The jury was brought in and as Marcy watched them, seven women and five men of varying ages and ethnicity, she was trying to imagine how they were going to react when they saw her face for the first time. It would be perhaps the most damning evidence of all against Archie, probably enough to make up their minds there and then for a conviction. After all, what more would they need to see to feel certain that he’d behaved recklessly enough to endanger life? However, once they’d heard the testimony she, Claudia, and Helen had prepared, it might persuade them to look at things in a different way.

It was the best she could hope for and in spite of how she was feeling right now, she remained determined to go through with it.

“Here he is,” Jasmine murmured, and as Maria let out a wail all eyes went to Archie being escorted into the dock by two prison officers. He was wearing a navy suit that Dan had helped Maria to choose for him, a cream-colored shirt and a tie that didn’t look comfortable around his muscular neck. He kept his eyes down, and didn’t even look up when one of the officers spoke to him.

This was Marcus’s doing, Claudia kept thinking. His compulsion to control and punish her, and remind her that even where he was he could still reach her, had brought this tragedy into their lives.

But Archie should have, could have walked away, and that was the case the prosecution was going to make, a case against which there was really no good argument to offer.

As soon as Mrs. Justice Kerr was seated, proceedings got underway with the reading of the indictment. As they’d known he would, Archie responded guilty to the first charge—aggravated arson with the intention to destroy property; and not guilty to the second—aggravated arson being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.

The Crown’s opening statement followed, a bitter excoriation of Archie’s background and character along with countless instances of his—no other way to describe it—reckless disregard for human life that culminated in what had happened to Ms. Marcy Kavanagh. It was such a merciless taking apart of a young man and his failure as a decent and worthy member of society that Jasmine had to take Maria outside before someone forced her to go for sobbing so noisily.

“I di’ my best,” Maria choked, as she went. “I swea’ di’ my best.”

Marcy only wished she could have left with them, for next came the wholly unedifying experience of hearing herself and her family being spoken about by the prosecution with such crowing pity, indignant righteousness, and outrage that she kept wishing it would stop. There was no doubt, however, that it was resonating well with the jury.