The bed shifted behind her and the top she'd so neatly tucked into her skirt was pulled loose. Anthony's hand caressed her back and looped around to her stomach, pulling her back into him. His lips kissed the junction where neck met shoulder.

"Anthony!" It was a giggled reprimand, utterly ineffective and she was glad.

"Where the devil are you going?"

"To make you a coffee, go back to sleep for a bit."

"Come back to bed."

"Absolutely not, you need some more rest."

His hand coaxed her into lying down. He kissed the skin he'd exposed, tongued her belly button, which she loved and hated in equal measure. He mumbled against her skin, "I'm sorry about last night."

"For being a thoroughly terrible scrabble player, you mean?"

"Yes, but I meant for how it ended." He cleared his throat, "it was disgraceful behaviour."

"In what way?"

"I lost all control, I didn't even take my trousers down."

She laughed, "but you got my knickers off and your fly open which was sufficient."

"Edith -"

"Anthony. I wanted you as much as you wanted me. It was brilliant. I saw stars. Against a wall, or on a bed, or any other location -" He arched an eyebrow, perhaps contemplating the possibilities and she tapped him on the nose, "within reason! It's all you and me, no matter where we are and it'll never be disgraceful behaviour." Her lips found his and she mumbled into them, "Sometimes a lady wants to be taken against a wall."

For once, he blushed and she didn't. Edith wriggled out from under him and kissed him on the forehead, "go have a shower, I'll do breakfast."

Anthony yawned at least three times whilst getting ready for work, eating the toast Edith had only slightly burnt and gulping down coffee as though it contained the essence of life. Given how tired he looked, Edith suspected that description might be entirely apt.

"We can't do this again."

His eyes snapped to her, "what?"

"See each other like this – you need to finish summing up the trial."

He waved her concern away, "I don't care about the trial."

"Yes you do."

"Bloody job." He slammed the empty cup on the sideboard, "bloody life."

She was at his side then, stroking his cheek, "hey, it's only a few more days."

"Until the end of this trial, yes. But then I'm on to the High Court and even more work. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for dragging you into this. I'm sorry."

"Hush. You're overtired and that's my fault. We shouldn't have gone out."

She couldn't be sorry for it though. They'd been a couple, a team. Kissed in public, held hands. His arms around her for everyone to see. Last night was a cause for optimism.

Mary sent a text demanding that they meet outside the Royal Courts of Justice 'after court'. Edith wasn't sure exactly what that meant so she left Snaresbrook just after 4.30pm to make her way back to central London.

The RCJ had become an holy location for Edith. The place where it really started, dancing in the Great Hall.

Mary arrived and promptly stomped all over the memories with her stiletto heels. She gave her sister an appraising look from head to toe and shook her head, "Good God you look awful. Have you brushed your hair today?"

"Lovely to see you too Mary. How I've missed your sisterly –"

"Hold this."

"- affection." A large white box was planted squarely in the middle of her chest. R v Cropper emblazoned across the top in thick black pen. The air left her lungs as she struggled to hold the weight.

"What the hell is in here?"

"Papers. My case finished today. We just need to run these boxes back to Chambers. I have to make a couple of phone calls and then we can go to dinner."

Trying to manoeuvre the box into a comfortable position on her hip Edith spoke sarcastically through gritted teeth, "oh, is that all?!"

"Well, if you hadn't cancelled on me last night we wouldn't be in this position, but you did and so we are. You've only yourself to blame. Come on." Her heels clacked on the shiny floor and she sped through the hall towards the exit. Mary carried no box; she simply wheeled a large black bag behind her.

Beads of sweat had gathered underneath her hairline by the time they arrived at Bedford Row. A series of neat red brick Georgian houses, long since converted into offices, a law school and numerous barristers' chambers.

Mary met someone she knew making their way out and chatted for several minutes leaving her sister abandoned by the side of the heavy black door, unintroduced and cradling the heavy white box atop the wrought iron railings. Edith didn't much care, she'd met her fair share of lawyers at this point; she had no need of another one amongst her acquaintances.

