Chapters (45)
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Seventeen
- Chapter Eighteen
- Chapter Nineteen
- Chapter Twenty
- Chapter Twenty-one
- Chapter Twenty-two
- Chapter Twenty-three
- Chapter Twenty-four
- Chapter Twenty-five
- Chapter Twenty-six
- Chapter Twenty-seven
- Chapter Twenty-eight
- Chapter Twenty-nine
- Chapter Thirty
- Chapter Thirty-one
- Chapter Thirty-two
- Chapter Thirty-three
- Chapter Thirty-four
- Chapter Thirty-five
- Chapter Thirty-six
- Chapter Thirty-seven
- Chapter Thirty-eight
- Chapter Thirty-nine
- Chapter Forty
- Chapter Forty-one
- Chapter Forty-two
- Chapter Forty-three
- Chapter Forty-four
- 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.