‘I was a child,’ she said, and felt the release of those lingering hints of guilt that she was somehow to blame. ‘A very young fourteen-year-old. And you took horrendous advantage of my innocence, my youth, my vulnerability.’ She stepped closer again, her lip curling in a sneer when she saw fear creep across his face. ‘You are a monster, Victor, worse, a craven monster who preys on the weak and defenceless. That was why you sent me those packages before your declaration of–’ she lifted her index fingers to make quotation marks in the air ‘–love. You wanted me weak, scared, anxious.’

She used the toe of her shoe to prod his leg. ‘But I’m none of those things.’ A few steps backward took her to the door. She reached for the handle without taking her eyes from him. ‘I’m going. I don’t want to see you again. If I do, if I even see you in the distance, I’ll go to the police and complain that you’re stalking me.’

Without another word, she opened the door and hurried down the corridor. She took the stairs two steps at a time, almost tripping over herself in her haste to leave.

By the time she reached home, she was shaking from a combination of anger, relief, and disgust. Her fingers fumbled with the house key, panic in every breath. Inside, she slammed the door behind her, reached for the safety chain and slid it into place. Only then did she feel safe. It was an hour before she calmed down, an hour she spent stomping around the house unable to settle to doing anything.

Victor… he was a delusional monster. She had considered that he might still love her after all these years, crazy though that notion was. What she’d never considered, was that he might think she felt the same. The idea made her squirm.

If she saw him, even once, she’d go straight to the police. Any pity for him had been wiped away by his declaration. Victor may no longer be on the sex offenders register but he was still an ex-con, if she told the police he was stalking her and that he’d been the one responsible for the packages, they’d have to take her seriously.

Hours later, by concentrating on the memory of Victor as she’d left him, a seedy, pathetic man lying on the floor, Jodie was almost able to forget that he was a monster. She’d shown him that she wasn’t the pushover she’d been as a child. Perhaps he’d leave her alone now.

With that hope lodged firmly in her brain, she decided to go to the pharmacy as planned. Her hands sneaked over her flat belly as if to comfort what was growing inside. She wasn’t going to live her life in fear, and she was desperate to confirm what she suspected.