When George handed in his notice at the site, the foreman was sorry to see him go. ‘You’re a good worker, George,’ he said. The boys had all clubbed together and given him ten quid as a wedding present. ‘You’ll be needing it to pay for the nappies,’ they’d laughed. And he’d laughed too. But inside he was crushed. He walked around in a daze, unable to process the speed with which everything was happening. It was a living nightmare and he felt permanently sick.

They moved in quickly. Patricia, glad to see the back of her dingy little flat, had splashed out on new furniture, all bought ‘on tick’. George became more and more subsumed by the horror of it all. Sinking into debt, sinking into infinite sorrow. His only saving grace was little Judi-moo, who he’d grown to love as his own, who kept sharing her excitement about their new house with its little back yard and the hills in the distance. And how much she loved her new, bigger bedroom and how she wanted to invite her little school friends Lana Lloyd and Catrin Kelly over to the house to play. It was a fresh start for them all. Their little family of three, soon to be four.

When she told him she’d miscarried, all he could think was, So I did not need to marry you. I did not need to marry you. But it was too late. Because now he’d promised, till death did them part, to remain by her side. Shackled to a woman he didn’t love.

He felt ill. Ashamed and trapped.

Serves you right, Georgios, he thought.

It was five more years before he learned the truth. A chance remark, a lazy mistake, a friend of a friend passing comment on past events and there it was – the revelation. That there never had been a baby in the first place.

He’d always questioned her honesty. Little examples of little white lies, which built and grew until he was witness to her downright deceit. So when he discovered she’d lied about the pregnancy, it didn’t surprise him. He’d grown to hate her, then grown to be indifferent. And yet still he stayed. As if he must pay the price, endure his penance, be punished for his sins. For all these years.

It was only when Judith had confirmed the date she was leaving for her travels that he knew – instantly – that that was when he would finally go. He applied for a job in Aberdeen, handed in his notice and swore his boss to secrecy; stashing his cash in his locker at work, he put together a small holdall of essentials along with a change of clothes. And on 5 August 1986, George Andrew Harris walked out through the factory gates of BDE Electronics, never to return. He wrote a short note to Patricia, which he put in the post on his way to the bus stop. It simply said: