After a composed performance in front of the world's media on Thursday, the former British au pair Louise Woodward slipped out of her home in Cheshire yesterday to visit her grandparents for the first time in two years.
Her departure came just over an hour before the arrival of a BBC reporter, Martin Bashir, who will conduct the first interview with Ms Woodward about the death of Matthew Eappen and her time in prison in America since her return to Britain.
The interview, for BBC's Panorama programme for which she will not be paid, is expected to be broadcast "within the next few days". Ms Woodward was expected to begin filming the interview yesterday and her mother, Mrs Susan Woodward, explained why the family had chosen the programme.
"We gave it to Panorama because it's a well-respected, hard-hitting programme. We thought it was the fairest way to get the interview to everyone," she said.
Previously those who have found themselves in the public eye have used Panorama to tell their story. Perhaps the most noted example was the emotional "queen of hearts" interview given by the late Diana, Princess of Wales. She told Bashir about the breakdown of her marriage, her affairs, and famously attacked her former husband, Prince Charles, by saying she did not believe he was fit to be king.
In a reference to that interview, Mrs Woodward said: "Louise is no Princess Diana. She won't be hounded to her death. She just wants to get on with her life. Matthew's death has been difficult for her and she has not had time to deal with it properly."
Asked what her daughter did when she returned home from Boston, Mrs Woodward said: "She had a cup of tea. She had a lie-in this morning and she's doing fine."
As Ms Woodward begins the process of rehabilitation, a British newspaper has criticised her attack on the American legal system. At a press conference at Manchester airport on Thursday, she claimed she had not received a fair trial because of "atrocious pre-trial publicity", but according to a Times editorial yesterday that claim "does not convince at all". The Daily Mail described her performance as "assured, articulate, assertive", while the Sun said her comments during the press conference were "as convincing a plea of innocence" as it had heard.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail admitted last night that it had paid money for exclusive access to the Woodward family after the initial guilty verdict in the Eappen case last year.
The paper did not mention a figure, but according to a report in the Sun, it was in the region of £40,000.