‘He said that … that … I would lose Jamie because I couldn’t look after him. That I had no chance. He had custody of his other children and this would go the same way.’

‘Did he, now? Well, it won’t. I’ll help you, Katy. He’s done this once, he won’t do it again. And he doesn’t have fucking custody. Everyone knows what he is now. Where is Jamie? You didn’t …?’

‘No. He’s at my mother’s. I had to come here and tell you I was sorry. Not just that. I want to help. I want to help you to …’

I get up and hug her. We can help each other. Through the distrust and jealousy and hurt we can help each other. The house stinks and it’s like some kind of fucked-up charity shop, but it’s home again and somehow Katy is sitting here and she’s sorry.

‘We’ll sort something out. I need to tell you what’s happened.’

I don’t tell her about the journal. I tell her the DS Percy version – another witness to what I said. She listens and sips her hot, sweet tea.

‘So it was his mother all along? I thought you said she hated you?’

‘Yes. But she’s a mother at the end of the day.’

The lies spew out and I can’t stop them. I’m careful to not let her know that I’ve seen the journal, only the bits on Facebook. I suddenly feel bad about Missy. I did all those things when I was mixed up and weak. She took my kids away.

Yet I can’t get away from it. She’s a mother at the end of the day. I remember Jack telling me that she wasn’t well liked within the family. I realise now that he isolated me from his relatives, but he did talk about them. He told me that Missy had two sisters, both ‘worse than her’ – his words.

There had been an incident where they had found out what she was really like – self-centred, grasping, greedy – and there had been a suggestion that she didn’t pay the attention she should to Jack. A bad mother, they called her. He told me that was the only time he ever saw her cry. It must be why she saw my kids – and now Jamie too – as a second chance.

So Missy knows that feeling of persecution. She knows what it’s like to be deemed a bad mother. Yet she still did it to me. I’ve often wondered if that was when it started? That all paths from there led to that afternoon in the meeting room where she took my children.