There is a particular hush that settles over a courtroom when a recorded voice begins to speak, a voice belonging to someone who is not in the room but whose words must nonetheless be weighed, line by line, by twelve strangers. On Wednesday at Southwark Crown Court in London, that voice was a woman's, describing in a police interview what she says happened at Russell Brand's house in 2009. The trial involves six female complainants, allegations stretching across a decade from 1999 to 2009, and seven charges that Brand, now 51, denies: three of rape, three of sexual assault and one of indecent assault. He has said he has never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity.

The woman told detectives she first met the comedian after a show at the Hammersmith Apollo, when she was still in a relationship with someone else. She said that at their second meeting, at his home, she had agreed only to vaginal sex, and that no conversation about anything further ever took place. Six months later, the jury heard, an unexpected text arrived, saying he wanted to push her further. She says she answered that she thought he had pushed her far enough and that he had treated her like an animal, and that his reply came at once: he was sorry.

Cross-examination, as it often does, turned from what was said to what was chosen. Defence barrister Ian Winter KC suggested that she had gone to the house knowing Brand's reputation and intending to have sex with him. She agreed, adding that she wanted to be clear she had wanted to go and took ownership of that decision. The court also heard that she had been drinking beforehand, and that he had asked her to shower and brush her teeth, which the defence linked to his sobriety and which she attributed to his dislike of the smell of her hair.