Nicola Sturgeon’s memory is a fascinating and frustrating thing.

At times, the former First Minister of Scotland’s powers of recall are quite remarkable. No detail escapes Sturgeonian examination, no nuance goes unnoticed. On other occasions, it fails her completely.

Take her appearance, in March 2021, before a committee of MSPs investigating the Scottish government’s handling of complaints of sexual assault levelled by a number of women against Alex Salmond. On that occasion, Sturgeon’s testimony was notable for its remarkable gaps. She simply didn’t remember details of a key meeting that had taken place just months previously. Even the extraordinary nature of the matters she was discussing could not help fill in the gaps in her recall.

Appearing in front of the UK Covid Inquiry in Edinburgh on Wednesday, Sturgeon showed no trace of that faulty memory. Her recollection was deep and wide. She remembered one particular cabinet meeting, she told counsel to the inquiry Jamie Dean KC, ‘in detail’.

Sturgeon’s day started badly before she’d entered the inquiry’s room in Edinburgh. The modern Scottish establishment’s favourite anti-establishment figure, lawyer Aamer Anwar, launched a remarkable attack on her handling of the pandemic. Anwar, much admired by many in the SNP, said on behalf of the Scottish Covid Bereaved group that, during the pandemic, Sturgeon ‘projected a daily image of sincerity and wanting to do right’ but that this image had been shattered by her own actions.

For Anwar’s clients, the recent revelation that Sturgeon deleted a series of WhatsApp messages, sent and received during the crisis, breaking her promise to make them available remains unforgivable. The inquiry hearing may have been in the business of getting answers about government decision making, but for Sturgeon it was an opportunity to persuade Scots they should have no concerns about her message-deletion.

The former First Minister failed to settle those particular stormy waters. If anything, she added to the churn. During questioning about her promise, on live TV, in August 2021, that she’d make available to a future inquiry all electronic communications, including WhatsApps, Sturgeon confirmed that – even as she was speaking – they’d already been deleted.

Nicola Sturgeon’s star has fallen some way over the past year

So unimpressed were Anwar’s clients with Sturgeon’s testimony on Wednesday morning that they held a press conference at lunch time to denounce her. Displays of emotion by Sturgeon during the hearing were dismissed by one bereaved sister as ‘crocodile tears’.

If Sturgeon didn’t manage to rebuild her reputation under questioning, she managed not to make things appreciably worse for herself.

But the former First Minister, in a most lawyerly performance at the hearing in Edinburgh, failed to reassure.

For much of the hearing, Sturgeon danced on the heads of a succession of pins. On whether some messages had been deleted, she replied that she preferred the words ‘not retained’ to ‘deleted’. Yes, said Dawson, but the messages were deleted, weren’t they? Yes, said Sturgeon.

The First Minister tried to establish firm rules around what actually constituted decision making. So far as she was concerned, cabinet is where decisions are taken and there was a disconnect between this and any preliminary discussions.

Nicola Sturgeon’s star has fallen some way over the past year. Her resignation as SNP leader and First Minster last year threw her party into chaos. Revelations that Police Scotland were investigating allegations of fraud in the SNP while Sturgeon was leader and her husband, Peter Murrell, was chief executive of the party, seriously damaged her standing in the party and across the wider independence movement.

The Covid Inquiry – and the rest of us – will never know whether Sturgeon’s deleted WhatsApps would have been relevant. But it should not have been for the former First Minister to make that call.

Nicola Sturgeon failed during her testimony to shut down this scandal. The families of bereaved Scots are clearly determined to ensure the rest of us don’t forget.