"I am sorry for what happened to you," he says, clipped and almost sharp. He is sorry, though more unnerved - he'd never confessed scared, even to himself. He can see just enough of himself in the man before him to throw him off balance.

"But I'm not going to give up. On the contrary," he adds, quiet if still precise, "it's all the more reason I will fight to make sure your future isn't my own."