The phone buzzed in my hand. Another text.

Come alone

5.31 p.m. Ben mob

I stared at his latest message for a moment before returning to the Google Earth image. Come alone. It hadn’t occurred to me to do anything else, but I would need to take precautions. Get there early and check the place out. Tell Mel where I was going, too? I couldn’t bring myself to confide in her, not yet. She had kept the truth from me for months, and it was better that she didn’t know her ex-lover was asking to meet. No one at school could know either, because meeting him on a Monday morning meant taking a sickie from work. Nor could Adam, because I knew he’d advise me against the meeting, but it was something that I had to do. Should I take a weapon, in case Ben kicked off? Bad idea. Really bad.

There was a much better option.

I found the business card with PC Khan’s name on it and dialled the number. It went through to a duty sergeant and I explained who I was, asking that a message to be passed on to the demand management inspector as soon as possible in the morning, telling them where and when Ben had asked to meet. I asked – if it was possible – for an officer to meet me at the entrance to the country park so they could see Ben for themselves. See that he wasn’t missing any more. Put an end to this charade.

The printer clicked and hummed as it printed a map of the park. Paths, tracks, a lake, a car park, a road running through the middle of it all. I drank the last of the red wine and just sat there in the chair for a few minutes, wondering whether meeting Ben at the park might turn out to be a mistake. Or my best chance to close things out, draw a line under what had happened, and start putting my family back together. There was only one way to find out. In any case, there were some things I wanted to say to him: to look him in the eye and tell him that Mel was mine and I was hers, and nothing would ever change that. To tell him she was human, she’d made a mistake, and now we would put it behind us and start again. Part of me – maybe a big part – also thought briefly about hurting him, punishing him for what he’d tried to do to my family. He had forfeited his right to a fair fight.

I didn’t notice the webcam until I was about to shut the computer down. The red light glowed next to its tiny digital eye, looking back at me from its perch on top of the monitor. The camera’s red light only lit up when it was in use. When there was someone at the other end, the webcam’s view displayed on their computer screen.