He said it without heat and without ceremony, as a simple statement of the law, and in doing so he named out loud the thing I had spent years being quietly taught to doubt: that what is done to you does not become acceptable because of who did it, and that a marriage is not a private jurisdiction in which the ordinary protections are suspended.

Chapter 13 — The Kitchen Door

Camilla tried to leave through the kitchen.

I understood the instinct — the animal urge to be anywhere but the center of a room that has turned against you — but it did her no good.

An investigator from the forensic team intercepted her near the service doors, not to detain her, which was not his to do, but to secure her company laptop and phone under the litigation hold the board’s lawyers had already put in place.

Whatever was on those devices was now evidence, and it would be preserved whether she wished it or not.