I breathe in sharply. For one second I let my mind wander to the final outcome of this. Not the bad ending, where I’m arrested and he gets away with it. The ending where I get my children back. I experimentally take it a step further because I thought I glimpsed my future with him still in it and, if that is so, I really am crazy and I’m heading for trouble.

It’s so common, though. Women who have been abused finally escaping only to return a week later. They’re fixers. They truly believe that they can change their man, that they have the magical qualities that will morph what has usually been a lifelong, if not generational, problem, into a fairy-tale relationship. He’s the one. I’m the one. We’re the one. Love conquers all. It’s a delusion that is sadly perpetuated by society and peddled in every greeting card shop and love song.

So I think hard. Is this what I’m doing to myself? Am I hoping I’ll get a second chance, even after everything? No. No. No. No I’m not. I want out. I want to get my kids back and I want him to know how I feel. How horrible it is to question your own motives, for fear you are so deeply manipulated that you’re even duping yourself. That you’re not listening because you’re not real. You’re just a figment of my tortured, manipulated imagination. ‘You’ are who I want you to be, but the real Jack, him, is someone else entirely.

I bet Louise Shaw doesn’t know half of what he’s been up to. But she’s going to find out.

I’m fuming now, super-angry that I have to go to these lengths. I slam the car door behind me. This is the moment of reckoning, when I’ll come face to face with Jack, he’ll have no choice but to admit what he’s done and let me see my own children. In my mind’s eye I see Louise Shaw pouting at him. She’s smiling up at him and holding his hand. She deserves to know all about him too.

I push the gate open and stride up to the door. There’s a glass vestibule and I’m banging on the glass before I catch a glimpse of myself in it. I’ve still got the glasses and fancy-dress wig on. For a second I question myself. Is this like Frances or Pam? Is this what I said I wouldn’t do? No. I’m confronting him to see my kids, not to get revenge. With my collar up I’m unrecognisable and I realise that’s why Louise opens the door just as I was regretting knocking.