Romy frowned. That’s it? He’s telling me it was just one kiss? she asked herself, disgusted nevertheless as she pictured him pawing the teenager. ‘She said you attacked her, Michael. Not just in the letter. She told the whole story to Finch.’ She gulped, falling over the words in her head as she tried to make her point. ‘When I got the letter, you denied even knowing her. You made me feel cruel and disloyal simply for asking you about it.’ She heard the coldness in her voice, felt the quivering in her body. ‘Why should I believe you now?’

Her husband’s look was resolute. ‘I absolutely was not violent, Romy. I wasn’t. She responded to my kiss – I know I’m not mistaken about that. And then the phone was ringing and she was pushing me off. She ran out before I had a chance to say anything.’

Michael spoke firmly, certainly with the appearance of honesty. But she knew her husband well and something wasn’t ringing true. Could Grace really have embellished a single kiss into a drama of vicious assault?

‘She was very clear, Michael. You tore her dress. Her breasts and her thighs were bruised, she said.’

He shook his head wearily. ‘She said. But that’s utterly impossible. You know me, Romy, better than anyone. I am not a violent man.’ When she didn’t respond, he went on, ‘I’ve been a selfish sod in all sorts of ways over the years, I’ll admit, and I’ve got plenty of things wrong – not least that kiss and the lies I told subsequently. But can you honestly imagine me doing something so vile?’ He shook his head in apparent bewilderment. ‘I don’t know why she’s saying what she’s saying. I can only suppose it was a moment she’s remembered wrongly, something she feels she should be ashamed of for some reason.’

An edgy, breathless silence ensued.

‘I really thought she was coming on to me, Romy. Not that that makes it OK, but …’ His voice had risen plaintively. ‘A pretty girl, late on a hot summer night when we were both slightly crazy with heat and exhaustion, accepts a glass of wine, then smiles at you with her huge grey eyes and pats the seat next to her. It certainly didn’t feel as if I was forcing myself on her.’

Romy was thrown. She didn’t know whether to believe a word of what Michael was saying. Yes, he’d had a stroke, but this was one very clever man. A man who was capable – brilliantly so, by all accounts – of manipulating the truth until the opposing barrister didn’t know which way was up. Was this all just a crafty choreographing of events, worked out and nuanced over decades? Or was it true, and Grace – as Michael suggested – was suffering from misplaced shame?