Catherine Nevin toyed with the wedding ring she still wears on her finger as she calmly waited for sentencing proceedings to begin in the Central Criminal Court yesterday.
Dressed in a red and black tartan suit, she arrived in a prison van an hour before her appearance in Court 3, showing no ill effects from serving two months in Mountjoy of her life sentence for murder. Her hair and nails were carefully presented.
"I thought the place would be black so I came early," said Mary, a middle-aged woman from Raheny, who said she sat in the public gallery for six days of the murder trial. "My husband says I'm obsessed. When she went down for it, the hairs stood up on my arms," she added.
Mary shuffled up the bench to make room for Mr Tom Nevin's seven brothers and sisters, who had travelled to Dublin to see their sister-in-law sentenced for the three charges of soliciting men to kill Mr Nevin. Their brother was shot dead in 1996 in Jack White's Inn, Co Wicklow, by a still-unidentified killer.
Nevin was flanked by her sister for the hour-long proceedings, while her brother looked on from the public benches. The two women flicked through Bread for the Journey - a paperback book of prayer containing meditations for each day of the year.
Because of her previous lifestyle, Nevin may find incarceration hard to take, Garda Supt Pat Flynn told the court. Defence counsel Mr Patrick MacEntee SC cited her age, (49), her kidney complaint and her "exemplary" work record in the licensed trade, as reasons for leniency.
Ms Justice Carroll handed down three concurrent seven-year sentences rather than the 10-year maximum, and said she had no intention of lecturing Nevin.
Mr MacEntee's request for a certificate for leave to appeal the murder conviction was denied, even though he insisted there were "numerous grounds".
The jury had been contaminated by media reports and the prosecution had failed to make adequate discovery of documents relating to possible IRA connections with the Nevin pub, he said.
But the judge was having none of it. "So be it," Mr MacEntee relented, and a short time later his client climbed back into a prison van as photographers and cameramen swooped for the day's final glimpse of the femme fatale.