Nicole was always considered the key to the whole thing, the missing girl with the missing details. FIND NICOLE, FIND THE ANSWERS, screamed the headlines. HOMICIDE DETECTIVES DESPERATE TO FIND NICOLE HORROWITZ. Dubbed the popular one of the three, Nicole was the nice girl from the nice family with a history of good grades and impressive sporting achievements. Classmates went on the record declaring her charming and charitable. There were rumours, of course—there were rumours about all the girls—but Nicole’s documented warmth and generosity saved her from the most vicious scrutiny. In contrast, Alex was the foster kid with no alibi, fingerprints on the murder weapon and blood on her hands. Her emotional reaction at the house, widely interpreted as a confession, turned into a stubborn silence, and there was little faith in her claim that Nicole had disappeared in the middle of their mysterious night walk without her phone and wallet. And then there was poor Evelyn, the centre of the whole thing, who, despite being stabbed four times in the back and chest, lost a good deal of her posthumous sympathy when it was revealed she’d had a cocktail of illicit drugs charging through her bloodstream and a great deal more hidden in her bedroom.

Cooper is still nattering away, while Oli is now firmly lost in the past. The old frustration returns as she remembers dead end after dead end, the inconsistent story arcs and the nonsensical clues. If Nicole really has turned up in the middle of nowhere, does that mean Alex was telling the truth? Or does it mean something else entirely?

Oli knows the case all but broke Isabelle. Jo even wrote a piece speculating about the strain it had put on the young detective. Dean never went so far as to admit that Isabelle was struggling—not to Oli, anyway—but you could see it on her face plain as day every time she fronted up to the press. Cracks appeared in her usually perfect exterior, and Oli hates to admit she experienced some joy in witnessing Isabelle’s weakness. Back then, the whole police force was under fire, and the media delighted in fuelling the flames: crime statistics splashed across the front pages alongside questions about dead prostitutes, the ongoing gangland wars and the lack of leads in the Carter abduction. After Evelyn was killed, the cops were scrambling, desperate for a conviction.

They got one in Alex Riboni, but Isabelle and Bowman copped a lot of heat for the way the case had been built around convenient forensics and circumstantial evidence. Accusations of incompetence hung in the air, the lack of motive compounding the issue. Alternate possibilities continued to circulate, and by the time Alex was sentenced Oli could almost feel the tide turning, the universal shift that tipped the party-girl orphan from guilty to innocent. Alex was sent to gaol under a maelstrom of doubt.