The two friends had agreed to go for a Sunday walk along the coastal path from Coogee. Anita had suggested this activity, explaining, ‘I’ve been sitting on my arse in that courtroom for so many weeks, my leg muscles will waste away if I don’t stomp in weight-bearing mode for at least ten kilometres.’

Sometimes Paula found the Bondi and Coogee area unappealing, almost harsh—mostly treeless hillsides covered in squat, unlovely apartment blocks, swathes of concrete, with a few patches of stunted salty vegetation. But then she would turn her head and the ravishing beauty of the ocean would gazump all of that.

Paula and Anita walked for an hour, then stopped for a sandwich in a cafe along the route. But as Anita talked nonstop about the Santino case, her fervour was ratcheting up, too loud and too intense for the crowded communal space of a coastal cafe on a bright Sunday afternoon.

‘Just take a breath,’ Paula advised her.

‘You’re right. Yes. Sorry. I’m talking too loudly. Are people looking at me—“Why is that woman so fucking loud?” Am I being too loud?’

‘Maybe a bit.’

‘Let’s scurry out of here. You’ve finished eating, haven’t you?’

They resumed their walk, following the curve of the beach, with Anita striding along, burning up some of her excess voltage. But she continued talking, barely pausing to breathe between words.

She ranted to Paula about the sixty-something male GP who had testified as part of the defence case. This doctor had prescribed antidepressants to Kendra Bartlett when she was brought to see him by Santino’s sister Marina. He had asked Kendra only a handful of questions—most of which Marina answered on her behalf—and then he wrote her a prescription for Lexapro.

‘Is he allowed to do that?’ Anita asked. ‘I mean, he sees Kendra one time and he can pump her full of happy pills?’

The doctor’s negligence frustrated Paula as much as it did Anita, but she wasn’t entirely surprised—guys like that were out there. ‘Look, I can’t explain exactly what that doctor was thinking.’

‘No, I know. Sorry. You’re not responsible for every GP in the country. Although—sidebar—things would work much better in our nation if you were running everything. And really, it’s Marina: she’s the dodgy character in that scene.’

Anita gave Paula a run-down on Marina’s performance on the witness stand during the week, acting out the testimony in character, conveying Marina’s motherly protectiveness towards Santino, even though she was several years his junior.