That night, she and Rohan celebrated with a ritual destruction of all contraception and they fell pregnant that same week. Anita liked to imagine her egg and his sperm hovering there, waiting for the DPP to make a decision—and then, the minute the no-bill came through, the gametes rushed towards each other to make a baby.

Anita knew her way around the car park at Silverwater Women’s Correctional Centre now. She’d visited every week, sometimes twice a week, for the nine months Paula had been an inmate.

Paula had been arrested the day she was discharged from hospital, as expected, then taken to Central Local Court and charged with assaulting the two men in the pub. Rohan was confident she would be granted bail, but Paula had declined to apply. Everyone, except Anita, was bewildered by her decision.

From the very beginning, Paula offered guilty pleas to the assaults and, after four months on remand, the sentencing hearing was set down for a court in Wollongong. Anita wanted to be there for the hearing and Rohan took the day off to go with her. It was a strange kind of outing for the two of them.

Many friends, colleagues and patients had offered Paula financial help for legal costs and suggested themselves as character witnesses, but she declined all of that, insisting that nothing be done and no evidence presented to mitigate her sentence.

In the Wollongong courtroom, Paula’s lawyer looked uncomfortable to be following her rigid instructions, anxious he wasn’t doing a proper job for his client, but Paula appeared composed, resigned, relieved that this process was being finalised.

The judge, a thoughtful, compassionate woman in her fifties, seemed as uncomfortable as the lawyer about the lack of material being presented on Paula’s behalf.

‘This is a curious matter,’ the judge said, baffled, scanning the papers in front of her as if they might suddenly offer up some clarification she hadn’t noticed before. ‘The accused is clearly a woman of prior excellent character and the court can take the early guilty plea as an indication of remorse. However, the accused has offered no explanation for her actions and the injuries she inflicted are serious.’

The judge sentenced Paula to eighteen months, with twelve months’ non-parole.

On the drive home from Wollongong, Rohan didn’t say anything at first and Anita didn’t want to misjudge the moment by chatting about something trivial, so they travelled in silence for a long time.

Eventually he said, ‘You know, Paula could have avoided a custodial sentence, most likely.’

‘I know.’

‘I mean, I would happily have testified on her behalf—about the trauma with Stacey and the children. We could’ve organised psych assessments, character witnesses. There was no need for her to cop a sentence that tough.’