“We’ve been through it all before.”

“Richard Deaken, on the run again.”

“I’m not running away,” he said. “I work here in Geneva because I want to… because I think it might have a future for me. And because to have stayed in South Africa was impossible. You know that.”

“You don’t work here,” she persisted. “You go into that dingy bloody office and make chains out of paperclips all day. Why the hell maintain all this crap about being a lawyer for the underdog? We’re the only underdogs in the entire country. The Swiss are too bloody expert at making money.”

“Maybe I should try to join a firm,” he conceded. Deaken wondered how long it would take other trained lawyers to recognize his problem, if he did join a group of partners: to realize that his trial nerve had gone, so that he couldn’t remember the construction of a brief or the points of defence or prosecution or seize, as he had once been able to seize, the mistakes and errors of the other side and turn them to his advantage.

“You’d better, before it’s too late,” she said. “There’s no point in having an international law degree and the reputation you have, unless you use it.”

Deaken started eating a brioche, not because he wanted it but because he needed something to do. It was difficult to swallow. He should have sought psychiatric help before now; before it had become so bad that he didn’t think he could ever again appear in open court, and had tried to bury himself in the anonymity of civil ligitation.

“Would you need money to buy into a firm?”

“Almost certainly.”

“We haven’t got any.”

“Sometimes they’ll let you pay it off from salaries and fees, once you’ve joined.”

She reached across the table for his hand, an impulsive gesture. “I don’t mean to bitch,” she said.

“I know.”

“I do love you. I know how good and successful you could be… It just seems letting everything drift like this is such a waste.”