Hearing the distress in her husband’s voice, Trish jumped in. ‘We saw it on the news—Brooke going into the courthouse. We didn’t even know she was pregnant until we saw it on TV. Then one day I turned to Rob and I said, “Let’s drive up there, try and talk to her.”’

The Lesters had been driving up from Wollongong every day during the last weeks of the trial. They’d taken leave from their jobs—Rob was an electrician and Trish worked in the kitchen of an aged-care home.

‘How long since you’ve spoken to Brooke?’ Anita asked.

Trish looked at Rob, as if making the calculation in his face. ‘It’ll be a year next month,’ she said. ‘We got into a big argument with her—about him.’

‘Santino.’ Rob Lester pronounced the name with a shiver of distaste.

Trish described Brooke meeting Santino on an online dating site and being spun around by the seductive bombardment from her new boyfriend—flowers delivered every day to the homeware shop in Sydney where she had been working, romantic texts filling her message bank, limousines arriving to take her to expensive restaurants, weekends in posh hotels, and promises of overseas holidays they would go on once he wasn’t restricted by his bail conditions.

‘So did Brooke talk about the murder investigation her new boyfriend was facing?’ Anita asked.

Rob Lester nodded. ‘She always defended him: “Poor Johnny”.’

‘In a weird way, I think it tied her to the guy more strongly,’ Trish added. ‘Like, here’s this man suffering over his girlfriend’s death, who gets unfairly charged with murder. It made Brooke feel an urge to support him even more.’

‘She quit her job so she’d be available whenever he needed her.’ Rob sighed heavily. ‘She stopped seeing her friends because Johnny needed her.’

‘We tried to get on with the bloke,’ Trish insisted. ‘I mean, that’s what you do. You can’t question your daughter’s choice of boyfriend …’

‘But what if her choice is a grub like John Santino? What do you do then?’ Rob asked.

Anita made a murmur of helpless sympathy.

‘A year ago, she tried to break up with him,’ Trish said. ‘She came home to Wollongong, crying and crying, wouldn’t say why. Rob thought—’

‘He hit her. I saw the bruises. That mongrel hit her,’ the father growled.

‘But then John kept ringing, sending flowers and whatnot to the house, and she said she was moving in with him. That’s why we had the big row.’

‘And when she went back to him, she cut off contact with you?’ asked Anita.

Rob nodded and flopped his head back. ‘Look, I lost my temper on the phone a couple of times—said some things I wish I hadn’t said.’

Trish rubbed the back of her husband’s hand, reassuring. ‘Santino made it like Brooke had to choose—him or us.’