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It’s Isabella and Isabella alone, emerging gracefully like a ballerina from the dark wings of backstage and into the spotlight.

She has a black bag over her head. She can’t see, so moves this way and that, her hands tied behind her back. She emerges on to the police-blue street in the silence. She thrashes, trying to remove the hood by bending over.

An officer moves a torch over her even though it’s bright sunlight, looking for weapons. A voice booms out from a police megaphone, tinny and distorted, asking her to stop, to raise her hands. She halts, still blanched in light, and someone approaches and unties her hands, freeing her arms which spread out, a Christ the Redeemer in the sun. And, for just a few, strange seconds, Niall feels as if this moment is only for him.

He moves towards her. He will be authorized to do so: his bulletproof vest is still on; he’s the hostage negotiator, after all, and she his first released hostage.

Niall takes five steps, ten, and then he’s right next to her. Two officers move out of the way to allow him to get near to her.

A copper pats her down, then removes her hood and steps away, leaving Isabella and Niall alone together. He looks down at her. She has dark hair, is of slight build. Slim wrists and shoulders. She has large hoop earrings in, and something about this makes Niall feel a wave of sympathy for her that is almost painful. How she must have put them in that morning, optimistic, George nearby; maybe he likes it when she wears those …

She survived, but she will never be the same again. That’s the reality. PTSD, claustrophobia, anxiety, flashbacks. These are what she may experience. Niall forgets this, sometimes, at the height of negotiations, but at the end of every siege he remembers there is always damage done, even to the living. Especially to the living.

‘It was me who took your call. Your husband is here waiting. You’re safe,’ Niall says to her. ‘You’re safe now.’

‘He let me go,’ she says, eyes wet. ‘He said he would let me go. He knew I was just caught up in it … accidentally, because we own the building.’

Niall nods his head. Makes sense. His shoulders drop in relief, relief at having a hostage released. ‘Do you know anything about the other hostages?’ he is unable to stop himself asking.

Isabella doesn’t respond immediately. Her hair is staticky and messy from the hood, which has drifted to the floor like a popped balloon, and she pulls her hands to her chest, then her cheeks, then leans right into Niall and sobs.

His muscles untense as he holds her. Maybe they got away with it. Maybe he was correct to ask for more time, to wait, to have Camilla to come on to the scene. Maybe Deschamps will release the others, next.

They stay like that for several minutes, Niall trying to slow her breathing by slowing his.

And just as he’s thinking that they will be OK, he hears them.

Two gunshots.

The ones that, ultimately, will end his career. They go off, loud and true, right behind him like a fireworks display that he can’t see, only hear.