Christian and I were like that now, I felt. We were keeping it polite, having a nice final kickabout in no-man’s-land, because soon it would be far too late for being nice. We both looked to the window as a car pulled up outside.

‘It’s Fat Phil,’ Christian said, his voice neutral.

He knew I hated it when he called my driver by that name. I drained my coffee cup. This morning I had an appointment with Sophie Sherman, best known for smiting justice on powerful men who had abused vulnerable women. I thought I would not mention it to Christian.

‘I’m going to work now,’ was all I told him.

He nodded, visibly relieved, reaching to scratch the dog between the ears, and for the first time in the long history of us, my husband looked like he was glad to see the back of me.

24

Tara

‘Did he tell you a condom broke?’ Sophie Sherman said.

I stared at her.

When she had arrived at the office, Mary, Michael and Skyla had treated Sophie Sherman as visiting royalty. This was the activist who had broken two of the great sex scandals of recent years – the children’s entertainer known as Uncle Norman in my childhood, a laughing, avuncular banterer with a gaudy tribe of stuffed toys, and the knighted Shakespearean actor who the tabloids were now calling King Leer. Uncle Norman and King Leer had more in common than was at first apparent. They had both used their positions of power to torment women and girls. It had gone on for decades in their dressing rooms and they had got away with it until Sophie Sherman – not yet thirty, whippet thin, dressed all in black like some hanging judge – had shone a spotlight on their crimes. Sherman had painstakingly collected evidence from victims, she had stood up to the bullying threats of legal action and never working again in her life, and she had been there in court when Uncle Norman and King Leer were put away. Then she had appeared on Newsnight, giving notice that this kind of sexual abuse was being put out for history’s bin men. But she could do nothing for me, I thought. I didn’t want James Caine exposed. It was too late to send him to jail for whatever he had done to me or anybody else. I just wanted it to all go away. Agreeing to meet Sophie Sherman had been a mistake. And then she dropped the bomb about the broken condom.

‘He did, didn’t he?’ she said, taking my stunned silence for affirmation.

I finally nodded. She was not surprised.

‘It was Caine’s standard MO,’ she continued. ‘I’ve heard his broken condom line from a few women already. There’s a kind of sick genius to it, really. It’s a great way to torment a woman, a great way to control her, a wonderful way to take away her marriage, her family, her life.’ She sipped the espresso that Mary had made. ‘Her sanity.’