She looked at the names running down the side of the front door. All the barristers who belonged to Mary's chambers, each inscribed in neat calligraphy on its own little blackboard. Members of the Lords at the top, followed by honorary judicial members, silks and then everyone else, ranked by the year they were called to become members of this illustrious profession.

The whole family came to London when Mary's was unveiled. They'd toasted the silly object with champagne and Edith had wished herself anywhere else. The little board was still there – Ms. Mary CRAWLEY - although numerous rungs higher than where Mary had started out, at the very bottom of the list.

It took a second for it to register, for her brain to process what her eyes had seen. A dozen names up from her sister, just below the first line of silks – a series of poisonous letters filtering through her brain and sliding slowly down her throat. They settled right at the pit of her stomach, heavy lead weights, pressing on her gut.

Ms. Maud TAVERNER.

Edith's head had snapped away immediately, as if slapped. She picked at the edge of the heavy box, pulling up a corner of the cardboard, and tried to swallow away the rising fear. The panic.

Perhaps it was a mistake, a subconscious misreading of a similar looking name. A second glance confirmed the worst. There she was. The woman from the restaurant. Anthony's woman. At Mary's Chambers.

Her sister finished her conversation and let them in the front door. Edith stole another glance at the list. The name flashed back at her, the light catching the bright white paint, taunting.

She trudged up the narrow staircase inside, the weight of the box eclipsed by the weight of the discovery. She told herself it didn't matter. So Maud was at the same Chambers as Mary, so what? Completely inconsequential. The Bar was a small world.

Such lies, and she knew it too. The lump in her throat, and the beat of her heart and that heavy weight in her stomach told her so. It mattered because of the questions she'd had since Saturday. The questions she'd been afraid to ask Anthony. She could ask Mary instead.

She didn't want to, because she was afraid of the answers, but she would, she must. This was an awful, terrible opportunity and she would exploit it. She hated herself, but she'd known the minute she'd seen the name what the outcome would be.

If she'd been thinking straight Edith might have taken in her surroundings. Mary's office was comically messy, apparently her controlled persona was left squarely at the door. There was ample fodder for sibling sniping.

But Edith couldn't focus on anything. Her brain played a looping tattoo of the same words - Ask her now. Ask her now. Ask her now.

It battled with her heart, which wished she'd never got up this morning, never agreed to have dinner, never looked at the board, never come up to this bloody office and certainly never needed to ask any questions. Questions were a risk.

The words whispered from the back of her throat, as if hoping they wouldn't be heard, "do you know Maud Taverner?"

Mary riffled through boxes, pulling lose strands of pink ribbon and pushing aside books, "what?"

It was a way out. She could row back – Nothing, Mary, nothing at all. But she didn't.

She hated herself, "Maud Taverner?"

Licking a manicured finger and leafing through the pages of a fat file Mary spoke with an impressive level of disinterest, even for her, "she's a barrister at Chambers. Led me in a couple of cases. Fiercely ambitious. Fantastic advocate." She maneuvered a red book from under the file and turned to the middle, "rather an idol of mine actually."

Edith exhaled the breath she didn't know she was holding. It was done. Information she already knew - barrister, ambitious, like Mary but older. Nothing else to be said.

"She's married to a judge."

Her heartbeat was in her ears, at very the tips of her fingers, in the twitch of her thigh.

Mary was using little yellow post-it notes to mark passages in her book. Edith couldn't look away. Her sister: the car crash behind a desk.

Edith's mouth gaped, sagging, dumb and useless. Her mind screamed, begged it to speak out, to shout across the room so her stupid sister would stop feeling compelled to fill the silence.

Shut up, no more. Please, no more. Shut. Up. Please. No. Shutupshutup.

Everything was still, save for the flutter of pages catching in the spine of the book. The silence was her whole life in a single moment. The earth took a deep breath. Surely the world had stopped, all heads turned towards this room, this pinpoint in time. She flexed her fingers, her head shaking softly, only able to wait, to see if Mary carried on speaking.

