Her plans for that morning pushed her work problems and Flynn from her head. Now instead of his handsome face, Victor’s was there, as it had been all those years before, handsome, charming, and utterly compelling. She wondered what sort of man he’d grown into.

Less than an hour later, wearing her smartest jeans, white T-shirt, and pale-blue linen jacket, her damp hair pinned up in a tight knot, she was ready to go. A constant churning in her stomach made her decide against breakfast. She’d get a takeaway coffee in the station and have it on the train.

Gravesend station was a bustling, heaving mass of commuters arriving, leaving, standing about getting in the way. Jodie, with her priorities right, bought her coffee before heading to the automatic ticket machines for a return ticket to West Hampstead and hurried to the platform with minutes to spare before the Southeastern train pulled out.

She was in luck and managed to find a seat. As the train chugged along, her thoughts drifted back to a period of her life that was fraught with conflicting emotions of love and hate. She had been convinced she’d loved Victor. Her mother, the social worker and even the prosecuting team had told her she was too young to understand, that she was a child. She’d cupped her hands around her baby bump and argued that she loved him… that she was old enough to know what she wanted.

She smiled at her naivety. She’d been just a child, a confused and very young fourteen-year-old desperately trying to replace the father who had died so suddenly the year before. The ideal vulnerable candidate for a manipulative man like Victor.

The train pulled into St Pancras International and she shuffled off behind a line of commuters. A few minutes later she was on Platform 1 waiting for the Thameslink train to her destination, sipping the last of her cold coffee. There were others on the platform; a young woman with a small child held tightly by the hand, an older couple looking bored, and a few men travelling alone. She stared at each intently wondering if any of them was Victor. They were all around the right age and her eyes narrowed as she inspected their features, looking for any reminder of the man she’d once adored. But there was nothing. One of the men caught her eye and leered. She looked quickly away.