I grabbed her glass and stood up. ‘Another Peroni?’

Jessica’s sad face matched mine. ‘If we can talk about something else.’

She looked happier by the time I came back with the drinks. ‘I was heading to a tutorial when you called the other day.’

‘You told me.’

‘It was exciting. All about crime and punishment. Half my group will spend their careers putting people behind bars…’

‘And the other half will try to keep them out,’ I said. ‘Is that what you want to be doing?’

The pub was filling up, and Jessica checked to see if we were being overheard. ‘It’s a difficult concept. Locking people away while they pay their debt to society.’

‘Penal servitude,’ I said, thinking of the people I knew who’d ended up behind bars. Most of them had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Jessica pressed on. ‘I mean, how is that debt measured? And how is it repaid?’

I was enjoying our discussion after the one about Hugo. ‘I don’t know, but we can’t let criminals off, we can’t flog them, and we can’t chop bits off them either.’

A smirk appeared across Jessica’s face. ‘A bit of hanging never hurt anyone.’

‘Unless you’re the one at the end of the rope.’

‘I don’t agree,’ said Jessica. ‘If you could choose between life in an American Supermax or a six-foot drop and on to whatever’s next…?’

I glared at her. ‘You could change to commercial law.’