As she pulls into the car park cameras are shoved up against the car windows and flashbulbs pop, forcing her to hold up a hand to shield her eyes. She wants to stop, to wind down the window, to scream that she’s not part of their news story, that her life has been destroyed too. But she doesn’t. She nudges the car through the mass of bodies then navigates around the car park until she finds the perfect spot to tuck her Volvo V70 out of sight. She turns off the engine and leans back into the headrest. Did the photographers get any useable photos? Did she look distraught or angry? How will the journalists caption them in tomorrow’s papers? Will they paint her as a victim – the loyal wife, supporting her husband despite everything? Or the villain – a complicit accomplice in a terrible crime? The jury – the social media jury, anyway – was split when Tom was sentenced. Some interpreted the look on Kate’s face as she climbed the steps to the courthouse as ‘hard-nosed and cold’. Others thought she looked tired and sad.

She takes another steadying breath then glances at her watch. It’s 8.57 a.m. Anthony Broadhurst, Tom’s lawyer, said he would be released sometime between nine and ten a.m. She’d meant to arrive much earlier, eight thirty at least, but she dithered so long over what to wear – ditching the navy suit she’d selected yesterday in favour of a skirt and a cashmere jumper (softer, less austere) – that time had sped away.

She shifts in her seat to take another look at the press, wondering why they haven’t followed her into the car park, and spots two flashes of yellow neon amongst the dark coats. Police, preventing the press pack from hounding her. She isn’t sure whether to feel relieved or irritated at the sight of their yellow vests and black peaked caps. She can still remember how airless and cold it felt in the station’s interview room, how dispassionately her interrogators looked at her and how bleak and broken she felt.