In other words: the connection did not corrupt the process.

It simply made the process actually work — the way the process is supposed to work for everyone and so rarely does for a woman with no money against a family with a great deal of it.

That, I have come to think, is the quiet injustice underneath my whole story.

The law was always capable of protecting me.

The evidence was always going to be damning.

What women like me usually lack is not a case but a way to make the machinery move before it is too late, a hand on the right door.