the age of eighteen. And a father by twenty . . . She hadn’t seen that one coming. And for all that Victoria kept her distance, dodging Ben’s attempts to touch her, ducking any compliments or courtesies he showed her, she could see them drawn together through the child whose love for his father shone out of every smile, every chuckle, every twinkle of those wide eyes, a bluish-grey at birth, now almost an exact match for Ben’s brown. How much longer could Victoria keep him at arm’s length? It hurt Christine to see her son pushed away, frustrated – but they were here, weren’t they, all of them together when it really mattered? And if things could work out for Christine and John, for Isabelle and Dan, if she could get silk after all that had happened, after the strange nightmare of a year ago, when their lives had descended into some kind of surreal crime caper, then surely things would come right for Ben . . .

So this was the end. All the battles fought, the mistakes made, the lessons learned. She’d got away with it. She’d done what the big boys did – screwed up, been caught out and knocked down, picked herself up, dusted herself off, waited until the robing-room gossip had died down and the story of the Family Barrister Who Fucked Her Gangster Client had passed into Inns lore. And then she’d come back, at first pushed unwillingly by John and then, when the fully glory of l’affaire Rodean had blazed forth, dragged into the limelight by celebrity after celebrity, until she’d almost eclipsed them. ‘Who’s next?’ the papers asked, speculating wildly about everyone from the most recently married reality stars to long-wed members of the Royal Family who were supposed to have sought Miss Fairbrother’s advice. With a profile like that, the Lord Chancellor could hardly turn her down.

And the cherry on the cake? Massimo Rivelli was in prison in France, after some frantic international bargaining, and would stand trial in May for the murder of Stefano Cassano. It was the worst of all the crimes they could charge him with. The outcome was certain.

Guilty.