You made it look like I was mad. Worse, you made it look like I had no remorse for the things you lied about me doing. No conscience. And I suffered in unspeakable ways. I almost lost my job. You, with your Ph.D. in Environmental Science and your carefree, travel-the-world attitude; you told them that I was imagining it all. Your solicitor was good. Very good. Turning my profession around, my lifelong passion for psychology, until it was reduced to mere overthinking. Using my Ph.D. study into designing a psychopath test to suggest that I was a psychopath. It was never actually articulated, of course, simply alluded to. That I knew too much.

Worst of all, you took the children. You were clever. You knew you would never get custody because you were lying, so you manipulated the situation and you manipulated me. You thought it would break me and it almost did. But not quite.

All the while you smirked your way through life, shrugging and hinting that none of it was your fault. None of my complaining and ringing your hotel to make sure you were there, none of my checking your flights and calling work colleagues to understand your diary. None of it was your fault.

As the call-centre operative gave me a number to ring to get your bags collected and helpfully read out your destination address to me – thank you very much for that – I remembered that karma is rarely instant, no matter what John Lennon thought. No. It usually takes years for what goes around comes around and this is it.

This is it.

My hand’s still shaking when I replace the receiver. Now, even though the delivery driver made a mistake and I signed, everyone will know that I did the right thing and got the cases picked up. Those four huge cases with all your belongings. I didn’t try to keep them or even open them. I just left them in the hallway where I’m picturing them now.

Even my insides are shaking with anticipation. I watch the clock all day as I click, click, click away at the websites I’m collecting papers from. I’m lucky to have this job after what happened and I don’t want to fuck it up. But as the day goes on I slip into the realisation that there, at home, in my hallway, is the key to everything that has nagged away at me for years. Even before you left. All the pain, all the sadness; the answer is waiting for me in that leather holdall.