Terence, prepared though he was for this line of questioning, familiar though he was with the answers he knew so well, agreeing as he finally had that this way Nicky could almost certainly be kept out of court, suddenly stared down – at his arm in the sling, at his black shoes, at the floor of the witness box. And Elvira in the public gallery could feel it: the constriction suddenly in his heart, desire and memory and pain and silence of thirty years.

She caught her breath in fear, she wanted to call across the balcony Terry, we agreed Terry, we agreed, this is the only way, it’s for Nicky too remember. Tell them the truth.

Terence Blue knew he would tell the truth. But not the whole truth.

At last, he began to speak.

‘When my first wife was a schoolgirl her mother was very very ill and in very great pain, with cancer. She would scream to be put out of her misery and one night, wanting to save her further pain she – my wife – I mean my ex-wife – put a pillow over her mother’s face until she was dead. She was sixteen. She somehow managed to – put this memory away until – until—’ Terence’s voice was suddenly husky. The court leant forward, anxious; even the judge had stopped making notes, had moved her body forward slightly on the bench.

‘Until,’ prompted Mr Tweed very quietly.

‘Until we – lost our daughter.’

‘How did you lose your daughter?’

‘In a car—’ he hesitated for a moment. I cannot tell them how the accident happened, I cannot tell them that. ‘In a car accident. In nineteen sixty-one. I was driving.’ A sigh around the court. ‘She – she miscarried. And was also very badly hurt in the crash. At the hospital they told me – it was a girl. Of course it was my fault. She was in a coma for several months. When she – when she finally regained consciousness she could only talk – she seemed only to remember – not about the baby, but about her mother. Somehow the incidents became muddled in her mind. She was very, very ill and, as she recovered from the accident, she unexpectedly became for some time very –’ his voice faltered ‘– violent.’

‘She was put in an – institution?’