But before Anita had a chance to say any of the words, the door behind her squeaked open and, in the mirror, she saw Brooke’s face harden with fear.

‘There you are, Brooke, my darling! Are you okay?’

Marina Santino’s tone was syrupy—sweet enough to bring on a diabetic coma—but there was no denying the anxiety on Brooke’s face when she saw her boyfriend’s sister walk into the ladies.

Marina slid her manicured hands across the young woman’s shoulders and steered her away from the basins, away from Anita. ‘We’ve got to get you to a doctor’s appointment, honey!’

Then Marina flipped her attention to Anita, explaining, ‘Obstetrician appointment. Very exciting. But we’re late!’

She whisked Brooke out into the corridor.

After the encounter in the ladies, there was no sign of Brooke Lester for the remainder of the trial, but Marina was in Court 3 for the final two days, a conspicuous and potent presence. She announced—loudly enough to be overheard—that Brooke was ‘shaken up to see Johnny getting upset on the stand’, so she was staying home to rest.

The closing addresses by the two barristers were as Anita would have predicted. Hugh Warby’s summary of the case against Santino was pedestrian, with a vocal intonation that dribbled downwards towards the end of each statement, as if Warby himself was unconvinced by his own arguments.

Gilbert Woodburn was at his magnetic, cunning best, sweeping the jury through the evidence as if he was retelling the plot of a mesmerising true-crime podcast about a man falsely accused. He appealed to the jurors’ vanity: surely they were smart enough to see through the apparently suspicious material they’d heard; surely they were wise enough to appreciate that a man could be foolish, but that didn’t mean he was homicidal. Woodburn left space for the jury to feel huge sympathy for poor anguished Kendra Bartlett, so there was no need for them to swing that sympathy into the guilty column of the ledger. He concluded by using his deep, authoritative voice at its most compelling—this was a sad story but not a story of murder. Acquittal was the only sensible verdict.

Anita surveyed the faces of the jury as they listened to Woodburn. She’d developed theories about each juror, assumptions based on gender and other markers, plus her observation of their reactions during the trial. But there was really no way to know.

When the twelve people retired to deliberate, Anita kept replaying Rohan’s reminder: ‘The jury aren’t crazy.’ Despite the omissions in the evidence and the clunkiness of the prosecution, there had to be a filament of hope the jurors would make the right decision.