The notorious Revolver trial of James Miller finally began today at London’s Old Bailey. Mr Miller, the millionaire club promoter and record producer, is accused of smuggling heroin; the consignment police seized holds a street value of £2.5million. The drug was allegedly contained in a shipment of marble and wooden furniture bound for Miller & MacAvoy’s new super-club Revolver, based in Smithfield. A last-minute development means Miller will now stand trial along with co-defendant Saquib Baheev; both men are said to be pleading not guilty. Miller’s wife, Rose, formerly Rose Langton, was at the court today, although his business partner, Liam MacAvoy, is still out of the country; there has been no suggestion of MacAvoy’s involvement in the case.

Prior to the birth of her three children, Mrs Miller enjoyed an award-winning career as an investigative journalist, but she declined to comment outside court today.

The Sunday morning before the trial finally began, I awoke to find Effie staring at me.

‘Open your eyes, Mummy,’ she was saying, squishing my cheeks between small hands. I opened and shut them again quickly. I felt vertiginous: like I was at the top of the ski-jump in Innsbruck where James and I had gone when we still did things like that, the Christmas before Alicia was conceived.

I screwed my eyes up tight; saw myself as a minute speck waiting at the top of the mighty white expanse – about to hurtle off the end into oblivion.

‘Open,’ Effie insisted. Reluctantly, I did. She stuck a small finger in my eye.

‘Ow!’

‘I want a biscuit, Mummy,’ she guffawed with delight. ‘Now.’

It had been the strangest year of my life. A year of guilt and unrest. A whole year after the party where Katya had fallen to her death and my world had finally split open like someone had cleaved it clean down the middle.

As soon as the case was over, whatever the outcome, we’d move from the Cotswolds. I’d relinquished the delusion that I could ever make it home now; valiantly I’d endured the gossip and the stares until finally everyone got tired of us and forgot the scandal. Surprisingly, a few had shown true friendship; even Helen Kelsey had insisted on making me a weekly casserole, for which my kids were eternally grateful. Properly cooked food, made with care – unlike my burned offerings. I realised James’s story about her crush had probably been a downright lie.

My mother packed the children into the car that breezy April afternoon and took them up to Derbyshire. For the duration of the trial I’d stay in London with Jen or Xav, and see the children at the weekends.

I kissed them bravely and then my mother hugged me. ‘Good luck, Rosie. I hope it goes all right.’