In the Great Hall, he paused. People were milling around every-where. Mostly worried-looking parties and pompous-looking counsel, mixed in with the occasional tourist photographing the court’s cathedral-like architecture. As he looked down to the entrance a familiar feeling of disconnection began to creep over him. The Great Hall was still there in all its Victorian glory and the people were still bustling around the security checkpoint, but Priest no longer felt that he was a part of the scene, it was as if he had stepped backwards and found himself looking in to the stage rather than out of it.

For a moment, he wavered between worlds, like Alice staring down the rabbit hole, contemplating the leap. But in his mind, Alice didn’t look like Alice. She looked like Jessica Ellinder.

‘Charlie?’

He felt a tug on his arm. The rabbit hole vanished. The image of Jessica dissipated. A pair of startling green eyes stared at him.

‘Charlie? Are you OK?’

He shook the feeling of drowsiness off. ‘Fine. Everything’s fine. Thank you.’

‘Were you having one of your disassociation moments?’ asked Georgie.

‘Of course not. I only get those when I’m stressed.’

Priest waved the notion away before it occurred to him that he had never discussed his dissociative disorder with his assistant solicitor. He hadn’t really discussed it with anyone. Not that he was ashamed of the condition that caused breakdowns in his perception of reality, but he didn’t see the value in talking about it. Besides, he counted himself lucky. There are generally six recognised classifications of dissociative disorder but many sufferers of one of the most common – depersonalisation disorder – have their lives utterly wrecked by the condition, living in a permanently emotionless, unreal world. Priest had experienced that early on, but the symptoms had faded with time. Now he was able to function ninety per cent of the time without giving the slightest hint of his vulnerability, except on occasions where, like now, he felt his grasp slip slightly.

He shook the feeling off, refocused. It didn’t feel like the onset of an episode. Just a glitch in his own personal matrix.

‘How do you know about it, by the way?’ he asked, meaning the disorder. When she didn’t immediately answer, the detail suddenly seemed unimportant. ‘Moreover, why aren’t you in court? I pay you to be in court, not diagnose complex personality illnesses.’

‘Vincent said I should go with you,’ Georgie said firmly.

‘What about the clients?’

‘He said you might need more looking after than them.’

‘No, he didn’t. Okoro would never say that.’

Georgie at least had the decency to look slightly sheepish. ‘That may have been my interpretation of what he said.’