She looked down at the list of names of her fellow jurors and a brief description of each of them to help her remember them. A disparate group of people, none of whom seemed to have anything much in common with any of the others. They’d spent much of Thursday closeted in the jury room, apart from being allowed to leave the court building and go into town during the lunch period. Most of them passed the time reading, doing emails, some with headphones listening to music or watching films or television on their hand-helds. As well as talking, some of them increasingly argumentatively. A recurring complaint had been the lack of convenient parking in Lewes.

One particularly annoying juror, a woman in her early fifties, Gwendoline Smythson, told them she cycled the five miles to court from her country home. She had suggested they all do that and then they would have no problem with parking.

Meg had pointed out that would have meant a fourteen-mile cycle ride each way, much of it along perilous main roads. Another juror, who lived near Hastings, indignantly said it would mean a thirty-mile trip each way – again, much of it along main roads.

The one juror who made Meg smile was Hari Singh, a chef. He worked in a modern Brighton restaurant. He’d arrived on Thursday morning with a bag full of samosas, one for each juror. It had amused her to see the stiff, hesitant reactions from the two crusties on the jury to his act of generosity and kindness.

Late afternoon on Thursday they were informed by the jury bailiff that the trial would resume on Monday morning. But by then tensions were rising among the jurors, firstly over whether the person they elected as foreman should be called, as they were now known, the foreperson. And secondly – and more vociferously – over who should have the role.

The retired cop, Mike Roberts, a former Hampshire Police senior homicide detective, had volunteered to take it on. In Meg’s view, he would be good: he had both experience of the law and a calm authority about him. But Hugo Pink, with his arrogant self-importance, had thrown his hat in the ring. So had the retired actuary, Harold Trout, who was insisting he had the best credentials.

For God’s sake, Meg thought, what the hell did it matter? She hadn’t as yet put herself forward and was slightly disappointed none of the other female jurors had. Maybe she should enter the fray herself on Monday. Laura would have fought like hell to have been in that position if she was one of the twelve, she knew.

But at this moment, swigging her second or perhaps third glass of Taittinger champagne and finishing a sumptuous seafood lunch in the owners’ enclosure at Plumpton Racecourse, feeling decidedly – and very pleasantly – tipsy, all of that was forgotten.