Her voice is soft and quiet and I wonder if, apart from fucking my husband, she is a nice person. She motions for us to go downstairs and we sit at the kitchen table. She tilts her head to one side.

‘I know you don’t believe me, but he took me in too. Told me he was leaving you. That he’d leave soon. And yeah, I did feel sorry for your kids. But I thought I was in love.’

I snort. ‘But you fucking knew he was with me. You fucking knew.’

‘I bet you hate me, don’t you?’

Her eyes are pleading. I nod.

‘Maybe not hate. Strong dislike? You deserve it.’

She winces. ‘OK, maybe I do. But deep down you know that it’s not my fault. It’s his. I was stupid. So were you. And whoever else he took in. But having a go at me is just going to make it worse. For both of us. The Facebook stuff is one thing ... but all that upstairs, the dresses and that, well, it’s a bit …’

She lights a cigarette and gets a saucer from the cupboard. I think how close I came to taking real revenge. I feel a pang of guilt, a roll in the pit of my stomach when I think about Frances’s shop. What the hell is happening to me?

I study Pam as she checks her phone messages. She looks happy. I wonder how, if she says she loved Jack, she had got over it. How do people do that? For the first time since I saw that fucking holdall I feel genuinely sad. I wonder if I’ve done the right thing, going after these women.

I can’t change it now, but I can do something about it. I can go and talk to DS Percy. I can tell her that I’ll help her as much as I can with her inquiries and, obviously, the posts will stop so you won’t be able to complain any more.

I watch Pam’s cigarette smoke wind through the morning sunshine.

‘What you said, you know, we’re on the same side?’

She laughs. ‘We are. We’re both Jack’s exes, like it or not.’

I hadn’t thought of it like that. It’s different for me. I was married to him. I had children with him. But I’ll take it. I need to think. Think of a way to get my kids back.

‘Yeah. Well, it’s just got a bit out of hand. I didn’t ask for any of this.’

She looks around and waves her cigarette at the boxes.

‘All this. You need to unfuck yourself. You need to think about getting back to who you were before all this shit happened. Look, we’re never going to be soul sisters, but if you ever need anything, give me a call.’