At no time in his cross-examination of prosecution witnesses, said the Independent on Sunday in a formal court report that somehow managed to sound disapproving, had the defence barrister sought to imply that Ms Taylor might be a willing party to the sexual event, a more fruitful path surely, the paper implied, than merely reiterating that when Mr Blue left the hotel room Ms Taylor was passed out on the bed. There was much covert criticism of Terence Blue’s legal team in many of the newspapers: it was felt they had not put up a proper case at all. Simply denying a rape was not a defence. Terence Blue should have taken the witness stand.

It seemed a foregone conclusion that he would be convicted.

Engrossed in the newspapers in the warm kitchen, with the smell of the lunch cooking, a sherry in her hand, most of all knowing that this evening she would be rehearsing her own part in the trial for the following day, Pauline didn’t hear the front door open, heard only vaguely voices in the hall, coats being hung up, shoes being removed.

‘Hello Mum.’

She looked up finally to see her daughter Viola standing a little shyly at the kitchen door. Next to her, his arm resting round her shoulder was Banjo Mitchell, Molly McKenzie’s young man.

‘Good God!’ said Pauline.

‘I know,’ said Viola.

*

Lunch was electric. Both Pauline and Anthony, for different reasons, were completely thrown by the appearance of Molly’s lover at the dinner table with their daughter.

Pauline, shocked, at once saw that this could be her final triumph over Molly at last; nevertheless had her suspicions that somehow even this was part of Anthony’s grand plan; therefore felt strangely elated that tomorrow he would find out that she had a grand plan of her own. She drank more wine, very quickly. Anthony tried, not very hard and not very successfully, to hide his anger. To have this man at his dinner table, his mistress’s lover with an arm round his beloved daughter was deeply sexually disturbing. Anthony literally could not bear it. He ate quickly, anxious to get away to Soho where he was recording voice-overs for four different commercials. Benedict remembered that this was the man at the garden party who had stopped him punching his father and that his father called this man Molly McKenzie’s toyboy; Viola was shy but determined.

Only Banjo seemed unfazed. Although he was a vegetarian, so smoothly did he bypass the beef and so obviously did he enjoy the roast vegetables and the peach pie and cream, so interestingly did he mention to Benedict about computers and music, that a bizarre kind of normality prevailed across the fraught table. They even managed to have a few sentences of conversation about the Terence Blue rape case, the likelihood of him being sentenced, how a film star would fare in prison.