Summary

Chapter 1 opens on December 2nd, 2016, with Kate Woodcroft, Queen’s Counsel, in a bad mood after losing a case. Kate is a government prosecutor specializing in sex crimes, and in her ornate, centuries-old office in Westminster’s halls of justice, she reflects bitterly on how often a jury will not believe a female victim’s allegations of rape against a known intimate. Before coming to London for law school some 20 years earlier, Kate scarcely knew such places as the splendid environs of the government buildings in Old London even existed, and she measures how far she has come in her life by how at home she feels in this rarified, privileged world. Kate’s long-time clerk Brian understands her unexpressed feelings and hands her a file for a new, high-profile case which he says is just what she needs to take her career...