I live in a quiet village, more a hamlet really, not far from Windermere. A remote and peaceful place, somewhere my past could not follow me, or so I thought. I moved here from Cambridgeshire after Doug and Toby died to be near my elderly parents, and when they died too, I stayed. I’ve built a simple, solitary life for myself, just me and my little dog Rufus, and if the other inhabitants of this tiny community know my story, if they remember the grim details of my murdered family from the newspapers before I came to live amidst them, they’ve kept it to themselves, and for that I’ve been grateful.

But now Hannah’s face is once more front-page news, her trial a media circus, a tabloid editor’s dream. It has everything, after all: two beautiful teenage girls, an affluent successful family torn apart by adultery, kidnap, suicide and murder – and not one of us who played a part in the whole awful business has escaped without blame. Each of our actions another scrutinized detail in the story that has had the nation gripped these past six weeks.

Who knows what the outcome will be? Hannah will almost certainly be sent back to prison – there’ll be no wriggling her way out of this one. How she kidnapped Luke, how she confessed to Emily’s murder – though she’s denying that now, of course. But what of the rest of us? Oliver’s affair with Nadia, her death, the abduction of baby Lana. Such a tangled, complicated web.

It’s become clear that Hannah’s allegations about her mother’s murder can’t be substantiated. After all, who would believe the desperate rantings of a proven liar, killer and kidnapper, over someone like Rose, who’s presented herself so well throughout this trial? A retired surgeon in her late sixties now, responsible for saving the lives of countless children, years of charity work to her name, beloved by her colleagues and community. A dignified, gentle soul. Yes, there’s a lot of public sympathy for Rose, a feeling that she’s suffered enough. That will please her, I’m sure – it always was so important for her to be liked.

Oliver hasn’t come out of it quite so well. Because there were others, apparently, and plenty of them, all ex-students of his, before, during and even long after his affair with Nadia, most of whom have come out of the woodwork telling their stories about how they too were victims of ‘Cheating sex-pest prof’, providing the perfect combination of titillation and schadenfreude the British public so enjoy.