‘Now,’ Scott pressed her. ‘Let’s try again one more time. You have testified that you knew – Ron Beaumont had confided in you – that his relationship with his wife was in a difficult stage. Isn’t that true?’

‘Yes, he told me that.’

‘And did he tell you the nature of these difficulties?’

‘A little bit.’

‘Did Mr Beaumont tell you anything that suggested he was unhappy or angry with Mrs Beaumont?’

Frannie shook her head. ‘No, I wouldn’t say so. But really I have no idea how he felt. We didn’t talk about them.’

‘But he did tell you he was having difficulties?’

‘I would say so.’

Scott Randall turned over a few pages on his yellow legal pad. He looked at the jury, then back to the witness. ‘Mrs Hardy, do you find Mr Beaumont attractive?’

Her lips went tight. ‘I have never thought about it.’

Scott conveyed his disbelief clearly to the jury. ‘Never thought about it? You obviously had a relationship with him, a close relationship – isn’t that true? And you didn’t notice if he was attractive or not?’

‘I may have noticed, but I didn’t think about it. We were friends, that’s all.’

‘And yet he chose you, and you alone, to confide in about his marital problems.’

‘I don’t know that. He might have confided in other people. I don’t know if it was only me.’

‘Were you two having an affair, Mrs Hardy? Is that it?’

Frannie Hardy was biting down hard on her lower lip. She clipped out the words. ‘I’ve already told you, we were friends.’

Scott Randall remained matter-of-fact. ‘That’s right, that’s what you told me. But friends have affairs all the time. Did his wife find out about you – was that it? Was she going to make problems for the two of you?’

‘I’m not going to dignify that with an answer.’

‘Well, you’d better dignify something with an answer, and pretty soon. You’re digging yourself into quite a hole here – don’t you realize that?’