My parents sued me for the four point seven million dollars my grandmother left me, and to prove I was unstable their own attorney subpoenaed my service record and put it in front of the judge himself. He had read two pages of a hundred and forty. That is how my family found out what I do for a living.

The gap between Slaught’s last sentence and hers is recorded as a pause. There is no length given. Transcripts do not record how long a silence is, which is the single greatest failure of my profession, because in a courtroom the length of a silence is most of the information.

What is in the transcript is that after she asked the question, and after my father asked his, Judge Ferro said one further sentence before she moved on.

She said: Mr Slaught, is your client aware of the contents of the exhibit he has filed?

That is a judge being extremely polite about something. I have been on the other end of that politeness twice in eleven years and I remember both.