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Back Perfect Ten Save as PDF
Chapters (45)
  1. Chapter One
  2. Chapter Two
  3. Chapter Three
  4. Chapter Four
  5. Chapter Five
  6. Chapter Six
  7. Chapter Seven
  8. Chapter Eight
  9. Chapter Nine
  10. Chapter Ten
  11. Chapter Eleven
  12. Chapter Twelve
  13. Chapter Thirteen
  14. Chapter Fourteen
  15. Chapter Fifteen
  16. Chapter Sixteen
  17. Chapter Seventeen
  18. Chapter Eighteen
  19. Chapter Nineteen
  20. Chapter Twenty
  21. Chapter Twenty-one
  22. Chapter Twenty-two
  23. Chapter Twenty-three
  24. Chapter Twenty-four
  25. Chapter Twenty-five
  26. Chapter Twenty-six
  27. Chapter Twenty-seven
  28. Chapter Twenty-eight
  29. Chapter Twenty-nine
  30. Chapter Thirty
  31. Chapter Thirty-one
  32. Chapter Thirty-two
  33. Chapter Thirty-three
  34. Chapter Thirty-four
  35. Chapter Thirty-five
  36. Chapter Thirty-six
  37. Chapter Thirty-seven
  38. Chapter Thirty-eight
  39. Chapter Thirty-nine
  40. Chapter Forty
  41. Chapter Forty-one
  42. Chapter Forty-two
  43. Chapter Forty-three
  44. Chapter Forty-four
  45. Acknowledgements

‘Thank you. I appreciate it. You know, they’re all that really matters to me.’

She nods, but I see her looking at the bottle of milk. Checking it out, scoping where it came from.

‘I’ll get going, then. Give me a call if anything else occurs to you. I’ll be in touch.’

Her eyes are on my shoes and my jumper, looking for clues as to where I have been. She has the journal now, so she has the key to all this. She suspects something. I need to act fast.

Chapter Twenty-five

I watch her as she walks down the drive. She stops beside my car and feels the bonnet. Then she walks towards her car and walks straight past it. I run downstairs and out of the kitchen door. As I duck through the back fence and up the alleyway I see her walking towards the shops.

Did they have CCTV? Shit. Shit. Shit. I still had the wig on when I went in. I follow her, keeping back. Outside the shop she looks around for cameras. There are none. She goes in and I stand around the side where I can just see her through a gap in the newspaper stand in the window.

She looks at the milk then speaks to the assistant. She raises her phone and shows her something and the assistant shakes her head. She looks around for CCTV and the assistant shakes her head again.

I run, run, run before she can see me and I’m back at home to see her take a last look at my house before she drives away. I wait twenty minutes – enough time for her to not be coming back but not enough time for her to send someone to watch the house. I’m shaky and upset. She’s starting to believe them. She’s starting to think it’s me. It’s just like before.

It’s getting late now but I take the back roads up into the hills, then the dimly lit lanes. One thing in particular is playing on my mind. I saw your mother at the police station. They brought her in. She had the bag. So why haven’t they charged her?

Some people lead a charmed life. They never get found out. For some people it takes a considerable effort to cover themselves, but others just charm their way out of it. She’s like that. Melissa Atkinson. Missy, as everyone calls her.

She even looks like a Missy. A blonde bob, neutral clothing. Beige and navy. Chanel and Dior lines. Even though she’s barely middle class and had to scrape enough money together to keep the house when her husband died, she was always considered ‘posh’. Or ‘snobby’, as my friends called her.