At the time I thought he was the most intelligent man I had ever met-would ever meet. But there was also something just below the surface, something sinister, implacable-he was the last person I’d want to have as an enemy. I feared he’d take my letter as a declaration of war and that I’d have to face the worst of him. I was frightened and started having thoughts that were…paranoid. After all, he had my address, my phone number. We’d become quite friendly; he knew a lot about me. I thought maybe he hadn’t answered the letter because he was planning another kind of response, his own personal revenge. But the solicitor assured me that, as he was married, if he really was an intelligent man he’d do the only thing he could do: pay up. And the longer he took to reply, the higher the sum would get. She dictated a second letter, identical to the first, but demanding an even higher amount, because we were also claiming the wages for the month without a reply. It seemed to have an immediate effect. We received his first response, obviously also written by a solicitor. He rejected everything. It was a list of denials. He denied that I’d ever worked for him and even that he knew me. The solicitor told me not to worry. It was a stock legal reply and simply meant Kloster had realised we were serious and had got himself a lawyer. We now had to wait for the first conciliation meeting and think about how much lower a sum we would accept. I was reassured. In the end it all seemed impersonal, an administrative formality.”

“So you went to the conciliation meeting.”

Luciana nodded. “I asked my mother to come with me because I was scared of facing Kloster again. Ten minutes after the agreed time there was still no sign of him. The solicitor whispered, as if it was just a little bit of mischief, that he was probably busy with another bigger case: his divorce. She said a colleague who was a friend of hers was acting for Kloster’s wife. Apparently his wife had read my letter, with the accusation of sexual harassment, and decided to file for divorce immediately. She’d asked for a settlement running into millions. And her friend was ruthless, the solicitor said: Kloster would be out on the street. I listened, horrified. It had never even occurred to me this might happen.