Rebekah Vardy is facing paying a significant contribution to Colleen Rooney’s substantial costs. This will require more than a few drama spin-offs, documentaries, and reality TV appearances.

If long litigation experience tells you one thing, it’s that “winning” and “losing” are relative concepts.

The tone of much litigation correspondence is often one of outraged offence: your client is the repository of all virtue and the “other side” is guilty of extreme bad faith. This can sometimes be hidden in mild language: the description “unhelpful” often covers a multitude of sins in its passive-aggressive use and can easily be understood to mean that the recipient party is guilty of egregious misconduct.