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way ticket to anywhere if I'd had any inkling of this masquerade for Justice. The Jury looked as inanimate as a two rows of cardboard cut-outs and it was difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that those twelve people seated just a few yards away from me had the power to dictate your future.

The judge was sitting on the opposite side of the courtroom and was practically inaudible without a microphone in such a massive room with its huge glass-domed ceiling and bad acoustics.

Two of your accusers were in the row directly behind me: Cally and her brother Kane, sniggering. You'd told me earlier in the week that they'd been making cut-throat gestures from the public gallery after giving evidence. You were directly in front of me in the dock, you who I love so dearly, having to endure all this. All I could see was the back of your head. Perhaps if our eyes had met it would have been even worse. So strange to see you standing there in a suit when I've never seen you wear one before.

"Nice tie!" one of your accusers had come right up to you and had the audacity to say, before one session.

Seated in the court lobby later, waiting for your father to collect us, there was further distress. Mounting conflict between you and the police officer in charge of your case necessitated me placing my hand on your chest to keep you away from him.

What was he doing here anyway? I wondered. Josie swore she saw him talking to the Jury. Isn't that what they call Jury knobbing? God, I wish we had been better informed. You, yourself had seen him taking the prosecution barrister to one side at the pre-trial hearing:"This is a very dangerous man who needs to be locked away," he had told her. Even now his relentless vendetta against you was making its presence felt. Nothing would surprise me with that "No smoke without fire" policy he had adhered to in the course of this investigation. To this day I remain dismayed at his obvious lack of logical thinking to have been so easily convinced by the lies of your accusers. If he is the true villain of this tale then I hope he will reap the just reward for his wickedness, though some would say he was just doing his job. And it was just your rotten luck that he couldn't do it right. I'm not Miss Marple, I don't even read detective stories but I could see quite clearly that everything in this case just didn't add up.

Kane came right up to me sneering and jeering a few inches away from my face; I'd never set eyes on him in my life, but he was

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