“I lost my cool. I told him that after what I’d paid the practice, a lot of it under the table, he couldn’t tell me it still wasn’t enough, and at such a difficult time, when the appeal was about to start.”

“Do you remember who he was?”19

She said a name. A person for whom the definition of idiot was needlessly charitable. I wouldn’t even have given him the role of a lawyer in a school play. I avoided sharing this judgement of mine, just nodded and asked her to continue.

“He told me if we weren’t satisfied with the service provided by the Costamagna practice, we could go elsewhere. Then I really raised my voice. I screamed at him, let out everything I felt. He turned red, and said that if that was the case it was best to suspend our professional relationship and he suggested I leave. Over the next few days I started wondering if it hadn’t been stupid on my part to react in that way. I didn’t know what to do or where to go. Then I thought of you.”

An unpleasant thought wormed its way into my mind. She hadn’t come to me because she thought I was a good lawyer. She’d come to me because she didn’t know which way to turn. She was broke and obviously assumed, considering our shared past, that I would work on credit or, even better, for free. That annoyed me, and I decided to make things clear: I’d already worked as a lawyer for charity too many times.

Dear madam (you’ll excuse the formal tone, which may seem strange to you given that we’ve been naked together in the same bed, but in view of the situation I prefer a certain degree of formality), I will gladly accept the task of examining the case file relating to the legal proceedings against your son. First, however, I would ask you to go to the office outside and pay the deposit indicated by my colleagues. The fact that many years ago we were … intimate for a few months is, unfortunately, irrelevant when it comes to work. Demanding work, I should add: a case that’s already quite compromised and that relates to a rather serious matter. In 20other words, a task that, were I to accept it, would require a great deal of time and effort.

As I was making these rapid, unpleasant observations in my head, it struck me that we hadn’t talked even for a second about the substance of the proceedings. About what the boy was actually accused of, and if he was innocent or guilty.

So I dropped the deposit – and my dignity, and my offended self-esteem – and asked her to sum up the facts of the trial. Basically, what was the charge? And above all, what was the evidence that had led to the conviction?