‘It would be a blessing if we could get you home’

in Holdem’s four-wheel-drive and it was dark and raining, Boyce told the jury. ‘‘The meth came from Stu. We had two or three goes on the pipe each. I think he was getting a bit paranoid because we were talking among ourselves.’’

The two women in the back seat were whispering about Holdem’s driving, holding hands out of fear.

‘‘I was getting worked up as well and telling him to slow it down. It was too fast. It was just erratic and we could feel that he was grumpy, he wasn’t paying enough attention, he was drinking,’’ she said.

‘‘Dylan was trying to keep Stu calm by talking to him and joking and just trying to lighten the mood. I just kept quiet. At some stage he’d pull on the car steering wheel to scare us, and we were in a 4WD so we were afraid we would tip.

‘‘Stu travels that route every day so he was confident on that route. He knew we were going to leave when we got to Blenheim and he knew he wasn’t going to see us again. He was angry.’’

As the 4WD approached a bend north of the Wairau River bridge on State Highway 6, it rolled down a bank into a vineyard, landing upside down.

Boyce had leaned over her friend in the back seat to brace for impact, she told the court.

‘‘I don’t remember where I was, after that... Stu got out of the car and he was just pacing around yelling,’’ Boyce said, tears streaming down her face.

Ambulance staff described how the crash site smelled like cannabis. Debris was strewn across the vineyard: a trail of car parts, clothing and fishing gear. Sutton’s girlfriend called emergency services on her cellphone shortly before 11pm.

‘‘The helicopter couldn’t get to us because it was raining and it was too windy. The police and ambulance came. It was raining quite heavily by that stage,’’ Boyce said.

‘‘The ambulance and police took us to Wairau Hospital. I was there maybe like two weeks. I broke the top of my neck. They call it the hangman’s break.’’

Nina Hagan said the creative, caring ‘‘bright spark’’ she went to school with was different after that. ‘‘She blamed herself and I think that made it even worse. If it was just the crash, that wouldn’t have been that bad, but she blamed herself for the guy dying. She had that survivor’s guilt,’’ Hagan said.

‘‘Usually she’s the one texting everyone to say, ‘come round and have some drinks,’ and then all of a sudden – nothing.

‘‘I’d text her after the crash to see how she was doing, she didn’t want anyone to come to the trial or talk about it. She didn’t want to burden anyone with it.’’

The original Boyce was ‘‘a bit of a teenage rebel’’, who was capable of getting good grades in school, but did not turn up much.

‘‘She would jump in the sea in the middle of winter, and wander where no-one else wandered.’’

Boyce fancied herself a matchmaker – always trying to set up her single friends – and always ensured everyone felt included in a group.hagan said she’d said she wanted to be a counsellor for a while.

Steph Stratton said Boyce liked Harry Potter and Disney movies, named her dog Alice after Alice in Wonderland and dismissed mainstream fashion. She didn’t care what others thought.

‘‘That was her inner child. She was such a free spirit.’’

And there were spontaneous camping trips. ‘‘There was a river she thought was her secret river. She would find a little off-road path and then it would be ‘her’ track. She found some amazing places... We did a lot of unprepared camping. As long as you have music, that’s the main thing.

‘‘She’d say, ‘I don’t care what you listen to – but I’ll hold the auxiliary cord’.’’

But when Holdem came on the scene, Boyce