After three years of legal arguments, millions of dollars in lawyers' fees and appearances on the stand, the infamous Wagatha Christie trial between footballers' wives Coleen Rooney and Rebekah Vardy is due to end.
On Friday at noon (UK time), a judge will make a ruling in the case that has captivated the local tabloids and coined the "Wagatha Christie" moniker.
Coleen, 36, is the wife of former England player Wayne Rooney, who holds the record for the most international goals for his country, while Rebekah Vardy's husband Jamie has also played and scored for the national side.
Vardy, 40, is suing her former friend for libel after Rooney accused her of leaking persona; stories to the press after staging an elaborate operation to find out who was passing on details of her private life to The Sun tabloid.
Rooney became suspicious when information from her Instagram Stories appeared in the tabloid, and decided to launch a sting operation to find out who was behind it.
Reuters reported when the trial began that Rooney had worked out who was responsible; she said she blocked everyone from viewing her account except one person, and then posted a series of false stories to see whether they leaked - which she said they had.
She wrote on her social media accounts that only one person had viewed the false stories, concluding with the revelation: "It's... Rebekah Vardy's account."
Rooney's lawyer David Sherborne has suggested in the High Court that Vardy used her agent Caroline Watt to leak the stories to the tabloid.
He argued Vardy had conducted a campaign of "deliberate destruction of evidence" by deleting media files and WhatsApp messages.
"Like any good detective story, you never find the person responsible standing over the body with the smoking gun in her hand," Reuters reported Sherborne as saying in court in May 2022.
In response, Vardy's lawyer said Vardy accepted "it's possible that Ms Watt was the source."
The case took another turn when it was revealed Watt's phone had ended up at the bottom of the North Sea after she accidentally dropped it over the side of a boat.
Originally the trial was due to last only seven days.
High court judge Mrs Justice Steyn has spent the last two months considering the evidence and relevant aspects of law.
A verdict is expected in the early hours of Saturday (NZ time).
