I watch Connor’s face as the jury files back into the courtroom. He doesn’t show any sign of emotion, just stares straight ahead. The dazzling smile and bravado that has carried him through life, has charmed men and women alike, convinced them to do as he asked, to believe his version of events, has deserted him. He looks small, diminished.

The last seven months have brought me to the very limit of what I thought I could endure. Once I made the call to the police I thought the hard part was over, that the weight of the legal system would come down on Connor and relieve some of the anxiety and fear I’d been feeling. Little did I know that the hardest part was still to come.

When Connor was arrested he not only protested his innocence but repeated the lies he had told to Lottie: that I’d got drunk that night then I’d woken up the next day, hung-over and regretful at having blacked out, and decided to accuse him of rape. He pointed out my subsequent decline, leaving my job, my ‘unhinged’ spree of visiting houses under different guises and, of course, Geoffrey Rivers’s death. Even though I was cleared of that entirely, he maintained I wasn’t as innocent as everyone thought.

With Connor refusing to admit what he had done, I was faced with the decision of whether to go ahead and face a trial that could see every aspect of my life dragged out and scrutinized. As nicely as she could, my barrister pointed out that I would be painted as an unreliable witness: a woman in a seemingly stable relationship, with an Instagram page full of loved-up photos of the two of us at the time of the alleged rape, a woman who went on to dupe estate agents in a bizarre game that got me tangled up in a murder case.

The odds were stacked against me, but I decided to proceed. I needed to prove that what Connor did to me that night was wrong, criminally wrong, and to do that I would have to be brave. I thought of my mother, how she hid those headaches from us because she didn’t want to worry us, didn’t want to cause a fuss, and I tried to imagine what she would say if she were here. She would want me to stand up for myself, want me to have the life she never had, a long and healthy one, free of fear. I knew it was going to be daunting, but I knew I had Georgie and Jack and Lottie behind me. I had no choice, I told myself, I had to see this through, had to see justice served.