The opening statements for prosecution and defence laid out two possible narratives, like trailers for the movie the jury would be watching over the next six weeks. The Crown would tell the story of John Santino—a controlling bully and possessive partner who could not endure the idea that Kendra Bartlett would leave him. He had followed her as she attempted to escape and, in a fit of anger, threw her off the overpass with the intention of killing her. The defence narrative rested on a portrait of Kendra as a mentally unstable young woman, further unhinged by the failure of her acting dreams, who took her own life.

Every day of the trial, the new girlfriend, Brooke Lester, arrived on Santino’s arm. He made a big fuss of protecting her from jostling media, leaning his head right into the crook of her neck to murmur reassurances into her ear. She wasn’t as demonstrative with Santino as he was with her but, even so, she clung to his arm and played the loyal partner.

Anita noticed the way Brooke kept her face tilted down, so she was always looking up at people from a low angle, big green eyes peering through her blonde fringe like a nervous forest animal hiding in foliage. It was reminiscent of Princess Diana’s defenceless baby fawn pose, which had always struck Anita as disingenuous and irritating. It was easy for women to slip into such self-deprecating postures. Some years ago, Anita had noticed her own body language in photos: her head tipped slightly to one side in the pose many women adopted. The head tip said, It’s only little me. It was a woman reducing her own power in a group shot, next to suited men who would be staring directly at the camera, heads square on their thick necks. Anita had consciously trained herself not to do that head tip.

During the trial, Santino periodically turned to seek out where Brooke was sitting in the courtroom and mouthed ‘I love you’ to her. She would look up at him through her pale fringe and smile back. Anita scrutinised the faces of the jurors. Were they convinced by this or sickened by it?

The morning the forensic pathologist was on the witness stand, Anita craned her neck to catch a glimpse of Brooke’s face. What was going through that young woman’s head as she heard the pathologist describe Kendra Bartlett’s catastrophic injuries, caused by the fall from the overpass onto the road surface ten metres below and the impact of the truck that then hit her? Her skull shattered, her face pulpy and unrecognisable, her pelvis and so many other bones splintered into pieces it took the pathologist a long time to list them all.