‘No. It’s your behaviour that’s getting to me. You’re the fucking crazy ex. You posted the pictures. You stirred all this up. Now you’re going to seal my fate.’

Seal her fate? What the fuck does she mean? I haven’t done anything to Emma.

‘Oh, right. Is this something else Jack has made up about me? What I’m going to do? How mad I am?’

‘No. The way this is going, he’s going to get custody of your children.’ She steps closer to me now and I can see her properly. She’s my double. That’s why she looks so familiar. ‘The thing is, Caroline, I don’t want your brats. I want Jack. I want to move away from his crazy fucking mother and your kids. We’ve got an apartment, beautiful it is, but it’s not big enough for your kids as well.’ Of course. Villa Place. ‘I want us to have a life and you’re stopping us by … all this. He was planning to get legal custody of them.’

It sinks in through the hurt and the pain very slowly. Pushing through the shell that’s formed around me over the past year, thick and thorny. We stare at each other and, for once, I’m at a loss for words. She doesn’t want Charlie and Laura. Emma’s not on a mission to discredit me. She’s not the enemy. I am. I’m her enemy. She’s on her own mission on an entirely separate trajectory. She’s got a mad look in her eye that I recognise. I used to have it 100 per cent of the time when I was chasing Jack’s exes around. Emma jumps up dramatically.

‘So, unless you’ve got a better idea, I’m going to have to tell the police about all this.’ She points at the contents of the hole and the photographs. ‘That’s where I’ve been. I had to get the photos out of Allan’s flat when he was arrested. Private investigator. Got too greedy, he did. Obviously I couldn’t tell Jack, so he reported it because he thought it was your doing. So it conveniently looked like I was missing. But this has to stop.’

I can’t believe it. It was her, not Jack. It was her who nearly got me arrested.

‘So you’ve had me fucking followed?’

‘Yeah, I was building a case. I was going to blackmail you with it. Make you leave Jack alone. Make you take the kids back. Then all this happened with the journal and—’

I intervene.

‘So you don’t mind about the contents of the journal? That he’s marked everyone out of ten? Taken pictures? Doesn’t that disturb you a bit? You know, as a feminist?’

I can’t resist. The sarcastic note in my voice pisses her off even more.