Janie had, at first. When Miles had told her about the woman in his office who worked two levels below him, speaking of her with respect; how it had started with flirty comments in the pub one night. And Miles had told Janie that maybe he knew it was wrong at the time, and perhaps his fault; that he should have stopped it.

He’d told her Jess Anderson was needy, often asking for approval of the work she was doing. Miles had buried his head in his hands and said, ‘I think maybe I should have known to stay away from her. God, I wish I had, now.’

He’d discovered that Jess had slept with another man in the office only the weekend before, following a night out at work. Just like the one they were having, the night Jess ‘suddenly decided Miles had raped her’.

He’d said that maybe Jess liked men with power, and had gone on to say, ‘That sounds really awful when I say it out loud. Not that I am powerful.’ He had laughed and looked sheepish, but Janie had sensed that he most definitely was.

As a barrister, what she could have said to Mia right then was that Jess’s guilt or innocence in the proceedings was immaterial. Miles had the right to be defended to the best of her ability, and that was what she had done.

But she couldn’t say that. Because she felt sick with herself – as she had when later on Sophie told her why she could never put herself through a trial.

And so instead Janie said now, ‘I believed him at first. But no, by the time it got to court …’ She trailed off, shaking her head.

‘Yet you stood in court and told everyone how my sister didn’t think twice about having a one-night stand, because it had happened the week before. As if that was enough to justify what that man did to her. You said that now Jess’s job was being threatened, because Miles was her boss’s boss, so she was crying rape to protect herself. You skipped over the fact that the other man was Jess’s own age, and someone she’d been having a casual relationship with, because that didn’t suit your case, did it?

‘Did you forget about my sister after that?’ Mia went on. ‘As soon as you won, did you walk away, pleased with yourself for doing a good job?’

‘No,’ Janie said firmly, though she didn’t expect Mia to believe her.

‘You have everything,’ Mia was yelling. ‘Everything. You want for nothing.’

‘I never forgot about your sister,’ Janie pleaded. ‘I didn’t.’ But what could she tell Mia? That the guilt of getting Miles acquitted had draped over her like a black cloud, though it wasn’t because of what had happened to Jess. It was because of what subsequently happened to Sophie.