Sandra Lean
Ronnie Mothersole that might be how some of us would understand "just left," but there was some discussion at appeal about how the timescale could be vastly different between different individuals - an older friend of mine, when prompted about times, would say, "in the last wee while," which could, in reality, be anything up to a couple of hours!!!!
I don't think we can generalise the use of "just left" to personal understandings of the term - although I can see how many people would assume that to be a short amount of time, it is, still, an assumption.
Another thing we'd have to consider is AO's awareness of the passage of time. If he's come out of the loo and zoned out in front of the tv, he might not have been aware of how much time had passed when the phone rang. He hadn't eaten yet, so there would be nothing, really, for him to compare timings against.
Different, I'd say, from JuJ, who was making a meal with specific timings for specific elements of the meal - she was consciously clock watching for various things to be ready for the next stage.
Of course, I'm not saying any of this WAS the case for AO - it might actually be the case the "they" (whoever "they" are) had just left within the last 5 - 10 minutes - as with so much in this case, we just don't know!
Notice how the pretend criminologist uses the word ‘awareness’ but in relation to ‘timings’ not in relation to how AO would have been aware it was [Name removed] who ‘just left’ and not [Name removed].
