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Back Perfect Ten Save as PDF
Chapters (45)
  1. Chapter One
  2. Chapter Two
  3. Chapter Three
  4. Chapter Four
  5. Chapter Five
  6. Chapter Six
  7. Chapter Seven
  8. Chapter Eight
  9. Chapter Nine
  10. Chapter Ten
  11. Chapter Eleven
  12. Chapter Twelve
  13. Chapter Thirteen
  14. Chapter Fourteen
  15. Chapter Fifteen
  16. Chapter Sixteen
  17. Chapter Seventeen
  18. Chapter Eighteen
  19. Chapter Nineteen
  20. Chapter Twenty
  21. Chapter Twenty-one
  22. Chapter Twenty-two
  23. Chapter Twenty-three
  24. Chapter Twenty-four
  25. Chapter Twenty-five
  26. Chapter Twenty-six
  27. Chapter Twenty-seven
  28. Chapter Twenty-eight
  29. Chapter Twenty-nine
  30. Chapter Thirty
  31. Chapter Thirty-one
  32. Chapter Thirty-two
  33. Chapter Thirty-three
  34. Chapter Thirty-four
  35. Chapter Thirty-five
  36. Chapter Thirty-six
  37. Chapter Thirty-seven
  38. Chapter Thirty-eight
  39. Chapter Thirty-nine
  40. Chapter Forty
  41. Chapter Forty-one
  42. Chapter Forty-two
  43. Chapter Forty-three
  44. Chapter Forty-four
  45. Acknowledgements

Then I walk home. Halfway there I realise that I don’t really want to go indoors. My insides tremble and I know that things have got out of hand. Not that it’s my fault. This is a means to an end to me, to get my children back. But I never meant anyone to get hurt. I never meant to steal anything at all. I need to remind myself why I did that, because things are certainly becoming muddled.

I double back to the car and retrieve Monica’s laptop and the flash drive. I sit in the dark under an oak tree and fire it up. I watch as the bats dip through the last of the sunset and fly back into the trees.

I scroll through the scanned images of you and your women until I reach you and Frances again. The picture of her holding baby Charlie. I was right. The following pictures show you in her house, the same one she lives in now. I reach the end of the sequence and skip over scanned cinema tickets and a receipt for a diamond tennis bracelet. I’m thinking that I’m desensitised to this now until the next pictures flash up in front of me and my mouth falls open involuntarily.

Pam Harding. She’s beautiful. I admit that. Dark hair curled right down her back. Ruby rosebud lips. Dark eyes. But in the fifth picture she’s wearing a wedding dress. My hands shake as I flick through the pictures. Wedding dress. Smirk. Smirk over the shoulder. Blowing a kiss. There’s no bouquet. I recognise that tiara. Wedding dress undone. Naked in my wedding tiara. In my bedroom.

I slam the laptop shut. What the fuck was I thinking? Almost feeling sorry for these women. Frances, with her fucking cat and her tea shop. Frances, who held my baby son and smiled for your camera. And now Pam Harding. Nine out of ten. You fucked her in my wedding dress on my bed. And now I have to go back there.

You deserve everything you’re going to get, Jack. And so do your women.

Chapter Eighteen

This is a turning point. I can feel it. I know that I’m a good person and my mind keeps making excuses for you. Telling me to leave it, leave it. It’s not worth it. But I know this is how you trained me. Telling me I was insane when I half suspected something. No smoke without fire.