That is a particular kind of evil, and a particular kind of cunning, and it works precisely because our instinct to protect the vulnerable is a good instinct, one of the best we have, which she had learned to exploit.

And what I saw, in that courtroom, was the performance finally failing.

Because the one thing a person like Selina cannot survive is a context in which appearances no longer determine outcomes, where the performance of victimhood counts for nothing and only the evidence counts.

In my living room, her performance was everything, because there was no one to check it against the truth.

In a courtroom, with an audio recording and forensic evidence and a jury bound to weigh facts rather than feelings, her performance was worthless, and without it, she was nothing but what she had actually done, laid bare.