Laura went down to the garden shed and found a tin of white paint and a stiff-bristled brush. She began painting the dog’s fence, from left to right, covering the unvarnished wood in a layer of matt white. The brush was old and the going was hard. When the first coat was dry she started again. The whole job took her until late afternoon.

When she was finished and the second coat was dry, she kicked the fence down, methodically, plank by plank.

‘What’s she doing out there?’ her father asked, when he came home from work and went to the kitchen window.

‘Don’t disturb her,’ Laura’s mother said. ‘At least she’s keeping herself occupied.’

Laura’s counsellor’s name was Dr Alison Reid, and Laura’s father had known her at university. As far as I’ve been able to find out, Laura liked her, even preferred her to her parents as an outlet for anxiety and pain. The newspapers didn’t find out about Dr Reid until the trial was almost over. One morning in October Dr Reid turned up at her office in a Victorian terrace in Ranelagh to find cameramen and journalists arrayed outside. She refused to talk to them, though her friendship with the Haines family gave rise to a couple of articles about what the media had taken to calling ‘the old boys’ network’, as if Dr Reid were simply the latest member of a countrywide conspiracy to be unmasked as the true evil behind Conor Harris’s death.

Laura went to see Dr Reid every Tuesday afternoon.

‘And how are we feeling this week, Laura?’ Dr Reid would ask.

‘Fine,’ Laura said.

‘How do you feel about food at the moment?’

‘Alright, I suppose.’

‘Are you eating?’

‘Two meals a day. But I exercise, so that gets rid of it.’

‘We’ve talked about the importance of a healthy balance between food and exercise, haven’t we, Laura?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And how’s Conor doing?’

‘He’s good. He, like, keeps an eye on what I eat.’

‘And how does that make you feel?’

‘Like he loves me, I suppose.’

‘But?’

‘But ... it also kind of pisses me off. Like, what does he care what I eat? What fucking business is it of his?’

‘If he loves you, he wants you to be healthy. It’s probably important to him.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you think Conor loves you?’

‘Yeah. I suppose he does.’

‘And how does that make you feel?’

‘You always want to know that. You always want to know how things make me feel.’

‘Isn’t that what we’re here to talk about? How things make you feel?’

‘Yeah, but it’s just, like, what is that, some mantra you learned in therapy school?’

‘Do you think you’re trying to avoid my question, Laura?’

‘No.’

‘You suppose Conor loves you. How does that make you feel?’

‘Honestly?’

‘Of course.’

‘It kind of, like, annoys me a little bit. He’s like this puppy. You know the way, sometimes people are so, like, vulnerable, and it just makes you want to, like, kick them?’