Chapters (45)
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Seventeen
- Chapter Eighteen
- Chapter Nineteen
- Chapter Twenty
- Chapter Twenty-one
- Chapter Twenty-two
- Chapter Twenty-three
- Chapter Twenty-four
- Chapter Twenty-five
- Chapter Twenty-six
- Chapter Twenty-seven
- Chapter Twenty-eight
- Chapter Twenty-nine
- Chapter Thirty
- Chapter Thirty-one
- Chapter Thirty-two
- Chapter Thirty-three
- Chapter Thirty-four
- Chapter Thirty-five
- Chapter Thirty-six
- Chapter Thirty-seven
- Chapter Thirty-eight
- Chapter Thirty-nine
- Chapter Forty
- Chapter Forty-one
- Chapter Forty-two
- Chapter Forty-three
- Chapter Forty-four
- Acknowledgements
Part of the disadvantage I have is that I can’t even imagine what is going on with DS Percy. She appears to believe me, but then she starts to check up on me. She would have been round to see Jack now. Has he convinced her I’m insane just like he convinced everyone else? Have he and Emma planned this, to get rid of me once and for all – Emma reappearing and telling them that Caroline kidnapped her? Lorraine will have got in touch with all those women, asked them if they had any contact with me.
I know Jack. He’ll have tried to win her round. He’ll have talked about me like I was mentally ill, tried to distract her from the journal. Anything to discredit me and to make himself look good. I don’t see any way that he could explain it away. And Lorraine is so strait-laced that she would be aghast at the contents.
I scroll and scroll, there are a lot of pictures of Jack and Emma. They were stuck on top of each other in the journal and I remember I had to separate them carefully before scanning them. Some of them are graphic and some of them are blurred. I’m used to it now, the sight of him with someone else. It used to be my worst nightmare; I couldn’t imagine what I would do if I ever caught him.
Tap, tap, tap through the pictures and then stop. There she is, in my wedding dress. Except it’s not my wedding dress. It’s a different wedding dress and she’s in a beautifully dressed room with a bouquet of daisies. Jack’s there too with two people I don’t know. I don’t recognise the room or the outside where someone has taken a photo of a photographer taking a photograph of the wedding party.
The wedding party. It’s just dawning on me. The fucking wedding party. This is his wedding to Emma. I study the photographs and it’s difficult to judge if we were still together then. We definitely were earlier in this relationship. Even so, it took a year for the divorce to come through and, according to the pictures, they met in early spring and this was the summer.
The next pictures in the series are Jack at the airport with Emma. A Just Married sticker is plastered on her case. That would have been around the time you left to work abroad. I go back to Facebook and scroll down Emma Atkinson’s profile. She’s posted a life event. Married. 21 August.
I rush upstairs and get the decree absolute out of my document case. Dated 30 September the same year. He married her while we were still married. This is it. This is really it. Proof.