Work was always quiet in December. Nobody wants to start divorce proceedings at Christmas, whatever the soap operas tell us. There were cases to be prepared, schedules of assets to be drawn up, which kept the solicitors’ noses to the grindstone, but there were few cases big enough to keep a barrister of Christine’s seniority busy. And so, undistracted by Joel or by complicated briefs, Christine was free to concentrate on the thing that really mattered at the moment – her application for silk.

The coming year, she thought with confidence, was the one in which she would become a Queen’s Counsel. She would put all else aside in pursuit of her goal. She spent her days in chambers, doing research, preparing her application. She spent her evenings at home doing the same, enjoying the solitude, looking forward to Ben’s return from college – if he came. There had already been talk of spending most of the vacation with indeterminate mates. She hoped to have the company of at least one of her children on Christmas Day, but if not – well, it was another day on which to work on her application, wasn’t it? A day like any other.

Linda was becoming a nuisance. After successfully avoiding her for several months, screening her calls until she finally gave up ringing, Christine took pity and agreed to meet her for ‘Christmas drinkies’, as Linda would have it. Well, it would do no harm to have a night off, if it made Linda happy. She had been a good friend over the years, in her way, and a great help in the early stages of Christine’s career, when she’d been her pupil mistress. Pupil had long since leapfrogged mistress, a fact that both of them knew but neither cared to acknowledge to the other, for reasons of tact or pride. Linda would always be senior, if only in years of call.

Since putting the date in the diary, Linda had been calling at least once every day, in and out of working hours, sometimes late at night when she was a good deal the worse for wear. She seemed to know, although Christine had not told her, that they were both ‘single girls’ again, and suggested that it might be fun to go out ‘on the pull’ at one of the disgustingly overcrowded, overpriced bars that were popular with the younger, rougher end of the legal profession, where one was pressed up against bumptious clerks and sleazy solicitors and those junior barristers who still thought that drinking ones way to red-nosed obesity was still a professional requirement.

‘Come down,’ Linda bellowed into her mobile, barely audible over the baying and braying that surrounded her. ‘I’m in Daly’s. It’s fun!’

‘Linda, I’m in bed.’

‘How boring, it’s only . . . my God it’s half past ten.’

‘Exactly. I’ll see you on Thursday, as arranged. Goodnight, Linda.’

‘But Lindy’s lonely . . . Lonely in a crowd . . .’