She said that she looked up a cookbook to learn how to make mashed potatoes,while Dawson and his two young daughters “sat at the counter watching”. “It was an awful situation,” JC said.

She denied having created an “entirely imaginary scenario” about her life with Dawson at the time.

JC testified on Thursday that the wardrobe was “bursting” with clothes,including Lynette’s,and she had been allowed to go through them to keep anything she wanted.

David suggested Dawson had “nothing to do with” JC wearing any of Lynette’s clothes.

“I would never have put on someone else’s clothes,” she replied.

Asked by David whether she “used to sometimes cut Lynette Dawson out of photographs of the family”,JC said “no”,and denied she was lying.

The defence says Dawson drove his wife to a Mona Vale bus stop to go shopping on January 9,and they had agreed that she would later meet him,their children and her mother at the Northbridge Baths where Dawson was working.

Dawson alleges Lynette called and said,to the effect,“she would not be returning home that day”.

A woman,who cannot be identified as she was a juvenile at the time,gave evidence that she worked at the kiosk at Northbridge Baths during the summer of 1981-82,and had answered a call in “January or February”.

“One phone call I remember fairly clearly is that I picked the phone up and there were long-distance pips,” she said,adding that the high-pitched tones occurred with calls “from out of the Sydney area”.

She said a female had asked to speak with “one of the Dawsons”,either Chris or his identical twin brother Paul,who she could not tell apart. “I don’t remember who it was.”

Asked whether the female had identified herself,she said,“quite likely,but I really can’t remember”.

She told Crown prosecutor Emma Blizard she was unable to hear anything about the call.

The judge-alone trial before Justice Ian Harrison continues.

The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interestingstories,analysis and insights.Sign up here.