Her name was Lynette Dawson. We're thinking about her daughters.

Listen to this story being read by Adrienne Tam, here.

Today, your news feed has told you that Chris Dawson has been found guilty of killing his wife, Lynette, on Sydney's northern beaches, 40 years ago. 

Depending on how enraptured you were with the true crime podcast The Teacher's Pet, you might feel a moment of joyous satisfaction about the outcome of this case, or a shrugging indifference. Either way, now you'll likely go about your day.

Tonight, when you go to sleep, you won't think of Lynette. Or maybe you will, for just a second. Maybe you'll hope she has found some semblance of peace; that wherever she is, she is no longer in any anguish and pain. And tomorrow, when the sun rises, her name will already be fading into memory. 

In a year or five, you might not even remember who Lynette Dawson was. You might vaguely remember, instead, that podcast, and the journalist who caught a killer. 

But for the people who loved her - her daughters Shanelle and Sherryn, her sister Pat, her brothers Greg and Phil, her niece Renee, her friends - today's verdict will bring something beyond the satisfying conclusion to an intriguing zeitgeist plot point.

Because for them, Lynette is more than a mystery to be solved, more than a smiling face in an old photograph.

She is a real person. She is loved. 

And once upon a time, she loved. Fiercely. 

For the people who loved her, today's verdict will bring some form of closure. But it will never be enough. Because Lynette is still gone. 

When she vanished, Lynette's daughters were just two and four. Now fully grown adults with families of their own, they've grown up with a constantly spooling nightmare that most of us will never understand.

For them, this is not a happy ending. They already lost their mother. Today, they have likely lost their father too. 

Lynette Dawson and one of her daughters. Image: AAP.

They've grown up with his version of the story of their mother - that she walked out on them, without a word. And they've now been handed the true version of events - that their father, their protector, their constant, was the one who took her from them. 

How do they reconcile that? How does anyone reconcile that?

Over the years, two families have been at war over these different stories. Through that battle, these women have lost even more. Missed birthdays and anniversaries. Graduations. Engagements. Things we all take for granted.

It's an impossible place to be; this place where seeing justice served for a member of your family means losing another, when you have already lost so much already.

Until four years ago, when The Teacher's Pet was released, Lynette's daughters' grief - and that of her family - was private. And while the podcast brought their mother's case out from the cold, it also brought with it all the heat of public scrutiny, innuendo, gossip, amateur sleuthing and morbid interest from the ferocious appetite of true crime.

Now millions of people around the world, who were waiting for that all important verdict to come through, are rejoicing on their behalf.

This fascination has followed Lynette's daughters throughout their lives, on first a small, and then a global scale, and it's coloured every aspect of the lives they've built in its shadow, and will go on to live from here. 

So while it's just and right that Chris Dawson's long-held secret was forced into the light today, Shanelle and Sherryn still lose.

Everyone who loved Lynette loses. She was killed by the man who was supposed to love and protect her. Forty years is not possible to re-live. 

Tonight, Lynette's daughters will likely go to sleep thinking of their mother and their father.

And tomorrow, and for the rest of their lives, they will have to live with today's verdict, and all it means.