‘Thank you. OK, I’ll just look at the file. Actually, your first payment has gone out. It was £17.05 to cover the first three weeks of the month, from when you opened the account on the tenth. And this month’s is due out next week for a full month. £23.17.’

I fake laugh.

‘Oh, yes, I can see it now. £17.05. I was looking for £23.17 for a full month. So sorry to bother you.’

‘No problem, Mrs Atkinson. Have a nice day.’

Oh, I will have a nice day. I will now I know how long you’ve been sneaking around. Six weeks. You’ve been back six weeks. Your luggage must have been lost all that time.

It doesn’t make sense. You must have been following me. Watching me, like the note said. Or getting someone else to do it. I cringe to think that you saw me with those men. Knew what I was doing. My habits. My foibles. I can imagine the fucking satisfaction you would have got out of it.

I can even understand why you did it. To make me look bad. Like a slut. What completely puzzles me is how you thought you’d get away with it? You’re not stupid. You know hotels have CCTV. Whoever did it disguised themselves but if they ever got caught, even if the police didn’t work out the obvious, they’d tell on you? I don’t get it.

I suppose it could be one of two things. The first one is that you are stupid enough to actually think there would be no cameras and no one would see. The other one is that you knew I would realise it was you behind it and you actually want me to say it’s you. That would be a very similar situation to what had already happened, to me accusing you of all the affairs and of colluding with your mother. Is that what you wanted, for me to make myself look mad again?

But you didn’t know I had the means to expose you then, did you? You didn’t know I had the journal. A wave of fear washes over me. If you’d do this just to get your own way, what else are you capable of? I know you’d never risk doing anything directly to me as you’d be the first suspect. The accusation I’d made against you would resurface and come true. In any case, that injunction you took out against me works both ways, doesn’t it, so you can’t come anywhere near me.

DS Percy’s back now, walking towards me. She gets herself a coffee out of the machine and hurries over.