Her tone was casual, conversational. Of course it was, she knew not what she did, the absolute destruction of a few simple words.

"His name is Strallan. He sits at Snaresbrook."

When she was thirteen Matthew pushed Edith into the lake at Downton.

There was a moment of shock, one second she was dry, the next she was not. Land to lake in short order. But it wasn't the act of being so suddenly and unceremoniously shoved into the water which stuck with her. It was the immediate, unrelenting attack of the icy cold. It stabbed at every inch of her, all at once. Even in her young brain it led to only one conclusion: I will not survive this.

She did, of course. Dragged herself up the bank and shook uncontrollably. Her mother wrapped her in a blanket and plied her with tea and a little whiskey. She was fine.

Mary's office had filled with that same water, engulfing her whole, but there was no bank to climb, no warm blanket in maternal arms. Instead, there was just the stabbing of the cold. The drowning. And the certain knowledge: I will not survive this.

Whispered words emerged, unbidden, directed at no one, because they didn't matter, nothing did, "they don't have the same surname."

"She practices under her maiden name, not uncommon around these parts. They've been on-off for as long as I've known her, but, eventually, they're always on again. It must be a real love match. And marrying a judge is such a career boon." With a huff she pulled out another file and started flicking through it, "I just cannot find the bloody exhibit I need."

She prattled on, presumably about work, Edith heard none of it. There was just the ringing in her ears. Stupidly she stared at the edge of Mary's desk, a curl of red ribbon snaking down towards the floor.

Married.

"Edith? Edith!"

She sucked in a breath, "what?!"

Mary held out her hand and raised her eyebrows, "for the fourth time, pass me the green file?"

"I - " Dazed, she turned, all the shelves looked the same, the files identical, nothing had a colour.

Married. He was married.

"Edith!"

Married.

"I have to go."

"What? Oh, don't be silly I only have to make this one phone call and we'll go to dinner."

The round handle of the door was smooth and cool. It took a moment to get the traction to force it open. She sprung out into the hall and ran for the stairs. Her shoulder collided with the chest of a faceless man. She pushed him aside. She needed to get out. To go. Somewhere, anywhere, nowhere.

Then she was staggering along Bedford Row, hand in her hair and tears in her eyes.

Before she knew it she was running, full pelt, feet pounding on the pavement. If she ran fast enough perhaps she could escape it. Go so fast that time would fold behind her, bend outwards and break, so that she could go back and undiscover the awful truth. Or far enough even to simply undiscover the dangerous man.

Her legs nearly carried her into the streaming traffic of Grey's Inn Road. A ball of panic swelled in her stomach. It became a conscious requirement to suck air in and push it out again. She put her hands to her head and shut her eyes, gritting her teeth against the rising anxiety.

The questions accumulated. How could he do this? How could he inflict this pain? What was he doing with me if he was still married to her? Does the man I know even exist at all?

The answers fired around her brain, bullets and ricochets and bleeding holes: He used you. He must love her. You don't know him at all. To him, just as to everyone else, you are nothing and nobody.

The street swirled around her as the panic threatened its all-powerful consumption of sanity. Nothing and nobody.

She breathed deep and stuck out an arm.

"Where to love?"

"Battersea."

When they reached the neat row of terraced houses just behind the power station Edith stuffed some notes in the cabbie's hands not bothering to count, only knowing she'd overpaid. She hurried up the small path. She didn't know why she'd come here. She just knew she couldn't go home and face the flat, so full of memories and his face in the sketchbooks and on the canvass.

The tears came as she knocked at the door. She couldn't stop them. All the feelings churned up and out. She was gasping for breath by the time the door opened.

"Edith, what are you doing here? What on earth is the matter?"

She dove into the centre of Matthew's chest and clung to his jumper as she wept. He took a step back from the impact but his arm came awkwardly around her waist and he brushed her hair from her eyes, "Sis, what's wrong? What's happened?"

My heart is broken.

She couldn't say it out loud, so she sobbed another truth instead, "I miss Sybil. I miss her so much it hurts."