The numbers told the truth all by themselves, with a colder precision than gossip could ever have managed.

This was a deliberate choice, and I want to dwell on it, because it is the choice that separates what I did from mere revenge.

I could have humiliated Lucan far more thoroughly than I did.

I had, from the audit and from six weeks of quiet observation, material that would have destroyed him personally as well as professionally — the texts, the hotel details, the whole tawdry shape of the affair.

I could have put a photograph of him and Lavinia on those screens.

I could have read the messages aloud.