I rose from my knees. Carefully, I stood, extracted myself from the tangle of bush, and made my way to the cliff edge. I dangled the piece of paper over the heaving sea below. But I didn’t let it fall from my fingers. Instead, I snatched my hand back and stepped away. I hurriedly returned to the gorse and Maxine’s weather-proof canister.

I hesitated one final time, facing up to the implications of what it would mean to do this. I would be working deliberately against Zac. I would be working with intent for Maxine. I would be changing my emphatic No into an ambivalent Yes.

I thought of Zac and my constant slip-ups at work. I could no longer repress my suspicion that he was behind them, though he would say it was my paranoia, my anxiety, my antenatal depression, that made me imagine such a mad thing. I thought also of the orange notebook with my hospital stories. There was no doubting that one.

What I wrote in that journal was illicit and embarrassing, and I never wanted to share it with anyone. Though there was the small consolation that there was nothing about spying in the journal, and nothing about Zac himself, I still felt my face go red with shame when I imagined him reading it. He had peered into my head and extracted my fantasies without my consent. Is that why the Goddess Diana was so angry and humiliated when Actaeon caught her bathing, naked and in disarray? Though poor Actaeon stumbled upon Diana accidentally. Zac did this on purpose.

And for the first time he had openly threatened me. There was no doubting that one, either. If I were to do anything he considered a betrayal – and I was clear that his definition of betrayal meant anything he didn’t like – then he would expose me. He had a power over me that he gained through trickery.

‘No, Zac.’ I said this out loud. ‘You don’t get to play it this way.’ I slipped the paper inside, screwed the lid on, and returned the canister to its hiding place. Then I walked home, climbed into bed, and slept the sleep of the dead.

Now
Further Warnings

Two years and two months later

Bath, Tuesday, 2 April 2019

When I get back from Cheltenham, I am still wearing the sticky running clothes I put on at dawn. I hurry into my basement flat to shower and brush my teeth. I pull on a pair of faded jeans and a chunky cream jumper, both of which I bought from a charity shop. My hair is wet and there is no time to dry it, so I tie it in a low knot at the nape of my neck and stick a few pins in to hold it there.