The thing about liars is that they forget who was there. They happily lie their way through life and lose track of the evidence. She forgot that I had you to tell the other side of your childhood. You told me that she spent all her money on herself, and that she rarely bought toys or took you on expensive trips. After your father died she became even more self-centred. I weighed the situation carefully and realised that this wasn’t a case of you and her against me, rather that you were using her just like you were using me, and I sometimes felt sorry for her. Her one saving grace, and the reason I didn’t, couldn’t, cut her off completely was that she does love Charlie and Laura. She used them to point score, but she does love them. With them, her smile is soft and her hand is light in a way I’ve never seen before. Perhaps she sees them as her second chance to perfect motherhood, but they’re my children not hers. When I first had them I was her favourite too. But as they grew and became independent of me she cooled. Later, as your partner, I was so far off her trajectory of expectations that she virtually ignored me. So now, sitting here in a strange car in the middle of the night, I feel a little bit sad.

Even after she’s manipulated the situation so far that she took my children, I still feel sad that this will be the end of our relationship. I suppose it’s a bit like Stockholm Syndrome. I’ve been stuck in a destructive relationship with her all my life, but it’s always been one where we have related. It might have been via a solicitor or manipulative actions, but we’ve always communicated.

Now I’ve won, she will be gone. When the police knock on her door and find the phone and the holdall they will think it’s her who has posted on Facebook. It will look for all the world like she has betrayed her beloved son, that she disapproves of your behaviour and has protested by posting the journal. Only she and you will know the truth. Her world will crumble because she really didn’t think that I was capable of setting her up.

I get out of the four-wheel drive and go over everything in my mind. I’ve brought Frances’s phone with me, dismantled, of course. Monica’s phone is at your mother’s and her laptop is in the car, deactivated. My phone and laptop are at home, both with the location turned on.