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

Right at the bottom is a bunch of keys on a D ring. I pull up the ring and roll a Yale key around it. I zip on a black hoodie and pull on a black beanie. I open the front door as quietly as I can and Rover is silent. I hurry across the drive and around the skip and run over to the park, your bag over my shoulder.

The laptop and the flash drive are still on the floor of the car. I eventually park up in a city-centre back street and hop onto the Manchester free Wi-Fi. I open Monica’s Facebook account and find the offending photos. Pam Harding still smirks out at me and she’s still wearing my wedding dress. No time to feel angry now, though. I’m on a roll. Instead, I write a status – ‘#drunkenselfie #notmydress’ – and add a picture of the back of Pam with the dress unzipped. In the ‘who were you with’ section I select ‘Jack Atkinson’ and in the ‘where were you’ I tag my own postcode. It’s obvious that this photograph is taken in a bedroom, and anyone who knows me will know it’s my bedroom because behind Pam is a huge picture of my children looking down on her smirking face. I add the hashtags #notmyhouse and #notmykids and post the picture, knowing it will immediately post to Twitter and be dissected by #teamCaro and #teamJack.

I turn off the computer and I continue on my journey, this time back towards my house but I turn off three streets before. I park outside a three-bedroomed detached house and switch the computer back on again. Because it’s night-time not so many people have shared the picture yet, but some of your friends have liked it and tagged you. I can imagine you now, phoning DS Percy in the middle of the night and demanding that she goes to my house and arrest me straight away.

If she is half the copper I think she is she will be using ‘find my phone’ right now to see where I am. She’ll ring my mobile and when I don’t answer try to trace its location. She’ll see that it’s right there in my house and that obviously I am in bed asleep. She’ll probably ask the police IT people to trace the IP address of made-up Monica’s post and the location. I’ve helpfully switched on ‘location’ on this laptop now so that when I post the next picture, the one of Pam naked in my bedroom, with the status #ooopsIdiditagain and tag you, eventually, when I’m long gone, the police will trace it to this spot.