Gray arrived home sometime around 1.50pm, the court heard. Around 20 minutes, she messaged her boss saying she had had to go home because she was feeling unwell.
At 2.46pm, Butler and Gray rang 999.
In a statement read out to the court, Gray’s work colleague Tracey Bernstein said she suspected something “was just not right” throughout the short time the defendant was in the office on October 28.
Gray, a graphic designer, had only been with the company for less than two weeks, the jury were told.
Ms Bernstein said: “She gathered her things, just stood up and walked out.
“The way she got up was just not right. I had the feeling she was walking out of the job and not coming back.
“I wondered if she just had enough and it wasn’t for her.”
Ms Bernstein said Gray had come into work and told her her partner was down in Cornwall, looking after his ill father, and that Ellie was being looked after by her godfather.
Other colleagues saw Gray on the phone shortly before she left the office.
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Derek Greenwood, the taxi driver who picked Gray up in central London and drove her back to Sutton, took the witness stand just before the court broke for lunch.
He said she seemed “quite keen and desperate to get a cab”.
Mr Greenwood said: “She said ‘Can you take me? My child is really ill.’
“She was quite anxious. I said yes to the fare.”
He remembered her talking on her phone during the journey, he told the jury, and hearing the words ‘You’re joking’ and ‘You’ve done what?’ or ‘You’ve gone where?’
He said: “I remember hearing ‘you’ve gone where?’ because I was waiting to be told to change the destination.”
Gray, Mr Greenwood said, was “slightly agitated” during the journey and paid cash for the £50 fare.
“She paid me and was gone,” he said.
The next evening, while watching local TV news and a report about Ellie’s death, he realised his fare might have been a significant one, Mr Greenwood said.
He will be cross-examined after lunch.
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After the lunch break, taxi driver Mr Greenwood said he was set to refuse to take Gray to Sutton because storm damage had left felled trees in the roads outside central London.
But Gray’s alleged plea about her sick child made him change his mind.
Under cross-examination by Bernard Tetlow QC, for Gray, Mr Greenwood said: “I distinctly remember those words [’Can you take me? My child is really ill’ as allegedly said by Gray] because it made me take the job. I was going to refuse the job.”
