By Ben Ando Crime reporter, BBC News

Kate Sheedy appeared in her own witness reconstruction

Kate Sheedy has always been determined not to let the attack she suffered in May 2004 totally dominate her life.

Her injuries were horrific - a ruptured liver, punctured lung, broken ribs and badly gashed lower back.

Yet when, some months after the attack, the police suggested a reconstruction of her movements to assist in their enquiries, she agreed not just to advise but to take part - playing herself.

It was perhaps the best way of ensuring that whatever footage was filmed was as accurate as possible.

She missed going to college at the same time as her friends because of a year-long convalescence.

Now aged 21, the former head girl at Gumley Convent school is at university reading history and politics as she always intended.

Bizarre dreams

Giving her evidence-in-chief, Miss Sheedy retained her composure. Her voice, though soft, was always clear.

On occasions, the prosecutor Brian Altman asked her to speak slowly, or take her story one step at a time, but she was a composed and lucid witness.

Under cross examination she found it harder and broke down in tears as defence barrister William Boyce QC suggested that on the night she was attacked she was more drunk than she had claimed, and that the car that hit her might have been attempting a U-turn manoeuvre.

She also told the court, in answer to another line of questioning from Mr Boyce, of a bizarre dream she had while she was heavily sedated in hospital.

In it, she said a mad doctor was chasing people on a lawn mower and she was asked to remember its licence plate number.

When she awoke, all she could remember of the number was that it contained an L and an M.

Suspect vehicle

She told this to the police, believing that these numbers may have been part of the registration number of the vehicle that hit her, emerging in the dream from her sub-conscious mind.

She had previously told the police that the car that hit her was a white people carrier, and that it had a broken driver's side wing mirror.

The court has previously heard that Levi Bellfield - the accused - had access to a similar vehicle at the time.

As she was asked about her injuries and her time in hospital, she was clearly seen to be wiping away tears and on several occasions the judge, Mrs Justice Rafferty, intervened to suggest to Mr Boyce that it was time to move on to another topic.

As Kate Sheedy gave evidence she looked at her interrogators standing in front of the judge, and occasionally beyond them to the jury and the press benches, but I did not see her look once at the accused, Levi Bellfield.