It was, it turned out, worth every bit of it, because I had needed to see this, and now I had, and I would never again wonder whether I had been right to act.

Sarah had promised me, back in her office, that if I gave him room, Julian would expose himself more completely than any accusation of mine ever could, and I had not fully believed her, because it seemed too passive.

I believed her now.

A man like Julian did not need to be caught.

He only needed a stage, and an audience he cared about, and the false confidence that no one who mattered was watching, and he would walk out to the center of it and undo himself in front of everyone, entirely of his own accord.

All I had ever needed to do was stop preventing it.