‘In my long experience as a barrister I cannot remember a time where for sheer cheek a witness has invented so much unlikely rubbish as we have heard from you today. Discussing impotence among the nasturtiums, please!’ He looked around the court as if garnering support for his disbelief. ‘Impotence. What is impotence? A state of mind that comes and goes. The defendant himself, according to you, said he could only find brief reference to it in medical encyclopaedias. Impotence can be connected to an illness, a by-product of an illness, but it isn’t an illness itself, it is a psychological state that comes and goes, I repeat, comes and goes. How convenient, if we could say it was present at the Dorchester on the night in question, this Impotence. How would you know, how would anybody know except the people concerned when and where it occurred. It’s not like measles you know, this Impotence. Presumably you are inventing this story to try to save the skin of a rapist who happens to be –’ he loaded the next word ‘– an acquaintance of yours. For, Miss O’Brien – or perhaps I should call you Mrs Bonham – I find it hard to believe that the defendant would suddenly tell you all this during a little gardening afternoon, unless – of course – your relationship with him was of a different nature than the one you have presented to the court?’

Everybody in the court leant forward.

Mr Lee made Pauline O’Brien sound like yet another show business luvvie cashing in on having an affair with a star. He became extremely personal as he stared not at her but at a point above her head and asked her how successful she was as an actress. He said it was well-known in show-business circles that her career was in the doldrums. He asked if she was hoping for publicity from this case. He skirted daintily around her marriage, asked if Anthony Bonham, the well-known Shakespearean actor, was also a close friend of Mr Blue’s. Pauline’s face became paler and paler in the witness box, her red lips lost their colour as she bit at them in distress. It was as if Pauline was on trial instead of Terence; on and on Mr Lee’s sarcastic voice went, attacking her personally, waiting for her to break. Sometimes Pauline’s voice shook as she answered but she stuck to her story. Oh god, she thought, this will look so disgusting all over the News of the World, this had all better be worth it. He was a devastating cross-examiner and Pauline, cool, elegant Pauline O’Brien, was not used to being cross-examined, hesitated sometimes, made a mistake, back-tracked. In any other situation, using the pejorative term luvvie many times to good effect, Mr Lee might have broken his witness.

But Mr Lee didn’t know just how much hinged, for this witness, in her not breaking in front of him.