Tears move up through my body, carried on a tidal wave of sadness. ‘We were at the market. It was a normal day,’ I say thickly. And now what? My cottage is under offer. The vets’ practice disbanded. Calls unanswered. Facebook pages defriended. Estrangement.

I try to distract myself. There are four rectangular windows along the top of the courtroom, the kind you might find in an old school hall, and I stare up at them, those four little boxes of light. The March sun seems to have finally come out. They’re bleached completely white.

I tell the courtroom about the market. The barrister waits patiently, then begins to probe.

‘So, then – after that,’ he says carefully, ‘the rest of your afternoon was uneventful, but your evening was not, is that right?’ He folds his arms across his body, disturbing the line of his black gown.

‘Yes. It was late.’ I wince. ‘Sorry,’ I say, trying to breathe, trying to collect myself. Trying to remember, here, for this courtroom, and to forget, all at the same time. The car. The body. The blood. That first unknowing step away from everything. Our homes. Our business. Our family dynamic. It was dysfunctional, sometimes, like everyone’s, but it was ours.

‘Can you talk us through it – please? Minute by minute?’

‘Okay,’ I say in a small voice. Jason told me this is exactly the way the questioning would go, but, now that I am here, it feels hostile. Like everything I will say will be met with scepticism.

I look across at the jury. Twelve completely ordinary men and women. Some in suits. The man on the far left surely will become the foreman – he has on large gold-framed glasses and a navy-blue expensive-looking suit, complete with waistcoat. Otherwise, an amorphous mass. The general public. These people who vote in elections and work in offices and shop in supermarkets and watch soap operas. A mainstream group who will take a view – guilty or not guilty – on the events in Verona. Only I have no idea which. I have no idea how it’s going to go. Will they go home and talk about us – my family, me – like we are villains? Corrupt, self-serving? Or like how it was? The desperation, the panic? The accidental cover-up. The cover-up that has its roots in something beautiful, in love, that turned sour, like curdled milk.

I blink, and look straight at the barrister. What is going to happen to me? After all this is over?

I close my eyes against it all, just for a second. I hear somebody clear their throat and I know it’s Joe without even looking. I know because of the tone of it, the pitch, the length of time on the uh before the huh.

I open my eyes but look down at the wood of the witness box, the white plastic cup of water. Anything but look at him.

Jason is seated behind the barrister, encouraging me with his eyes. Unblinking, solemn, reassuring.