The administrator of the mental hospital gave only one statement to the press, who had finally found Nicola Abbott under the name of Mary Shand. He said no decisions had been made about her future. The psychiatrist who had been treating her for so many years in the small mental hospital that had been sold to a sports club, and who had been punched in the face by Terence Blue, had been called to the big state hospital from France. He spoke pessimistically to the rest of the staff about the extraordinary information on the death of the patient’s mother that had come out of the now-concluded extraordinary trial; he doubted whether Mary or Nicola, totally non-communicative since her admission after the stabbing of Terence Blue, would understand. ‘That bastard ruined her life years ago,’ he said to them. ‘I know that.’

A police guard on the gates leading down the long drive turned journalists and photographers away from the unfamiliar room with the window, and the bed, where Nicola Abbott sat staring at nothing.

*

They all met at Stu’s farm in Berkshire that evening all travelling by different routes in different cars. The taxi carrying Terence Blue and Joseph Wain had headed for Heathrow Airport, stopped at the intercontinental terminal. There the pursuing press lost them for Terence and Joseph were whisked away through the VIP lounge, not to the Virgin Islands or Bali but, careless of the weather, back to Berkshire in a private helicopter.

They sat at the long, polished table that evening eating a meal that Elvira had cooked by candlelight (while telling Stu that she felt as excited by the outcome of the trial as if she’d just finished writing another thriller), every single person around the table in a state of elation. The host, Stu, although he was the least involved was nevertheless elated also because Elvira was, and he loved her. They laughed and talked around the long table: Elvira and Stu, and Terence, and Pauline with her son Benedict, and Joseph Wain Executive Producer of The Immoralists. With them were Terence’s English agent and his agent from America, and Pauline’s agent from Regent Street who couldn’t believe what was happening to her client and was in a state of excitement bordering on hysteria. For once Benedict had forgotten about computers; he had been whisked away from Chiswick, missed the last week of school before Christmas, found his mother’s photograph in all the papers, and understood – because his mother explained everything to him very very carefully because he was a boy just learning about sex and she didn’t want him to be confused – exactly what had happened. He was sitting beside Terence who was famous and odd and apparently this thing that Benedict couldn’t really conceive of: impotent, and who seemed, peculiarly, to be drinking Coca-Cola.