Eventually they escape the bustle of the city via the tollway and arrive in suburbia. Skirts and suits are replaced with activewear, and rows of taxis have morphed into mums with prams, but Oli barely registers their surrounds. Her brain is stuck on a loop of old faces: Nicole, Evelyn, Alex. Isabelle.

This bloody story was always going to come back to haunt her, she thinks grimly, tuning out Cooper’s babble. Despite the undeniable surprise, there’s a sense of inevitability in Nicole turning up. Secrets tend to come out eventually, whether they are forced into the light kicking and screaming, or simply float slowly to the surface. The pulsing momentum of unfinished business can be strong. This story was certainly the anomaly in her own resumé, the loose tooth that her mind often felt compelled to probe. She produced pages and pages of copy, spent weeks immersed in the world of the housemates, trying to make something interesting out of the ordinary, all the while arguing the toss with Jo, the whole saga culminating in their popular coverage of Alex’s trial. But in the end, it amounted to very little. The story turned out to be a dud, a nationwide let-down that left everyone feeling cheated, Oli included.

She can still picture the corner of the newsroom back at The Daily: the wall of photos, the piles of paperwork; a dynamic mural of the murder, Alex’s arrest and, ultimately, her trial. The shrine had remained in the office for weeks, almost as if Jo thought that by leaving it there, someone might work out what had really happened—anything to avoid the sustained feeling that the point had been missed. Oli knew her own fascination with the occupants of 28 Paradise Street had bordered on unhealthy, and Isabelle Yardley’s involvement had only compounded her obsession. To be fair, she was hardly alone: the entire country was swept up in the story.

She recalls feeling unsettled by the unchecked judgement that spewed forth from every armchair detective in Australia, all convinced they had the answers. Talkback radio exploded, and the brave new world of online blogs hyperventilated over the saga, flooding the internet with think pieces about the dangers of drugs and female promiscuity, cautionary tales that suggested no one should be surprised that when young women play with fire, they will likely get burned.