There were no handcuffs in a hospital room.

What actually undid the Draycotts was the least dramatic thing imaginable: a quiet woman in a plain suit sitting in a visitor’s chair, explaining, without raising her voice, what the law already was.

That is how real power works, I have come to understand, as opposed to the performed kind the Draycotts traded in.

Real power does not need to shout.

It does not need an audience.