‘Are you and Violette together?’

Bee was mortified. ‘As if she’s my type.’

His daughter had a type?

Rachel Ballyntine had a plan for the last couple of weeks leading up to the birth of her son. Keep off her feet. Get a good haircut, because David would have the camera in her face through the whole birth. Most importantly, get a pedicure for her poor swollen distorted feet. If she could have sat with them soaking in water all day long, she would have.

But France has changed everything. Bee’s roommate on the tour was a LeBrac, and a better friend than her daughter has let on. The photos were a giveaway, reinforced by the sound of Bee throwing up in the bathroom when the bashings in Bristol made news.

The idea of visiting the prison is in Rachel’s head when she wakes on Monday. It obsesses her more as the morning goes on, but of course when she makes the phone call she’s told she needs to do things the official way. So Rachel has no choice but to lie. Tells them she’s Noor LeBrac’s new barrister and that a request to see her client will be faxed through on her chambers’ letterhead.

‘Just for the record, I’m not happy,’ David says when he drops her off out front. ‘Nor will he be.’

‘He’ is Bish, but what her ex-husband doesn’t know won’t kill him.

Inside Holloway she makes it through three entry points before she hits a roadblock.

‘Her barrister?’ the bland guy behind the window asks, studying the request, then staring down at her belly.

Rachel isn’t sure how accustomed those at Holloway prison are to legal representation turning up with a belly as big as hers, but she hopes that the last thing Her Majesty’s prison guards are going to do is stop a pregnant woman from supposedly doing her job.

‘You’re going to have to wait.’

‘Will do,’ she says, feigning cheerfulness. ‘But if my water breaks in that chair over there, you’re delivering this baby.’

After a pat-down and a surrendering of everything but her notebook and a locker key, she’s warned she has only fifteen minutes. Moments later she finds herself in a room facing Noor LeBrac. There’s a sharp intelligence in the woman’s eyes, which Rachel recalls from photographs of her pre-Brackenham. She’d had a fierce life force. Some of it has survived, but not the humour or light.

‘My name’s Rachel Ballyntine,’ she says, sitting down. ‘I’m a QC, and I think it’s about time people heard from a Sarraf, Noor,’ she says with so much conviction that she almost persuades herself it’s why she has come today. ‘I’m here to help.’

Noor LeBrac’s wordless study of her is uncompromising. She leans back in her seat, as if enjoying the way Rachel is running herself into a bit of a babble.

‘I didn’t ask for help,’ Noor says after a time, and when Rachel goes to speak she holds up a hand to stop her. ‘I wanted your help years ago. When I was handcuffed to a hospital bed and told by a kind doctor that Rachel Ballyntine was one of the best human rights lawyer in London. But you didn’t respond to my letter. Since then I’ve had to put up with every idealistic idiot legal intern searching me out and promising me justice will be done.’