She would never, as she thought of it now, have put herself in the firing line where she was determined to remain, fighting for the things she was determined to be loyal to – even if, boiled down, they made pretty simplistic reading: truth, tolerance, justice, a sense of life’s beauty and a near violent rejection of their opposites – but, above all, an inherited belief, derived from both her parents and entrenched by Tessa, that the system itself must be forced to reflect these virtues, or it had no business to exist.