It is, Aaron told me, a perfectly standard instrument that appears in a very large number of settlements every year and that is not, in itself, improper.

What it says, stripped of the drafting, is that neither party will make any statement concerning the other or concerning any entity affiliated with the other, to any third party, including to any journalist, and that neither party will voluntarily participate in or initiate any proceeding, inquiry, review or complaint concerning the other or any such affiliated entity, save where compelled by lawful process.

Save where compelled by lawful process.

That is the whole of it.

Six words, and they are not sinister, and they are in every agreement of this kind, and they are the reason I did not sign.

Because compelled by lawful process means a subpoena.