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cells were found for the weekend before more permanent lodgings.

"When we arrived there they didn't give us any food. They didn't give us blankets. They didn't give us towels. They didn't give us soap, toilet paper, no toothbrush." The men were told the basic hygiene needs would wait until the next day. "So when I had to go to the bathroom, I can do nothing to clean myself," Dotcom says. "There was no towel for us after a shower, or other basic amenities." Already, Dotcom was struggling to believe stumbling blocks of this sort weren't being laid deliberately.

Back at Coatesville, Mona was enduring her own anxiety. When the police moved in on the mansion, she was evicted along with others and had taken refuge at the guest house on the property. On the evening of the raid, she had begun feeling abdominal cramps and pain. For a woman who was 27 weeks pregnant, the anxiety of the day was now compounded by fear for her unborn twins, and she sent Tempero out in search of help. She, and others there, had lost their phones in the police raid — they were swept up under the unlawfully broad wording of the search warrant. Tempero had headed down the hill to where police were standing guard over the mansion, still being searched by a team of officers.

"I went to them and said Mrs Dotcom needs to go to hospital. They said you need to ring 111 and call an ambulance," he recalled. The response left him cold — it was a harsh rejection for a woman who was 27 weeks pregnant with twins.

It would be days before Dotcom was able to speak to Mona, but the later discovery of the treatment suffered that night embedded an understanding that she was truly alone and there was nothing he could do for her.

His anxiety over Mona's plight, and the family's future, dominated the first sleepless night in jail. It was their first time apart since they had been married four years earlier. "I didn't have a chance to talk to my wife. Imagine, your wife is seven months pregnant with twins, she's just been through the biggest trauma. The kids, you're thinking about them, how are they feeling, how are they coping. By this time I knew all the accounts were frozen. Who's going to get food? How do they pay for electricity? There are so many things.

"You are in this unbelievable, threatening situation. You have your whole family to worry about. You have young kids, little kids, and you know you can worry so much that you are actually heartbroken. You feel sick — sick to your stomach. I couldn't keep food in, I couldn't eat. I lost 16kg in jail. I was so sick about the whole situation, I wasn't able to keep any food in or sleep."

It was difficult to grasp the speed with which it had happened. His company — seven years in the making — had been torn from the

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