Bish pulled up in front of Waterloo Station. He retrieved his wallet from the glove box and handed Sarraf an Oyster card. ‘You’ve got a 48-hour visa,’ he said. ‘If you violate the rules you’ll be back behind bars and on your own.’

Sarraf was at first speechless. Then: ‘I get to stay for two days?’

‘I want to know the moment Violette makes contact,’ Bish said.

‘She won’t know I’m here.’ Sarraf cleared his voice of emotion.

‘Then you need to find a way to let her know.’

The two-day visa was a condition agreed to by Grazier and the Home Secretary. Setting him loose in London wasn’t. When he gave Sarraf his business card Bish’s hand was shaking. The only consolation was that the hand that took it was shaking even harder.

It’s dark by the time Layla gets home from a booze-up at the Defector’s Weld. The first of her university friends are finally engaged, and although she doesn’t feel left behind, she was hoping for good news of her own that day. The junior partnership was within her reach, but those hopes are down to nothing now. The mood has changed around her during the week. Elliot and Ortley’s visit didn’t help, but it’s more than that. Once or twice she’s seen Jemima in Frank Silvey’s office, and her manner with Layla has gone from indifferent and unimpressed to awkward and slightly guilty. It means Jemima knows something, as office spies usually do.

And yet it isn’t the inevitable failure to get junior partnership that is humiliating so much as the realisation of what she’s allowed herself to become this past year. A yes person. The sort who doesn’t question anything. Who checks her tone and volume when speaking to the partners. Who lets them believe they’re teaching her something she doesn’t already know. Layla’s greatest regret is that she has sold a piece of her soul and still missed out.

It’s rare that she switches on the main light in the staircase, even when she’s back late. Most of the time it turns itself off when she’s halfway up the stairs, which frightens her more than the dark. But tonight she wishes she had switched it on. She feels a quick thump of fear when she sees the shadow at her door.

‘It’s just me.’

Him.

‘I need a place to stay for the night,’ Jimmy says softly, as if it hasn’t been twelve years since they last saw each other. He has nothing with him. No overnight bag, just the clothes he’s wearing.

‘Are you legal?’ she asks. ‘Because I don’t need trouble.’ She doesn’t care if that sounds harsh. After Calais all those years ago, she owes Jimmy Sarraf nothing.

‘I’ve got two days,’ he says, and she’s reminded of how much pleasure his voice always brought her. Unlike Noor, educated at the best schools on scholarship, Jimmy would always sound like the neighbourhood.