He walked rather slowly and heavily from the dock to the other end of the courtroom; Reuters, ITN, BBC, CNN, they were all there as well as every British crime and show-business reporter that could jam into the press boxes or the public gallery.

When he swore by Almighty God, Terence looked rather bemusedly at the card on which the words were written that he held in his good hand. What his eightyyear-old Welsh Chapel father was making of all this, although he had tried to warn him of some of it, he could not imagine. Nothing but the truth, he said, giving the words a kind of resonance and new meaning.

‘You may sit down if you wish Mr Blue,’ said the judge quietly.

‘Thank you My Lady, but I prefer to stand.’ He stood there, waiting.

Mr Tweed only said finally, gently, ‘Is it true?’

Terence Blue, grey-haired and gaunt and handsome in the witness box, with his left arm in a sling, looked (the Daily Express had said that morning) like a wounded lion. He stared down at the wooden handrail; with his right hand he smoothed it for a moment. There was absolute silence in the court.

Then he finally answered, his Welsh voice clearly heard.

‘It is – temporarily – true, sir, yes.’

And it seemed to Elvira that a soft, collective sigh seemed to echo round the courtroom, the word temporarily somehow putting him in touch with, echoing in the minds of, everybody there. All the men: all the lawyers and the legal clerks and the men on the jury and the hard-drinking hard-bitten journalists; all the women: the legal secretaries and the consultative lawyer for the prosecution and the women in the public gallery and on the jury. Temporarily. The soft sigh seemed to enclose the man in the witness box as if they were saying, we know. As if they were saying, we all know how it can be, temporarily.

‘Was it true the night in question, the night of the alleged rape of Miss Taylor?’

‘It was most certainly true the night in question. I had just seen, that afternoon, my first wife for the first time in over thirty years.’

The court stirred, but Mr Tweed was like a conductor, not ready yet, for the crescendo; he actually put up his hand as if to say: wait.

‘Mr Blue, is it true as Miss O’Brien stated earlier that this – affliction of yours, this temporary affliction, was brought on by news of your first wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me Mr Blue, why was your first wife in a mental hospital for so long?’