I nodded slowly, as realization dawned.

‘Well, obviously, I took the precaution of copying his number. In case I ever needed it,’ he added.

I closed my eyes, unable to stand the way he was looking at me for a second longer. Leo would have told Ben everything. Worse, he would have enjoyed it. I had always regretted telling Leo the truth in a drunken moment of madness. I somehow always knew that it would come out eventually.

As if reading my mind, Ben continued. ‘We had quite a long chat in the end, me and Leo …’

I opened my eyes to see Ben looking at me with an expression of pure hatred, before his face crumpled and fresh tears began to pour down his cheeks again. He wiped them away furiously with his free hand and gave an anguished howl. ‘And the one word that keeps going round and round in my brain, is “why”? Why did you have to wreck our lives, Bella? Why couldn’t you just have stayed away from us and got on with your own life, instead of stealing ours?’

A volcanic wave of rage exploded within me. ‘To make your fucking father pay for what he did!’ I screamed, all control now lost. ‘He thought he could dump me like a sack of rubbish. Like I meant nothing! When he knew I was pregnant with his child! He thought he could pay me off like some kind of prostitute and that I’d just take the money and run. That I’d kill our baby!’

Ben visibly recoiled at my words.

‘Well, I wasn’t going to just go away! I wasn’t going to make it easy for him! I decided that the best way to make him pay for what he’d done was for him to be forced to have me in his life for ever.’

Ben’s eyes narrowed, as if steeling himself as I delivered the killer blow. ‘And you were just the convenient idiot to make that happen!’

There was a stunned, heavy silence as my words landed with a sickening, heavy thud, before Ben looked up at me with an agonized, haunted expression. ‘You never felt anything for me,’ he said, his voice filled with pain.

‘No! I never wanted you!’ I yelled. ‘I just wanted him! I couldn’t believe it when the bastard died and I was left alone and stuck with you!’ Rage drove the words out of me with reckless abandon.

‘You’re sick!’ Ben shouted back, anger helping him to recover his strength. ‘You’re a bloody psychopath! I don’t care if I’m not Elodie’s biological father! She loves me and I love her. I’m taking her as far away from you as possible where she’ll be safe. I’m going to make sure you never see her again, you evil bitch!’

I didn’t remember doing it. All I knew was that when I came to, Ben was lying motionless on the ground and I was on top of him, still holding onto a shard of glass that seemed to be embedded in his chest.