The jury at the Central Criminal Court has learned a little more about Rachel O'Reilly, the 30-year-old mother of two, whose husband Joe stands accused of her murder.
One of five adopted children of Rose and Jim Callaly, she loved wine (her husband barely touched alcohol), her "sneaky ciggies", the cinema and a takeaway.
She was tall and strong, her best friend from school days, Jackie Connor, said yesterday, "very outgoing, active, very helpful, very caring, very sporty, self-sufficient".
While her two little boys were at school, she kept herself busy whizzing around in her Renault Scenic, working part- time for a solicitor across the city and as an agent for Avon cosmetics and Tupperware.
She did not pretend to her old friend that life was perfect.
"She said she wasn't happy, that her family life was
suffering because he was working away a lot and she was on her own a lot," Jackie said.
When Joe O'Reilly telephoned the Callalys and Jackie to say that Rachel had not collected the youngest boy from school at 12.30pm, they all knew immediately that something serious was wrong. "She lived her life for the kids," said her brother Anthony.
"She would have contacted somebody," said Rose Callaly with certainty.
The court heard about the frantic efforts to reach a woman already dead; the shattering experience of finding the brutally beaten, cold corpse of a loved one; the priest who went astray on his way elsewhere and ended up giving absolution to Rachel through a door; the milkman who heard a door slam in an apparently empty house; the swirling rumours, and media speculation.
It was Rose who found her daughter's body that October afternoon.
In a clear, strong voice that faltered only once, she described finding the patio door open and the curtains still drawn, how the two dogs, who usually stormed through the door ahead of visitors, didn't want to follow her in; how the sink tap was running "quite strongly" in the kitchen and how she became increasingly uneasy, until finally she came upon her daughter on the bedroom floor.
"There was lots of blood everywhere . . . I couldn't tell if her face was sideways, it was in such a state.
"As soon as I saw her I knew she was dead and I knew she was murdered. I knelt down beside her and I remember rubbing her arms and they were cold and hard and I knew she was dead a while. I just kept talking to her."
In her 40-minute court ordeal, Rose Callaly's composure cracked only when she was asked what Rachel was wearing. "She had on grey . . . like a big T-shirt and grey leggings. Her feet were bare. That would have been very usual. She often walked in bare feet."
Joe O'Reilly calmly made notes in a jotter on his knee as Rose Callaly described his verbal reaction to the sight of his wife's body.
"His first words - which I thought bizarre - were 'Jesus, Rachel, what did you do?'"
In the following days, "Joe O'Reilly", as she continually described him, was a regular visitor to the Callaly home.
"He said there would be rumours going around that he was having an affair but [ he said] there would also be rumours that we - Jim and I - abused Rachel," she said in the same controlled tones.
He "categorically" denied that he was having an affair, she said.
Asked about their Late Late Showappearance, she noted that Joe O'Reilly and the Callalys travelled together in an RTÉ car to the studio. Afterwards, he left on his own.
By then, according to witnesses, he was already confiding fears that he was "going to be framed".
He had told Jackie Connor that there were "a few hours" where he "was not accounted for" when Rachel was dropping the children to school.
When his brother Derek and a woman called Nicky were arrested - he had introduced the latter to Jackie Connor at a children's Halloween a few weeks after the murder - he told a witness, Naomi Gargan, that Derek was his alibi.
Today, it will be the turn of Jim Callaly, Rachel's father, to take the stand.