In my more lucid moments, like today, I feel such deep shame for how I must have messed up Jess’s life. I wonder how she’ll ever manage to recover from the truth. She doesn’t know Rachel and Andrew Faisal. She has no idea who they are, what they’re like. They’re her parents and yet they’re strangers to her. And how will Matt explain everything to my little Charlie? Will my children ever want to see me again? I wouldn’t blame them if they didn’t. Then I realise I’m still thinking of Jess as mine. But she isn’t. She’s Holly Faisal. And I am not her mother.

My tissue is thin and soggy now; I do my best to mop up my tears again. ‘I don’t blame him, you know.’

‘Matt?’

‘Yes. I don’t blame him. He did the right thing, telling the police about me. He’s a good man. The best.’ I picture his distraught expression when the police came to the house and arrested me. He was crying so hard. I’d never seen him lose it like that before. Other than when Charlie was born, but that was just a few emotional, happy tears. This time it was different. These were tears for a broken heart. A broken life.

I didn’t understand what was going on. I thought the police were arresting me for breaking into the Morrises’ flat, or perhaps for following Bella home. I still believed the Morrises had stolen my daughter. I thought the police had got it all wrong. But it wasn’t that at all.

Matt discovered the truth about me when Robin contacted him after our last session. Robin was worried about client confidentiality, but he feared for Bella’s safety. And because Matt was his friend, he thought he should make him aware of the possible danger that I might pose to Bella. Robin didn’t believe I was mentally stable. It turns out he was right.

Then the Morrises’ old neighbour Melanie rang Kate after I’d knocked on her door asking questions. Kate had grown fearful that I was going to expose the fact that Bella was adopted, and that Shaun had been in prison, so she called Matt to ask what was going on. To ask him to make me stop digging into their lives. After he explained my (fake) history to them – that I’d had a child who was abducted – the Morrises were more understanding. But my recent behaviour had set off further alarm bells in Matt’s head.