I realise I’m holding my breath, anticipating what’s going to come next. I don’t want to hear it, but I know I need to.

‘Tell me,’ I say, my voice almost a whisper.

‘Look, I’m meant to be able to spot this stuff in people. It’s my job. Because of that, I presumed I was safe. I mean, who’d try this sort of shit with a detective? But he’d been trying to alienate me from my friends and family, causing money issues. I had letters and emails go missing. Same as you.’

‘Tell me who he is. What he’s done.’

Jess takes a deep breath, then lets it out. ‘He told you his parents were dead, yes?’

I nod.

‘They’re not. They’re alive. They live locally. Down towards Polperro. He had a falling out with them years ago. Didn’t have a great childhood, apparently. They couldn’t pin him down and he just went off the rails. Blamed them for it. Then he meets Erin.’

Jess stops talking for a moment and seems to be trying to compose herself.

‘What happened with Erin?’ I ask.

Jess looks out of the window and shakes her head slowly. It looks like she’s trying not to cry.

‘She didn’t leave him, Grace. She didn’t take their daughter away. They died.’

43

I don’t know what I should be feeling, and I certainly don’t know what I do feel. My immediate instinct is to feel sorry for Tom, for the man I love. But I know there’s more to it than meets the eye.

‘What happened?’ I ask.

‘According to what I could find out, it was a car accident. A hit and run. Tom had been in the pub drinking all afternoon and had rung Erin for a lift home. She’d put the baby in the car and they’d driven out to collect him. They were on a road just outside town when it happened. Their car was found in a ravine. They were both pronounced dead at the scene. They found the other car later that night, but it had been burnt out. The driver was never found.’

‘When?’ I ask. But I think I already know the answer.

‘A couple of years back. The same time he claims they walked out and left him. The same time he says his parents died in a car accident. His parents didn’t die, Grace. Erin and the baby did. Tom couldn’t process that, so he twisted it in his mind. He couldn’t bear the thought that they’d just been taken from him in such a totally random and unexplainable way. Maybe he felt guilty that they’d only been on that road that night because of him, because they were picking him up because he’d gone out and got blind drunk again. In his mind, he twisted it so that never happened. They’d just walked out on him and left him. All of a sudden he was the victim. And he got to explain his parents away at the same time. If there were any two people he wanted to die in a horrible accident, it was them. He invented a whole new reality. One that suited him.’