Because I’ve done this before, started from scratch, so I know I can do it all over again.
Except this time, I have Ella.
And although I have no idea where we’re heading, at least we’re together.
Me and my beautiful girl.
I think of Jamie then, all the things he’ll miss out on. All those memories yet to be made. And memories are all I have left of him too.
It feels like a million years ago now, when I first saw him at that hotel bar. Dining with some clients, as I sat at a far corner table all on my own. Invisible to the likes of him. And he would have been invisible to me too, if it hadn’t been for the spectacle of the entire waiting team practically falling over themselves to keep him happy and all their Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir.
It had been entertaining to watch. How this one man seemed to have everyone in his power. I could see the appeal.
An attractive man with an air of importance about him. He looked like he wouldn’t take any bullshit. And well, I always did love a challenge.
It didn’t take much to find out who he was, the maître D had only too gladly corrected me when I pretended to mistake him with someone famous.
‘No, no. That’s Mr Jamie Dawson. The director of one of London’s most successful recruitment companies. He’s a regular client.’ Then, lowering his voice, he quipped as he winked at me. ‘A bit of a bachelor by all accounts.’
Of course, I took the bait and looked him up online. An eligible bachelor with money and power and everything already in place for me to start again in a whole new life. I studied him hard for two whole days, from the confines of my bleak hotel room. It wasn’t as if I had anything else to do. I was still hiding away, trying to camouflage myself into my new identity.
Recovering from the whiplash I’d suffered.
The news of the car accident, of Mark and Jessica’s death, had been all over the news. Reported as a hit and run.
I was desperate. So, I made it my business to find every article I could about this Jamie Dawson on the Internet, devouring articles about his company. About the charities he sponsored. The fundraising events he’d been to. And I found a few personal posts on Twitter too: A reference to a book he once read and loved. George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. A photograph of his favourite bottle of drink. The same vile Glenfiddich my mother drank.
I had all the knowledge I needed to impress him.
And I used it with vigour.
Jamie Dawson fell for me, hook, line, and sinker that first night he’d approached me at the hotel bar. It went much quicker and smoother than I ever could have hoped. Because I gave him the illusion of everything he thought he wanted me to be.
A clone of him, in effect. I fed his insatiable ego.
Over the first few weeks of us dating, I morphed into exactly the woman Jamie wanted me to be. If Jamie didn’t like spicy food, I didn’t like spicy food. If Jamie had a favourite movie, I had the same favourite movie.
He never suspected. He never clicked that I was just impersonating his perfect ideal.
And then I got pregnant with Ella. My sweet, darling Ella.
She’d been the one real flaw in my plan.
Because I never wanted to get pregnant. I never wanted a child. Not after what happened to Jessica. And from the minute Ella was born, I’ve lived with the constant fear that when I wasn’t looking, karma would come and snatch her away from me.
And Mark almost managed it.
Poor, pathetic Mark.
I remember the first time I ever hit Mark. He just took it. Believing me when I begged him to forgive me, promising him it would never happen again.
I did what was expected. What I’d witnessed my mother do time and time again when I’d been growing up.
And it had worked. He believed me.
But gradually over time, I got worse.
My demons became too overpowering and I started drinking to ease my throbbing head, all those vicious painful flashbacks. Anything to block out those awful memories.
And then I started to hit him when I hadn’t had any drink at all. Completely sober, but full of jealousy and rage. Because I was losing him, and that’s what you did, wasn’t it? When everything started to slip. You fought to stay in control.
My mother did that too, the experts said later. When they’d printed their contemptuous profiles about her in the press.
How she’d kept us all living in fear of her for years, because she believed that was the only way to make people stay.
Because she believed it was the only way you could stop people from leaving you.
Mark tried to hide his affair from me at first, but I knew something had changed. He started being careless, as if he wanted me to work it out. As if he wanted me to know.
Because he wanted it to be over. He wanted to leave me. That’s the truth.
I only realised that when I finally confronted him.
I expected him to deny it, I expected him to plead on his hands and knees to forgive him.
Only he didn’t do any of that.
He told me that he’d found someone who genuinely loved him, not someone like me; someone who wasn’t capable of real love.
And in that moment, I just wanted to kill him.
So I waited for a few days after our row, then loaded up the car with all of my stuff.
I was going to leave him.
But I was going to make him pay.
I was taking Jessica with me.
She might have been his daughter by blood, but I’d helped to raise her too.
I’d wiped her tears when she cried and hugged her tight when she’d had a bad dream.
I loved her like my own.
Even now, I can still remember every tiny detail about her, though I try my hardest to block that all out. Her dainty plump white hands. Her mass of bright blonde curls. The way she used to belly laugh whenever we said or did something funny.
She was just four years old and she trusted me.
She loved me too.
So, of course she didn’t protest when I strapped her into the car and told her about us going on a little adventure.
But Mark had to go and ruin all my plans. Clearly suspicious, he’d come home from work early that day, before I’d had time to get in the driver’s seat and start the engine up, and I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t prepared.
By the time I’d started the engine, he’d yanked open the passenger door and had jumped into the seat next to me. And I just panicked. I put my foot down and drove.
Aimlessly at first. Recklessly. Fast.
It was getting dark, but I didn’t notice the rain, not until later.
Until afterwards.
We were shouting.
And I told him that he couldn’t leave me. He couldn’t take Jessica away from me.
And he shouted back.
That it was over. That he didn’t love me. That Jessica was his.
I told him all the things I wanted to do to him. All the ways I’d make him suffer.
And then he hit me.
The back of his hand locking with my cheek.
The shock stinging me far more than the actual blow.
It was the first and only time he’d ever lain a hand on me.
I saw red. I remember thinking that there was no going back from there.
We couldn’t just go home.
We were done. He was going to leave me, and he was going to take Jessica away from me.
When we went off road, I drove at those trees, aiming for the one on his side. And in my head, my plan was going to work.
I’d turned and checked that Jessica was strapped in. Ignoring her terrified cries as her father and I continued to scream and shouted at each other.
We’d be okay. I could feel it.