DS Percy is taking it all in. She knows what has happened. She’s read the journal. She’s listened to Jack moaning on, telling her how I’m persecuting all the women in his little book. How I’m mentally unstable. Yet here I am with one of them, best friends. She’s offering to let me stay at her house where she lives with Jack’s child.

‘Oh, I don’t know; I don’t want to impose …’

Katy shakes her head.

‘I absolutely insist. All girls together, and all that.’

I see DS Percy’s expression change. No doubt she’s sick and tired of #allgirlstogether and #cheatingbastard.

‘About that. As you can imagine, Mr Atkinson has made further complaints. He’s claiming that he is being harassed. His solicitor is in the process of issuing an injunction against any libellous or defamatory statements from social networking.’

I stare at her. It’s unbelievable that he would go to those lengths when it’s clear that he is guilty. The evidence is right there, all over the internet, yet he is still trying to defend himself. I suppress laughter. I imagine his bent fucking solicitor’s face when he tells him he wants to prosecute everyone who has insulted him. Everyone who has commented on those posts. I imagine him scrolling through the social networking, pages and pages of it.

My natural thought process leads me to what is really at the nub of this matter. What he is suggesting does sound ludicrous, but is it more ludicrous than serial adultery and the cruelty Katy and I have endured? I focus in and realise that what he really wants to do is stop whoever is doing this. Stop them exposing him in public. Stop them. In fact, stop me. It still comes down to him and me, even now?

I know him. And he knows me. He’s worried about his reputation. Naturally. But now it’s all out there he hasn’t stopped. He knows that I will never give up and I know that he will never give up, but neither of us can sustain this for ever. Now it’s escalated out of our control, it’s a natural impasse. He’s not stupid. Far from it. He knows when he’s onto a loser. What he is proposing now – mass injunctions – will cost him everything.

Why, when there’s nothing more to tell? When the world knows everything? Because there’s something else, isn’t there? Something that wasn’t in the journal. Something that we must be very close to discovering if it makes him so nervous.

‘It’s nothing to do with me. I’ve been at the back of beyond with a … friend. You can check. I have his number …’

‘He’s absolutely adamant that you are posting the pictures.’

I take what she thinks is the bait.

‘But wasn’t it Missy? Isn’t that what you said?’